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at the ruined plastic. I took the letter over to him. “Do you want to keep it or what?” I said.
    “I think it’s served its purpose,” he said. He wadded it up, tossed it in the stove, and slammed the door shut. He didn’t even get burned. “Come help me on the greenhouse, Lynn,” he said.
    It was pitch-dark outside and really getting cold. My sneakers were starting to get stiff. Dad held the flashlight and pulled the plastic tight over the wooden slats. I stapled the plastic every two inches all the way around the frame and my finger about every other time. After we finished one frame I asked Dad if I could go back in and put on my boots.
    “Did you get the seeds for the tomatoes?” he said, like he hadn’t even heard me. “Or were you too busy looking for the letter?”
    “I didn’t look for it,” I said. “I found it. I thought you’d be glad to get the letter and know what happened to the Clearys.”
    Dad was pulling the plastic across the next frame, so hard it was getting little puckers in it. “We already knew,” he said.
    He handed me the flashlight and took the staple gun out of my hand. “You want me to say it?” he said. “You want me to tell you exactly what happened to them? All right. I would imagine they were close enough to Chicago to have been vaporized when the bombs hit. If they were, they were lucky. Because there aren’t any mountains like ours around Chicago. So if they weren’t, they got caught in the firestorm or they died of flash burns or radiation sickness, or else some looter shot them.”
    “Or their own family,” I said.
    “Or their own family.” He put the staple gun against the wood and pulled the trigger. “I have a theory about what happened the summer before last,” he said. He moved the gun down and shot another staple into the wood. “I don’t think the Russians started it, or the United States, either. I think it was some little terrorist group somewhere or maybe just one person. I don’t think they had any idea what would happenwhen they dropped their bomb. I think they were just so hurt and angry and frightened by the way things were that they just lashed out. With a bomb.” He stapled the frame clear to the bottom and straightened up to start on the other side. “What do you think of that theory, Lynn?”
    “I told you,” I said. “I found the letter while I was looking for Mrs. Talbot’s magazine.”
    He turned and pointed the staple gun at me. “But whatever reason they did it for, they brought the whole world crashing down on their heads. Whether they meant it or not, they had to live with the consequences.”
    “If they lived,” I said. “If somebody didn’t shoot them.”
    “I can’t let you go to the post office anymore,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”
    “What about Mrs. Talbot’s magazines?”
    “Go check on the fire,” he said.
    I went back inside. David had come back and was standing by the fireplace again, looking at the wall. Mom had set up the card table and the folding chairs in front of the fireplace. Mrs. Talbot was in the kitchen cutting up potatoes, only it looked like it was onions the way she was crying.
    The fire had practically gone out. I stuck a couple of wadded-up magazine pages in to get it going again. The fire flared up with a brilliant blue and green. I tossed a couple of pinecones and some sticks onto the burning paper. One of the pinecones rolled off to the side and lay there in the ashes. I grabbed for it and hit my hand on the door of the stove.
    Right in the same place. Great. The blister would pull the old scab off and we could start all over again. And of course Mom was standing right there, holding the pan of potato soup. She put it on the top of the stove and grabbed up my hand like it was evidence in a crime or something. She didn’t say anything, she just stood there holding it and blinking.
    “I burned it,” I said. “I just burned it.”
    She touched the edges of the old scab, like