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something so ridiculous could even be called a theory, was one of the most popular on Rifter websites. Glenn’s stomach turned. How could such nonsense be coming out of her own father’s mouth?
    “Dad, wait —”
    “No, listen. I never told you this because … because it’s
    complicated. Your mother didn’t leave us. Not like you think. She came here from the other side of the border and she had to go back.
    That’s where she is now. That’s where she’s always been! I think she intended to go for just a little while, that’s why she didn’t say anything to us, but she … well, things are different there. She’s different there, and she was captured. Or trapped somehow. I know how it sounds, but”
    — he turned to The Project — “none of that matters now. We can get her back. You and me, Glenny, we can rescue her. That’s what this project has always been about. She didn’t want to leave. She loved us more than anything and she wants to come home, but she can’t. She needs us to rescue her. And once we do, everything will be back the way it was. We’ll be back the way we were.”
    Before Glenn could say anything, Dad was at The Project,
    rummaging through clanking bits of metal.
    “This is what I’ve been building. It finally works. This will allow us to go over to the other side but bring a bit of our reality — our rules — with us. Like … like a space suit.”
    He grabbed Glenn’s arm and pushed a heavy band around her
    wrist. Glenn lifted it up. It was a flat gray piece of metal with a glowing red jewel in the center.
    “All we have to do is find her,” Dad said. “It won’t be easy. I know that. But once we bring her into our reality, she’ll be like she was when she was here and she’ll be able to leave with us. Then everything will be like it was. We’ll have her back, Glenn. Glenn? What are you doing?”
    Glenn hissed as her fingernails scraped the skin underneath the bracelet. She ripped it off and threw it into the corner of the shed, where it landed with a crash. Icy air flooded the room as Glenn threw the bolt and opened the workshop door.
    “No. Wait!”
    Glenn whirled around. “There’s nothing there, Dad! Nothing!”
    “Glenny —”
    “She’s not on the other side and she doesn’t need to be rescued!”
    Glenn screamed. “She left because she didn’t want to be with us anymore. That’s all!”
    Dad called after Glenn as she stormed out of the workshop, but she ignored him. She strode across the yard and back to the house, slamming doors all the way until she made it up to her room and shut herself inside.
    The silence was awful. Glenn felt sick. She fell onto her bed and her body curled around the massive emptiness inside her. Glenn listened as her father stomped up the stairs and pounded on her door, but she didn’t move.
    “Glenn?” he said, his voice shaking. She could tell he was crying.
    “Glenny, please.”
    Her father stood at her door for a time, his feet breaking the sliver of light beneath the door into three bars.
    Glenn’s breath caught in her throat, but she said nothing. She didn’t move. After a while, there was a small sound, like a sigh, and her father’s footsteps shushed down the carpeted hall.
    Glenn turned onto her back and stared at the blank ceiling.
    Hopkins jumped up onto the bed and began to purr. Glenn snatched him up and pressed her fingertips into the soft white patch at his throat and then traced the angle of his face. She found the arrow-shaped nick in his right ear, the last vestige of the day they found him.
    “What happened to him, Mommy?” Glenn had asked.
    She was five years old and standing on their front porch.
    Hopkins’s little body lay battered before her. “Was it a car?”
    “No,” her mother said. “It was no car. Come on, Glenny.”
    Mom wrapped Hopkins up in a towel and swept him into her
    arms. After the local vet had done what he could, Glenn and her mother devoted weeks of near constant attention to