Jackson didn’t make it.

None of them did.

An envelope showed up in David’s mailbox a few weeks later—he’d made Jess open it—from Jackson’s wife, Anita. Inside was the photograph, and a note.

All that’s left, it said.

Now David unfastened the metal clasps that held the frame together, and pulled the photograph free. He pinched the bottom of the paper. For a moment, nothing happened. And then the photo began to blacken and curl.

It didn’t catch fire. Nothing ever actually caught fire.

No, it all simply burned.

The photo—the broad smile, the wind-chapped face, the three gloved fingers—crumbled to ash in his hand.

What changed? Jess had asked.

The truth was, David had. He’d fallen so far, and the climb back up had been slow, agonizingly so—some days inching forward, others slipping back—but little by little, he’d fought his way back to the summit. He could see a life from here. Not his life, that was gone, but a life.

It was time for a fresh start.

* * *

It had been 294 days since Samantha left.

If any of David’s colleagues or Samantha’s old friends had come to visit, the first thing they would have noticed about the house was the shocking absence of stuff.

David had never been a fan of stuff, but Samantha loved acquiring it. She had spent a small fortune collecting trinkets and knickknacks, tapestries and prints and other random oddities. She treated every inch of empty surface—countertop, table, shelf—like an affront, something to be scrubbed out.

Nothing wrong with negative space, Sam, he’d said, tossing the latest bauble from hand to hand. That’s how he saw climbing, a physical exercise in positive and negative space. The vast expanse of white drawing the small, person-shaped speck into sharp relief.

At least my hobbies won’t get me killed, she’d said, plucking the ornament out of his hand and pecking him on the cheek.

After the accident, and after the fight, when Samantha left him in the middle of the night, she didn’t take any of the clutter with her. No, she took Jack and two suitcases and left David and the house full of stuff behind. He’d ruined most of it in those first weeks, a few select things out of spite (that damn lamp, those ugly bookends, the statue on the patio) but the rest were merely victims of his desperate search for control—sacrificed as he tried to relearn how to touch, how to hold, how to live.

How to warm up.

After the accident, they’d airlifted him off the mountain.

As they loaded him into the helicopter, the EMTs had given him a blanket. It didn’t help. When he tried to pull it tighter, the fabric went ember-red under his touch, and then crumbled. David stared down at the smear of ash across his palms as the EMTs piled in. They gave him another blanket. He didn’t touch it. Instead, he clutched a metal rail beside his stretcher. The silver began to glow beneath his fingers. He felt nothing, no heat, but when an EMT leaned against it midflight, it burned the skin from the man’s arm.

A malfunction, they called it.

When the chopper landed, the doctors couldn’t convince David to unclench his hands. They gave up. Trauma, they wrote in their books. They told him they’d come back in the morning.

But in the morning, he was gone.

David paid off two nurses and a front desk clerk and checked himself out—terrified that if he stayed he’d be dissected as some kind of freak—and went home. Afterward, he wished he hadn’t, wished he’d had the strength to run away. From his family. His life. Anything that could be burned. Instead he stood at the gate where the cab dropped him off and stared up at the oversized, overstuffed house, desperate to see his family again. To have the chance to say good-bye.

Samantha threw her arms around him. Jack clung to his leg, begging to be picked up. He kept his hands balled at his sides, terrified of touching them. Samantha said he looked tired. They went to bed. He only wanted to be near her. One last time. He lay there in the dark, hands wrapped around his own ribs—the heat never reached him—to keep her safe, but it wasn’t enough.

She tried to embrace him. He shook her off.

That’s how the fight started. They’d had so many, over the years, everything from minor quarrels to screaming matches—he worked too late, she spent too much—but this one was different.

David knew what it was: the chance to set her free. To let her go. An awful, dull ache spread through him as he said things—cruel things—any and everything he could think of to push her away. A few of them were truths. Most of them were lies.

And then a horrible thing happened.

She went to slap him and he caught her wrist.

He hadn’t meant to hurt her. It was reflex, self-defense, a hand raised against a hand. But the moment his fingers met her skin, she screamed. He let go at once, but it was too late. The flesh had bubbled and burned, raised welts in the shape of his hand.

Samantha pulled away, horrified.

A malfunction.

He tried to apologize, tried to explain, but he couldn’t make her understand. He didn’t understand.

She left right after, in the middle of the night, Jack and two suitcases in the car, David and his trauma left behind in the house.

Some days David told himself that if he found control—when he found control—he’d make it right. Piece that part of his life back together. But he knew he wouldn’t. No matter how good he got, it would never be good enough to embrace his wife, to hold his son.

The only papers in the house that he hadn’t burned were the divorce papers. He hadn’t signed them, not yet, but he would.

After tonight, he told himself.

* * *

It had been 293 days since he locked himself in.

Now, as David stood facing the front door, he checked himself—keys, wallet, phone—savoring the small measure of control he felt at confirming each thing, and the small comfort at delaying the vital moment a few seconds longer. Shoes. Pants. Shirt. Jacket. He’d showered and shaved—not that he hadn’t continued those rituals daily under his self-imposed seclusion; David had always been a creature of routine—and combed back his hair, which Jess had cut for him the week before.

I’m ready.

He reached out and brought his fingers to rest on the handle—it remained cool beneath his touch—and turned. He stepped through. Closed the door. Locked it. Took one step, then another. David made it to the end of the drive, through the gate, up the quiet road. Every block he paused and asked himself if he wanted to turn back, or keep going.

He kept going.

The Lanes’ house sat only a mile or so from the city center, and as David walked, the street and path—both empty when he set out—began to fill. It happened quite suddenly, this populating of the world, and David soon found himself standing at an intersection crowded with people. His pulse quickened, and he hung back to let them cross while he composed himself, flexing his hands, reassuring himself that he was all right. A hedge decorated the corner behind him, and he plucked a leaf and held it in his palm. It didn’t burn. He dropped it with relief, and crossed the street.

As he did, David had the feeling he was being watched. He scanned the other corners and found a handful of people—an older woman, a pair of teen girls, a young man—but none of them were looking his way, and he shook it off; nearly a year without prying eyes was bound to make the world seem full of them.