She bit her lip and nodded slowly. "I can help you with that," she said. "I don't need help," he said lamely. "I didn't say you did, but I can help anyway." They walked down slowly, him leaning on her arm like an old man, steps faltering in the scree on the slope. They came to the road and stood before the trunk as the cars whizzed past them. He opened the trunk and looked down. The journey hadn't been good to Gregg. He'd come undone from his winding sheet and lay face down, neck stiff, his nose mashed against the floor of the trunk. His skin had started to flake off, leaving a kind of scale or dandruff on the flat industrial upholstery inside the trunk. Alan gingerly tugged loose the sheet and began, awkwardly, to wrap it around his brother, ignoring the grit of shed skin and hair that clung to his fingers. Mimi shook him by the shoulder hard, and he realized she'd been shaking him for some time. "You can't do that here," she said. "Would you listen to me? You can't do that here. Someone will see." She held something up. His keys. "I'll back it up to the trailhead," she said. "Close the trunk and wait for me there." She got behind the wheel and he sloped off to the trailhead and stood, numbly, holding the lump on his forehead and staring at a rusted Coke can in a muddy puddle. She backed the car up almost to his shins, put it in park, and came around to the trunk. She popped the lid and looked in and wrinkled her nose. "Okay," she said. "I'll get him covered and we'll carry him up the hill." "Mimi --" he began. "Mimi, it's okay. You don't need to go in there for me. I know it's hard for you --" She squeezed his hand. "I'm over it, Andy. Now that I know what's up there, it's not scary any longer." He watched her shoulders work, watched her wings work, as she wrapped up his brother. When she was done, he took one end of the bundle and hoisted it, trying to ignore the rain of skin and hair that shook off over the bumper and his trousers. "Up we go," she said, and moved to take the front. "Tell me when to turn." They had to set him down twice before they made it all the way up the hill. The first time, they just stood in silence, wiping their cramped hands on their thighs. The second time, she came to him and put her arm around his shoulders and gave him a soft kiss on the cheek that felt like a feather. "Almost there?" she said. He nodded and bent to pick up his end. Mimi plunged through the cave mouth without a moment's hesitation and they set him down just inside the entrance, near a pair of stained cotton Y-fronts. Alan waited for his heart to stop thudding and the sweat to cool on his brow and then he kicked the underwear away as an afterthought. "God," he said. She moved to him, put her arm around his shoulder. "You're being brave," she said. "God," he said again. "Let it out, you know, if you want to." But he didn't, he wanted to sit down. He moved to his mother's side and leaned against her.