When the Wolf Comes Home

Early the next morning, the boy embraces Jess, prompting her to cry for Cookie. She controls her feelings so that they can start their next drive.

Jess and the boy travel toward Pennsylvania. The drive is silent, even in Jess’s thoughts. Fourteen hours into their drive, she pulls over to the side of the road to rest. She is unsure if she wants to continue living. On the second day, Jess forgets that Cookie is dead and thinks about giving her an update. This causes her to cry at a rest stop. She thinks repeatedly about Cookie’s request to not hate her.

To distract herself, Jess plays a game of “I Spy” with the boy. Jess teases the boy for his foul smell, which amuses him. The boy asks if Jess is mad at him; she says she isn’t. The boy shares his condolences over the death of Cookie. Jess thinks about using his power to bring Cookie back to life but immediately realizes that this is a terrible idea. She distracts herself by playing another game, “One Word at a Time.” This leads Jess to explain what an “improv troupe” is to the boy. Jess shares that she has been working in improvisational comedy for years. She blames her eagerness for her inability to succeed as a performer.

When the boy asks her why she continues to work in improv if she doesn’t like the business around it, Jess answers that she loves the practice of improv because it gives her something she needs. She shares one of the cardinal rules of improv: “Never Abandon Your Partner” (181). The rule profoundly moved Jess the first time she heard it because she found assurance in the knowledge that she wouldn’t be abandoned.

She then adds that the other reason why she needs improv is because it is scary by nature. Improv forces her to confront her fears and reminds her that she is capable of bravery. She suggests that she and the boy are alike: They are often scared of the world around them. Jess admits that she gets so afraid of situations that she accidentally causes the outcomes she’s afraid of happening. She wonders if, one day, she can get the boy to stop fearing his abilities and treat them as a normal part of himself. Jess tells the boy that there are many ways to get over fear. She assures him that he isn’t bad like his father made him believe.

Later, she realizes that the conversation helped her move on from the numbness that Cookie’s death made her feel. When she reminds herself to call Uncle Pepsi, she remembers how she and Cookie laughed over his name. She weeps again.

On the eve of their arrival in Pennsylvania, Jess wonders if she was right to tell the boy that they were alike in their fear. The boy has been comfortable ever since then, and the road trip has gone by peacefully.

They meet Uncle Pepsi at a diner. He immediately recognizes Jess from her childhood. He leads them to his secluded cabin, which he explains Jess used to visit when she was young. The boy comments on Uncle Pepsi’s funny name; he says that Jess gave it to him during one of her visits to the cabin.

Uncle Pepsi shows Jess and the boy around his cabin, which his cousins use to go on fishing trips. Uncle Pepsi reveals that Tommy was living at the cabin up until his death. Jess is surprised to hear this, never having known his whereabouts before. Uncle Pepsi apologizes and shares his sympathy with her. He understands that it wasn’t right for Tommy to abandon Jess and Cookie but adds that Tommy’s father was similarly abusive to him when he was growing up.

The tour takes the group to the garage, where Jess sees hundreds of baseball caps hanging from the ceiling. She initially mistakes them for bats. After the tour is done, Uncle Pepsi offers to take Margie’s car away, leaving his own behind for Jess to use. He apologizes in advance for anything he might have overlooked in the cabin that could remind Jess of Tommy. He confirms, however, that Tommy never kept any pictures of the people from his past. They agree that he was a coward. Before Uncle Pepsi leaves, Jess asks him how to reach the nearest medical facility.

Unbeknownst to the three of them, someone is watching them from afar. He waits for Uncle Pepsi to leave.

Jess prepares food and is surprised by how well stocked and brand new the cabin supplies are. She finds one cabinet filled with old liquor bottles, which she presumes belonged to Tommy. Behind the bottles are stacks of papers and a book. She retrieves them and finds a photo of Tommy and herself as a child among them. The book is a journal with all its pages torn out. The papers are all drafts of letters that Tommy had intended to send to her but never did. She sets them all aside, acting like she doesn’t care about what she’s found. She invites the boy to eat outside when she sees a pair of shoes that belonged to Tommy under the table.

Jess continues to think about the letters, so she suggests taking a walk with the boy after eating. During the walk, Jess asks the boy if it is okay for her to leave him at the cabin just so that she can visit the doctor. The boy agrees, expressing his concern for Jess’s injury. They reach a nearby lake, and it occurs to Jess that it is the same lake where Tommy likely died while sitting in his truck. She remembers her mother’s dying plea and realizes that Cookie had known that Tommy was living there all along—she withheld the truth from Jess up until she died.

She stops herself from crying by addressing the boy’s questions about the lake. She suggests that the Loch Ness Monster lives in the lake. Soon, a kind-looking creature emerges from the water, created by the boy. They laugh over the occurrence.

Jess and the boy return to the cabin, where the boy takes a nap. Jess can’t stop thinking about the letters she found, so she decides to read them. Each draft gives Jess the sense that Tommy never knew how to start a correspondence with his daughter. His voice is self-deprecating and unsure of itself.

The last draft that Jess reads is a free-form piece of writing that both addresses her and is about her. She considers it his inner voice, akin to Inner Jess. Tommy references a car accident that he got into with Jess in the backseat. He also references an incident at a swimming pool, in which Jess nearly drowned after he fell asleep. In both instances, Tommy was experiencing alcohol addiction. Cookie lost her trust in him after the latter incident, precipitating Tommy’s departure. Jess doesn’t remember either of these incidents but realizes that it aligns with the way Cookie used to characterize Tommy’s transgressions.

Tommy’s draft goes on to complain that every father is doomed to fail because fatherhood is a self-sacrificing role. In his situation, Tommy sees himself as the threat to Jess’s life. He describes being two selves—one who acts and one who watches and criticizes himself. He wonders how to protect Jess and expresses his hope that Jess will turn out better than him. This upsets Jess, who crumples the pages and the photo of them together. She soon throws them into the fireplace to burn because she doesn’t want any of his attempts to explain himself to exist anymore. She vocalizes her wish that all she ever wanted was a father.

Jess accepts the fraught peace that comes with knowing what her father and mother had feared by keeping the truth from her all these years. She feels protective over the boy, wishing that she had gotten him a stuffed toy at Target.

After dinner that night, Jess and the boy go stargazing. Jess compares the stars to fireflies, which delights the boy. Suddenly, the stars dance around in the sky like actual fireflies. Jess realizes that the boy is making this happen and reflects on the implications that his power has for the galaxies that he might have just affected with his abilities. After Jess puts the boy to bed, she is overwhelmed with fear, uncertain how she will continue taking care of him. This is compounded by the realization that she has yet to consult a doctor about her infection.

Although she knows that she can’t talk to Cookie anymore, Jess calls her voicemail to confront her about knowing where Tommy was all along. Her anger builds up, imagining that Cookie would have answered that she wouldn’t have reached out to him anyway. Jess accuses her of being as much of a coward as Tommy was, even though Cookie never abandoned her. She immediately regrets her claim and expresses her fears about what the boy’s powers could do to the world. She imagines Cookie telling her to take things one step at a time. She is glad that she doesn’t have the boy’s ability to bring Cookie back from the dead.

Santos observes the cosmic anomaly that the boy causes in the night sky. He informs Allen, who urges him to complete his assignment. Santos feels the pressure and motivates himself to work harder.

He sifts through the evidence collected from Cookie’s condo and is surprised when the iPhone that belonged to Cookie starts ringing. Jess is calling. Santos understands that she is doing this out of grief, echoing his own experience of losing a parent many years earlier. He lets the call go and then immediately regrets letting his sentimentality get in the way of an opportunity. He considers calling her back but then tries to deduce where Jess might have gone after losing both Cookie and Margie. He realizes that he knows nothing about Jess’s father and looks up his personal details. This leads him to an address in Pennsylvania, which he confirms is a lead when he finds a recent 911 call reporting a sighting of the Loch Ness Monster in a local lake. Santos prepares to travel there immediately.

Under a false name, Jess visits an urgent-care clinic the following morning.

Around the same time, Santos arrives in Lehigh Valley and briefly forgets his name. He is excited to pursue his lead but cannot push away the itching sensation in his neck, as well as the strange feeling that something is still looking through his life. He later learns that the highway authorities have traced Margie’s car to the location he is traveling to. Santos recalls that Jess had attempted to visit a doctor in the past. He requests the Bureau to send him a list of clinics in the area.

The doctor draws Jess’s blood, much to her relief. The doctor tells Jess that she can expect the results in two days. She anticipates that urgent-care medication is unlikely to work on Jess, especially since it has been more than three days since the syringe pricked her. Jess explains that she was distracted from seeking treatment. The doctor indicates that Jess will likely have to return for multiple screenings, just to ensure pathogen detection. Jess agrees, hoping that things will turn out for the best if she can tell “him” she’s healthy. The doctor doesn’t understand what she means, but she encourages Jess to keep a positive mindset toward recovery.

Outside the doctor’s office, Santos approaches the reception desk. His distracted manner worries the receptionist. Jess exits the doctor’s office and lines up behind Santos. Santos recognizes her with great relief.

Back at the cabin, the boy spends his time drawing. He wonders if it might be something he could do when he grows up. He delights so much in his illustration of puppies that the illustration comes to life. Knowing that he can use his abilities as a response to joy instead of fear makes them feel easier to control. When the puppy starts tearing up the paper with its jaws, however, the boy gets frustrated and destroys his drawing.

Remembering that Jess is away, the boy experiences “soft” fear, an uneasiness that doesn’t feel as urgent as “sharp” fear. He realizes that someone is watching him from outside. Although he is afraid of whomever his stalker might be, he reminds himself that it is better to control his fear. Looking up to Jess’s example, he turns to the direction of his stalker and uses his abilities to render himself and Jess invisible to the stalker. This reassures the boy to be patient.

Santos brings Jess to the diner where she reunited with Uncle Pepsi. Jess demands to know what he wants from her. He tries to earn her trust by telling her about seeing Cookie on her last night alive. Jess counters by recalling Cookie’s directive not to trust Santos. She asks Santos to tell her what happened that night. Santos shares everything up to the transformation of the boy’s father. Santos believes that Calvert managed to track Cookie down using his ex-military skills.

Santos offers to let Jess get back to her life if she surrenders the boy to him. He claims that he will bring him back to Project Albatross so that they can cure him. Jess feels uncomfortable hearing the truth about the boy’s origins. She wonders if they can also cure the boy’s father and stop his transformations. Santos realizes that Jess has misinterpreted Calvert’s condition and explains the truth: The boy is the one who transforms Calvert into a creature with his fear.

Jess is too shocked to accept what Santos has told her. She wants to believe the boy’s claim that his father transforms whenever he is mad. She turns angry at the notion that the father is a victim to the boy’s powers, not the other way around. As they eat, Jess realizes the implication that the boy’s fear caused Cookie’s and Margie’s deaths as well.

Santos needs Jess to keep the boy calm when they take him into custody. He appeals to Jess by comparing the boy to the central character in Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1971 science-fiction novel The Lathe of Heaven. He worries that once the boy starts discovering new fears, it might cause unintended damage to the world around him.

Jess considers her options, including attempting to escape from Santos. Given what she now knows, however, she realizes that she might cause greater damage by unintentionally losing her temper with the boy. This line of thinking extends to her initial plan to use the boy’s powers to cure her infection. This makes her decide to stop running.

The boy is initially happy when Jess returns, but he becomes dismayed when he sees that she has brought along someone else. She tells him that she has good news but soon realizes that she is in the same position that Cookie was in when she had to tell Jess that Tommy was never coming back. After Jess explains the plan to turn him over to Santos, the boy expresses his wish to stay with Jess. Santos tries to reassure the boy by introducing himself and addressing the boy by his real name, “Pete.” The boy remains reluctant and wonders if Jess will come with them.

Santos cannot promise that Jess will be allowed to come along. This upsets the boy, so Santos tries to placate him by telling him that she will be able to come. It is clear to both Jess and the boy that Santos is lying. Jess starts asking Santos various questions about the process of coming with the boy. Eventually, she realizes that she made a mistake leading Santos to the boy.

Santos tries to reassure Jess that he has their best interests at heart. Jess brings up The Lathe of Heaven again to ask which of the characters Santos thinks is the hero: the person who can dream things into reality or the doctor who uses his patient to his advantage. Santos’s immediate response is that the doctor is trying to help his patient. This loses Jess’s trust in him, as well as in the scientists behind Project Albatross. She urges the boy to run.

Santos draws his gun on Jess. Jess insists that the boy should run. The boy refuses, believing that Santos will chase after him. Jess tells the boy to make Santos disappear, and the boy declares that Santos never existed.

Santos feels a hand reaching through reality to rip him from its seams. The hand arrives at the earliest moment when Santos took form and stops him from ever being born. Santos feels the itchy point in his neck explode with the elements of his existence. He implodes.