Eddie and Laura sat on their sofa as the sun faded outside. He thought of Mrs. Kasolos—that jug of water she had in the basement.

She was a tough old bird, he thought. He wouldn’t be able to live alone at her age. Just getting the pots from the stove to the sink. It took a certain kind of person to last that long.

She certainly didn’t need another five-gallon jug of water just sitting in her basement. Eddie would go to her if the water didn’t come back on soon.

Laura was reading a copy of Field & Stream that had been sent to their house as a promotion.

“Why are you reading that?” he said.

She didn’t move her eyes from the pages. “There’s an article about gophers.”

If Eddie held on to the jug for Mrs. Kasolos, it would be safer, and he could move it around, for one thing. No way she was lifting forty pounds up those stairs. She wasn’t that tough.

“Mrs. Kasolos has more than enough to drink over there,” he said. “I think I’ll find a jar or something and have her fill it.”

“We should be the ones helping her,” she said. “Please don’t take anything from that old woman.”

“Okay,” he said. “But she has extra she doesn’t need.”

Laura went back to reading, but the image of the jug floated in Eddie’s mind. The more he pushed it down, the more it bobbed back up to the surface.

If he wasn’t the one to get it, it would be somebody else. In his mind, that person had no form. But then he saw it was a man. It was Bill Peters. Eddie could see him doing it. He could see him pushing his way in, babbling on about his son.

“I’m going to take that walk with Mike Sr.,” Eddie said.

“Okay.”

“It’ll be good to know what’s going on.”

She moved on the sofa in a way that suggested she was coming with him, but Eddie put his hand on her shoulder to keep her there.

“I think he wants it to be just me and him. You know how Mike Sr. can be.”

“That’s silly,” she said, but slid back to a comfortable spot.

“I don’t want you to worry. You’ve got Patty right there if you need anything.”

“I’m not worried,” she said.

He went to the basement and took the flashlight off the workbench. Then he went to the shelf and held Laura’s silver pom-pom to his face. He breathed it in again, as if he could find traces of her there. Still, there was nothing. Then he squeezed it in both of his fists and pulled until some of the strands strained and disconnected. It was a strange feeling. He held the severed strands between his thumb and forefinger, examining them as though they were a memento of her having once been young. He put them in his pocket.

“I’ll be back soon,” he said at the door. “Don’t worry about me.”

No one was out next door and he walked past the Davises’ with his breath held in.

At Mrs. Kasolos’s there was no response, and he went around knocking on the windows. When he got to the backyard, he heard her voice through the wall. “What in the hell?” she said.

“I’ll go to the front!” he hollered.

She was wearing a thin nightgown, the kind that Eddie’s own mother had worn, and she spoke very loudly—as though she’d never seen him before: “I don’t know what to tell you! I don’t have anything for you!”

“It’s Laura Gardner’s husband,” Eddie said. He made his voice as loud as hers. “I’m Eddie Gardner. Remember? I checked on you before?”

“I’m waiting for my daughter,” she said.

“Did you eat?”

“What the hell do you care?”

“I’m going to help you move that water upstairs. You said you had water in the basement? From the watercooler people?”

“I need it for my daughter.”

“I’m going to bring it up the steps for you in case you need it,” he said. “Can I come in?”

“Come in, don’t come in. I don’t care.”

It was hard to see inside; the walls and furniture were the same brown color.

“Down here?” he said, tapping on the door at the other side of the living room.

“That’s my basement down there.”

She shuffled past him into the kitchen, and Eddie opened the basement door. He clicked on his flashlight. The stairs creaked beneath his weight with a wooden springiness that threatened to launch him forward into the dim space below. He wondered when she’d been down there last. If she were to try it now, she’d fall to her death. The uneasiness he’d felt at being in her home had settled into resolve. It was important to help old people, however set they were in their ways.

When his eyes adjusted, he saw the pale blue jug sitting by itself on the cement floor. He hefted it to his chest and made his way back up the stairs again, setting it down against the wall beside the watercooler.

“Mrs. Kasolos?” he said. He walked through the kitchen and stood in front of the bathroom door. He heard the clink of something hard on porcelain. “You okay in there?”

She was moving around. He could hear that much.

In the living room, he examined the jug already installed in the cooler, no more depleted than it had been earlier in the day.

“Mrs. Kasolos?” he called.

Even if her daughter came, they wouldn’t need ten gallons of water. A woman her age—she probably didn’t need more than a couple cups a day.

He lifted the jug from the floor and shouldered it, walking outside and down the steps. By then it was dark and the shadows were as thick as curtains beneath the trees, but he kept the flashlight in his pocket. He sat the jug by the side of the house among the bushes. Then he walked around in both directions to make sure he was alone. He was sweating and thirsty, and thought of going back inside and taking a coffee mug right out of the kitchen cabinet and filling it at the cooler … but what was in the cooler was hers, he thought—there was enough in there to keep her safe, and he would leave what was left alone.

He stood there in Mrs. Kasolos’s dark yard. Laura would expect him back soon, but she wouldn’t start worrying if he was gone a little longer. She wouldn’t allow the jug in their house, no matter how much he explained. That much he knew. She’d make him give it back.

He hoisted it back onto his shoulder and walked, following the sidewalks until he saw that they revealed themselves too brightly in the moonlight. He walked on the dead grass of the lawns instead. The bubble in the jug slid back and forth in the corner of his vision as it leveled and unleveled with his progress.

He’d go into the woods and hide it in the park. It would be safe there, and when the water came back on it wouldn’t matter. No one would know he’d even taken it. The park was less than a quarter mile away, but his shoulder ached beneath the jug, and when he reached the aluminum rails that marked the entrance, he was relieved to set it on the ground. It didn’t feel as though he were down the street from his house. It felt as if he’d been on a journey—as if he’d left Laura behind long ago. He stuck a hand into his pocket and squeezed the plastic strands of her pom-pom. All he had to do was hide the jug. Then he could walk back up the hill and he’d be home again.

He set the jug back on his shoulder and clicked the flashlight on, walking slowly to keep from tripping over the roots and stones along the path. Still, his ankles gave way and pinched, and he teetered and had to grab hold of trees with his free hand. He tried to concentrate to keep from slipping, but his head buzzed. Only when he reached the bank of the stream, where the trees were charred and the ash was getting into his shoes, was he thinking clearly again.

This was the stream that flowed over the spillway, and he crossed the sand of the bed and climbed the bank on the opposite shore. From his pocket, he pulled three of the silver strands, affixing them in the crust of a burnt tree trunk. He swung the flashlight quickly in front of him. At the edge of the flashlight’s arc, the strands glinted silver and white where they’d crimped. He would be able to find them again if he walked along the bank and shone his light. The woods were big and deep here and already he had to remind himself of the way he’d come.

He climbed up the slope and walked back among boulders larger than himself, finding three trees so close together they made a kind of fence. Behind it was a hollow place full of ash and sand, and he placed the jug down and tore at the ground with his fingers until he’d unearthed a deep enough trench. He laid the jug in and buried it, and then crossed the streambed and tucked three more silver strands beneath a low rock there.

He walked back to the street and stretched his shoulders, looking up into the night sky. It was not hard to imagine that he was lost between the reflection of the stars and the concrete beneath his feet—though whether he’d projected himself into space, or it had cast itself down on him, was not as clear. He stooped and rubbed his hands in the grass of one of the yards to get the ash from between his fingers.