Here On Earth

10

On Founder’s Day the wind rises up from the Marshes and shakes the leaves from the trees. The night is so black it seems to Gwen that if she reaches into the air she’ll wind up with a fistful of coal dust. She let Lori and Chris talk her into going to the dance at the high school, and now her mom and Susie Justice have driven her over to Lori’s house, even though Gwen would much rather be down at the barn; blustery weather like this makes Tarot nervous, and now she’ll be worrying about him all night long.

Actually, she has a good excuse to stay home; her teachers have sent a huge manila folder full of school work she has to make up, since she’s been absent for two weeks. But Gwen’s mom seemed so excited that Gwen was doing something as normal as going to a school dance, what could she do? Gwen has to act the good girl and do as she’s told if she wants to achieve her goal: stay in town and buy Tarot. This objective has caused her to go easy on the eye makeup and spiked-up hair; it’s the reason why she’s heading into the windy night with two girls she’s not even sure she likes very much, en route to a high school she doesn’t even attend.

“My father’s in there,” Chris says casually as they pass the Lyon Cafe, which is overflowing with people in various stages of inebriation. “Drunk as a skunk.”

Chris is seriously pretty, with a rope of blond hair and creamy, pale skin, but now she goes right up to the window and makes a supremely goofy face. Lori and Gwen both peer in through the glass as well, and that’s when Gwen sees that Hollis is inside. Only Hollis isn’t at the bar, where there’s a party atmosphere and bowls of plum pudding, supposedly the Founder’s favorite treat. He’s over at the last table, drinking a Coke, speaking to no one. He glances up, and maybe he sees the girls peering in the window, but if he does he looks right through them. Seeing him from this distance, Gwen realizes that he really is handsome, surprisingly so, because there’s definitely something peculiar about him; Gwen is always relieved to find he’s not around when she goes to get Tarot. He seems cold-blooded, somehow; someone you’d want to avoid.

“Let’s get out of here,” Gwen says.

“Definitely,” Lori agrees.

They stagger through the night, tilting into the wind, their coats blowing out behind them; they can’t help but laugh at the effort it takes to walk two blocks.

“Oh, God, look at us,” Lori cries after they’ve reached the high school and have gone to the girls’ room to comb their hair. It takes a while before they’re ready to present themselves to the world at large, and Gwen decides to put on mascara and eyeliner, although in her opinion, nothing will make her look good compared to beautiful Chris and trendy Lori, who is wearing a short red velvet dress and silver beads threaded through her dark braids.

The gym has been hung with crepe paper, like something out of the fifties, and it’s so noisy you have to yell to be heard.

“I can’t believe it,” Chris says. “Hank’s actually here.”

Gwen looks toward the refreshment table and there he is, with a group of the boys who are clearly the most popular, since they all look so pleased with themselves. All except for Hank, who appears to be rather anxious, and who is wearing a new white shirt he got at the discount shop in the basement of the Red Apple supermarket and boots he spent over an hour polishing.

“He never comes to these things,” Chris confides. “He’s always working or something.”

At first, Gwen and Hank avoided each other whenever they ran into each other at the barn, but they don’t do that anymore; now, they actually talk. Usually, it’s impossible for Gwen to let down her guard, but it was too hard not to be nice to Hank. He said they were related somehow, which made it okay for her not to be nasty. Though she’d never admit this, Gwen feels good just being around him, and this is not the way she ordinarily feels when confronted with human life-forms. But all that may change. Hank may prove himself to be nothing more than another jerk, after all. Here he comes, and Gwen is fairly certain that Chris is the one he’s after.

“I didn’t know you were going to be here.” He’s walked right up to Gwen, and either he’s nervous or he’s choking, because he keeps putting his hand into his collar, as though he needed more air.

Gwen glares at him fiercely. What is his comment supposed to mean? That she doesn’t belong here?

“I thought you hated people.” Hank goes for a joke, but it falls flat. Gwen blinks her heavily mascaraed eyes and looks blank. “Well, anyway,” Hank says-what the hell, he has nothing to lose-“you look great.”

Chris and Lori elbow each other, and then they elbow Gwen too, who suddenly seems to be dead on her feet. She looks like hell, with her horrible haircut, a pair of black jeans, and an old white sweater she borrowed from her mother. What is wrong with Hank? Is he stupid or blind or what? No one says things like that, especially not if they mean it, and from the way Hank is staring at her, he appears to be sincere.

“Thanks.” Gwen says. “So do you.”

She must be out of her mind. She has never been this civil in her entire life. She’d never say a thing like that to a guy, and certainly not in front of her friends. But here she is, smiling, agreeing when he asks her to dance. As soon as he circles his arms around her, she feels like she’s having a heart attack. She doesn’t even know if this is possible for someone her age, but by the end of the dance she’s certain that she’d better take a break.

“I have to go outside,” she tells Hank, and who can guess what he thinks, although he follows her through the door and stands there watching while she takes a few deep breaths of fresh air.

They’ve both left their coats inside the gym, but they don’t notice the low temperature or the wind from the Marshes. The weird thing is, Gwen had sex with her last two boyfriends on their first dates, if fucking someone in his father’s car can be considered a date. She’s always been wild, she’s never given a damn, and she’s the one who’s currently a wreck. Her hands are sweating, and her heart continues to go crazy; she’s in the middle of thinking she might as well give up, just leave the dance and walk home by herself, when he kisses her. He kisses her for a really long time, and even though her heart is still pounding, she no longer feels she is suffering from some sort of attack. She’s seen the way he looks at her when she comes to take Tarot out to the field; all along she’s been wondering if he was attracted to her or if he was merely an idiot. She’s genuinely shocked by the depth of her pleasure now that she knows the answer.

“Do you want to go back inside?” Hank asks.

They can hear music playing and there’s a wash of light when Lori and Chris open the door and call out for Gwen. Gwen shakes her head no; she doesn’t want to go back. She waits on the bleachers while Hank goes in for their coats.

“I told your friends you were sick,” Hank says when he comes back.

“Good one,” Gwen says. “Not that they’ll believe it.”

They walk back to Fox Hill together, taking the long way, but that’s all right with them. They can’t wait to be on a dark, empty road and out of the village, which is so crowded for the Founder’s Day celebration. They pass right by Dimitri’s, the restaurant where March and Susanna Justice are having dinner, but they skitter by like leaves, and even though March is looking out the window, she doesn’t see them.

“Did we really order all this?” March asks when more food arrives.

Their waitress, Regina, has already brought over lasagna and baked stuffed shells, and now she’s delivering the crab-and-mushroom pizza they ordered.

“We’re pigs,” Susie says, and she asks for a second bottle of wine.

Although March would never have placed her, she and Susie went to school with Regina, who recognized March as soon as she walked through the door.

“I don’t remember anyone,” March says when Regina has gone off for their wine.

“Yeah, well, you had one person on your mind and he took up a lot of space.”

Now March recalls why she hated Susie when they were kids.

“You’re judging me. It must run in the family.”

“I’m not at all. Okay, I used to, but I’m not anymore. I’m only saying that you were in a Hollis-induced fog.” Susie sprinkles Parmesan cheese onto a piece of pizza. “You never seemed to notice that my father was over at your house constantly.”

For several days, March and Susie have been dodging around this subject, on the phone and in person; it’s definitely not a comfortable topic for either of them.

“He was always at Fox Hill, allegedly on business.” Susie sighs. “Why do you think I hated you?”

“I thought I hated you.” March sticks out her tongue and Susie laughs, but then Susie looks sad and she pushes her plate away. “You knew about them all the way back then?” March asks.

“I knew right after your father died. My dad kept going over there, every single night, for weeks. Maybe he was in love with her for ages before that, who knows? Maybe they’d already been lovers for years. But I knew because one night I saw him when he came home from your house. It was about ten o’clock and I was supposed to be in bed, but I was looking out the window. My mom was downstairs listening to the radio; she was used to him being out late. He turned off the headlights of his car; then he got out and he walked over to the roses, which were especially beautiful that year, and he ducked his head to smell them, and I knew. He looked like someone else entirely, standing there. He looked like someone who was in love with a woman he couldn’t have. I cried myself to sleep, because I knew.”

“No wonder we hated each other,” March says. She reaches across the table and takes Susie’s hand.

“All I can say is, I’m glad my mother never found out.” Susie squeezes March’s hand, then withdraws it so she can get a Kleenex out of her purse. “I’ve really tried not to be angry at him, but I don’t think I could have been so generous if my mother had known.”

“Have you ever talked to him about it?”

“Him? My father?” Susie wipes her eyes, then blows her nose. “Are you crazy? You don’t talk to my father, you listen.”

Regina brings over desserts-on the house: chocolate mousse with sugar cookies wedged in along the side of the bowl, and a helping of plum pudding, in honor of the Founder. Regina sits down with them for a minute to talk about old times and discuss her pet project-the Harvest Fair down at Town Hall. Somehow, before Regina goes back to work, March finds herself announcing that she would consider running a booth that will raise funds for the children’s section of the library.

“Why did you do that?” Susie asks, when they’ve gotten their coats and paid their bill-with a thirty percent tip for Regina. They’ve left behind half-portions of everything they ordered, and are stuffed all the same. “You won’t still be here for the Harvest Fair. If you want my opinion, you should go home right now.”

“Well, thanks,” March says as they go outside.

The wind has died down a bit, but it’s still a raw night.

“When you come back to a town like this, people think you’re staying,” Susie says.

March wraps her scarf around her throat. “I don’t care what people think.”

“Okay, forget people. How about Richard?”

“Who?” March teases.

“You’re deranged.” Susie links her arm through March’s. “You’d better get serious.”

“I’ve been serious for so long I can’t stand it.” If she hadn’t been so serious, would she have agreed to come back to him, even though she was in the seventh month of her pregnancy? By then, she’d already lined up a baby-sitter and a diaper service; she had registered in a new mothers’ exercise class. Could she have booked a flight to Logan anyway? Could she have tried? “I need a break from my life, that’s what I’ve realized.”

This, of course, is what she’s been saying to Richard-it’s only a break; it’s nothing, only a little time apart.

“The definition of a break is a rupture,” Richard said to her, only yesterday, an answer which, of course, drove March completely crazy.

“What if Richard jumped on a plane? What if he arrived in the middle of the night and said you had to leave with him?”

“He’s taking his graduate students into the field next week, and he’d never disappoint them. Even if he wasn’t scheduled to do that, he wouldn’t appear in the middle of the night. He wouldn’t tell me what to do. Richard’s not like that.”

“Exactly,” Susie says. “I should have married him.”

They head for Susie’s truck, parked down the street from the Lyon Cafe, which is all but overflowing.

“What a party,” March says.

“Every drunk in town. Except for Alan. This is Hollis’s turf.”

“Thanks for sharing that.”

March gets into Susie’s truck and slams the door. Just hearing his name stirs everything up for her. It’s even colder in the truck than it is out on the street. March turns up her collar; she’s had too much wine with dinner, she realizes that now.

Susie comes to sit behind the wheel. “Look, if you want to kid yourself, fine. If you want to put something over on Richard, okay. But don’t think you’re going to fool me. You’re here because of Hollis. I don’t understand it, but I guess I don’t have to. Maybe you need to see him, to make certain he doesn’t mean anything to you.”

“I’m glad that being a reporter for The Bugle entitles you to psychoanalyze me.”

March opens the door, and without a look back, she heads off down the street. She’s furious, but when she really thinks about it, she’s angry because Susie is right. March is drawn to the Lyon Cafe, only a few steps away now, in hopes of seeing Hollis. Susie knows her far too well, although March herself isn’t certain whether or not she’ll really have the courage to act on her impulse, until Susie honks her horn, trying to get her attention. That’s when March walks through the door.

When March was growing up, the Lyon was a place other people’s parents went to, and only occasionally. It was an embarrassment to be a regular here, something no one wanted to admit. The draw of the Lyon certainly wasn’t the decor, which is still Naugahyde and wood paneling, with three deer heads attached to the wall above the rest rooms and public telephones. You came here to get drunk, simple as that.

Tonight, the place is packed; there isn’t a table to be had, so March makes her way to the bar, excusing herself politely, and when that does no good, finally pushing her way through. She signals to the bartender, and once she gets his attention, shouts her request for a glass of red wine.

It takes a while to adjust to the noise level. There’s a Celtics game on the TV above the bar, and a loud, cheerful argument going on right next to her-something to do with borrowing a motorboat-which may well turn nasty as the night progresses. There’s a jukebox going too, although all anyone can hear of the music are the drums and the bass, pounding. March grabs a stool when one of the guys next to her finally leaves, and at last, she can sit down and look around. Maybe Susie’s wrong; March can’t imagine Hollis in this drunken crowd, playing darts or debating the merit of the Celtics’ back court.

Susie has come into the Lyon, and she easily makes her way to the bar, since she knows most of the people drinking here tonight. “Hey, Fred,” she says to the bartender. “I’ll have what she’s having. What is it you’re having?” she asks March. “An anxiety attack? Sheer lunacy?”

“Red wine.” March grins.

“That’s what I’ll have,” Susie tells Fred. “You know,” she says to March, “if you had your own car, I would have left you here. For spite.”

“You could, you know,” March says. “I’m perfectly fine. And besides, he’s not even here.”

“Oh, yes he is.” Susie nods to a comer. “He’s right there.”

Be careful what you wish for, Judith used to say to March all the time. But it seems that March has already decided not to be careful. At least, not tonight.

“At the last table.”

He’s got his chair propped up against the wall, and although there are five other men sharing the table, he doesn’t appear to be in the same universe. Certainly, he’s not listening to those men. He’s been watching March Murray ever since she walked through the door.

March turns away so quickly that she knocks over her glass, then has to wipe at the spilled wine with a cocktail napkin.

“It’s not too late to leave,” Susie urges.

March would have missed him entirely if he hadn’t been pointed out to her, but now that he has been, she realizes that the difference between him and the other men at his table, most of whom are employed by the Department of Public Works, is not so much in what can be seen. Those men are also wearing old boots and jeans, and like him, they haven’t bothered to remove their coats, since people who come to the Lyon like to pretend they won’t be staying, even if they’ve settled in for the night. The difference is that the air around him seems charged, perhaps by anger, by heat and light. The difference is the way he can look at someone, the way he’s staring at her right now. One look from him is more substantial than the wooden bar she’s leaning her elbows upon. It’s realer than the bottles of whiskey lined up behind the counter; realer than the pull of fabric as Susie tugs on her jacket.

“You don’t want to finish this game,” Susie shouts, because the argument next to them concerning the motorboat is getting more heated. “Let’s get out of here.”

At the moment, March doesn’t need much convincing. She’s shaking, she really is. She’s putting something on the line, and she’s frightened by her own actions. Wanting to see Hollis and actually being in the same room with him are two different things entirely. Now that they’ve decided to leave, it’s not easy trying to make their way to the door. The place is packed, incredibly crowded and smoky. Susie is waylaid by Bert Murphy, the sports editor at The Bugle, and while Susie is enmeshed in some newspaper gossip, March looks back at the far end of the room where Hollis had been sitting, in spite of her resolve to get out of the Lyon with no damage done. But he’s not there, and the effect of his absence is that her heart drops into her stomach, where it stays until she realizes that he’s walking right to her.

It is sometimes possible to look at a person and see inside, although this happens so rarely it’s always a shock, like a form of electricity traveling from one soul to another. It can only be glimpsed for an instant, but in that instant you can see the core of a person, even in the middle of a crowded barroom, as he comes up beside you, while the jukebox is playing a country-western song you’ve never heard before and will never forget. It happens quickly-seeing all that hurt and disappointment-it’s as fast as a breath drawn and released. Just as fast, he closes up; you couldn’t get inside Hollis for anything now. Not with a hammer or a chisel; not by begging on your knees.

“I never thought I’d see you here,” Hollis says. For some reason, March can hear him perfectly above the din. “Not your kind of place, is it?”

“Maybe it is,” March says. “It’s not as bad as I thought it would be.” She wishes she had thought to wear something other than this dreadful black sweater and an old pair of jeans; she wishes she had combed her hair. “I hear you’re letting my daughter ride one of your horses.”

“Is that your daughter?” Hollis acts as though he hadn’t the faintest idea.

“As if you didn’t know.” Why is it that he still has to look so good? What gives him the right to talk to her with such arrogance, as though after all these years he continued to be the most important thing in her universe, the single shining star?

“Did she tell you I was still waiting?”

“Oh, sure.” March tries to be lighthearted, but that’s not the way she feels. “And I’ll bet you never looked at another woman again.”

People are pushing by them and there’s absolutely no privacy, so when Hollis nods March follows him over to a less populated space, beneath the mounted deer heads. The only people who crowd them over here are those weaving past on their way to the rest rooms. One guy, who’s quite loaded, greets Hollis and thanks him for his support on the town council, but Hollis doesn’t even acknowledge the council-man’s existence, and March is so distracted that if she were ever asked to identify the guy in a court of law, she wouldn’t be able to. She didn’t even glance at him. Standing there, she can feel the reverberation of the jukebox in her legs. Susie is right-she’s crazy. She’s completely deranged.

“You’re the one who didn’t wait,” Hollis says.

Over by the door, Susie spots March and she waves like mad, but Hollis has moved closer, blocking Susie from view.

“Me?” March says. “Why didn’t you write or call after you left here? Why didn’t you come back for me?”

She’s done it without thinking, and there’s no way to take those words back. She should have said, Screw you, I waited plenty, I waited years, and even that was too long. Instead, she has admitted some sort of defeat; she can tell because Hollis still smiles the way he used to whenever he won.

“You went to California,” Hollis reminds her. “You were the one who got married.”

“You got married too,” March reminds him right back.

Hollis drinks from a can of Coke, which is warm by now, not that the taste bothers him.

“That was nothing,” he says.

“It was definitely something.”

Hollis comes closer. “No,” he tells her. “It wasn’t. I got married because you wouldn’t leave him. That baby was more important to you than I was.”

“It wasn’t like that,” March begins.

“It was exactly like that.” He’s even closer now; March can feel the heat from his body against hers. “Or maybe I was more important but you couldn’t admit it.”

Susie has finally joined them; jostled by the crowd, she’s taken forever to get across the room. Now, she leans against the wall and observes Hollis in what she believes to be a nonjudgmental manner.

“Fancy meeting you here,” she says.

“Hey, Sue.” He nods without interest. She’s a bitch who’s never been on his side; he doesn’t intend to pretend otherwise.

“I was telling March how Alan can’t come here, not even on Founder’s Day, because you frequent the place.”

“Oh, yeah?” Hollis gives March a look. He’s extremely pleased; first March admits how much he hurt her, and now Susie reveals that she and March had been discussing him. Unless Hollis is mistaken, and he doesn’t believe he is, the only reason March came to the Lyon was to look for him. She came to him.

“Where couldn’t you go because of Alan? Let’s see. The dump? The liquor store on Route 22?”

A bitch, just like he thought.

“Alan made his choices,” Hollis says.

“That’s crap.” Susie is getting all self-righteous, but she can’t seem to stop herself. “He decided to lose everything that was ever important to him-have it all taken away-so he could drink himself to death in a shack? Some choice.”

“You feel so bad for him?” Hollis says. “Go visit him, Sue. I bet he’d love to celebrate Founder’s Day with you.”

“Fuck you,” Susie says. Her cheeks are bright red.

“I’m shocked.” Hollis shakes his head, but he’s smiling. It’s so easy to rile people like Susanna Justice; they’re like push-button dolls.

“I mean it,” Susie tells him. “Fuck you.”

“Susie,” March pleads. Hollis and Susie were always like this; you couldn’t keep them in the same room for more than a few minutes before they started in on each other.

“I think I’ll have to be the one guy in town to pass that offer by,” Hollis says.

“Are you staying here?” Susie Justice asks March. “Because I’m leaving.” Susie already has her keys in her hand, and she jangles them like a bell. She takes a good look at March. “You’re going to stay, aren’t you?”

“I’m having one more drink.” March is making certain not to glance over at Hollis. “That’s it.”

Susie leans forward, so she can whisper. “You’re insane. I hope you realize that. Be smart when you leave. Call Ken Helm for a ride. Don’t do this all over again.”

“She never liked you,” March says as they watch Susie make her way to the door.

“Not one bit,” Hollis says. “You did, though.”

March looks away.

“You still do,” Hollis tells her.

“Oh, really?” March laughs. She’s always been surprised by his vanity and his pride. With anyone else she’d be repelled, but with Hollis emotions were so rare that whenever one showed, March couldn’t help but be charmed.

“I knew you’d come back, but I thought I might be eighty before you got here, hobbling around like Jimmy Parrish,” Hollis says, nodding to an old man at the bar.

What nerve, March thinks. “Believe me. I’ve done perfectly fine without you.”

March’s voice is cold; in another instant, she’ll stomp away, as she sometimes did when she was a girl. Hollis must sense this, because he puts his hand on her arm.

“Well, I haven’t,” he says. “Not without you.”

He waits till that sinks in, then lets go of her. If she’s going to walk away, she’s going to do it now. But instead, she goes on looking at him. And then he knows, just as he’s always known. At the core, they’re identical. People who didn’t know the family often judged them to be brother and sister. It was their dark eyes. Darker than midnight, that’s what people used to say to their faces. Black as whatever hole he crawled out of, they used to whisper when they thought Hollis couldn’t hear.

As the hour grows later, the clientele of the Lyon has become more disorderly. Conversations are incoherent; misunderstandings have begun to arise. Before long, there is sure to be a brawl, as there is at every Founder’s Day celebration. The bar is now filled past capacity, and people keep right on coming. There is Regina, the waitress from Dimitri’s, who waves when she sees March. There’s Larry Laughton and his wife, Harriet, who own the lingerie shop, and Enid Miller, who works at the library and can hush small children with a single look, and Mimi Frank, who styled so many heads today at the Bon Bon that she has a perfect right to down a few beers.

There are a dozen boys and girls that Hollis and March went to school with, all grown-up and drunk as can be, but March doesn’t notice any of them. Hollis is leaning toward her-he has to in order to be heard above the din, or at least, that’s what March is telling herself. Surely, he’s not doing it solely to get close to her; that’s all in her mind. Her extremely warped mind, since she’s got everything to lose and nothing to gain. She tries to remind herself of that, the life she leads, the responsibilities she has, and yet when he says, “Let’s get out of here,” she nods as if she were a rational woman. She lets him grab her hand so he can lead her through the crowd.

The people they pass by are enjoying the party; they’re not bothering to think of tomorrow or even today. But that doesn’t mean several women who’ve set out to have a good time don’t notice what’s going on. Mary Anne Chilton elbows Janice Melnick, and over at the bar, Alison Hartwig turns away when she sees Hollis and March together and she orders another whiskey sour. These are just a few of the women who know that when Hollis drives, he keeps the windows in the truck rolled down, no matter how raw the weather. If he can’t take you back to your place-if you’re married, or living with someone, or if you and the kids have been forced to move back in with your mother-he’ll bring you to Olive Tree Lake, and park in a spot where it’s so overgrown you can’t see the stars.

But any of these women would be foolish to think that being acquainted with a man’s habits or having sex with him in a parked truck is the same thing as knowing him. They don’t know Hollis, and they never will. They wouldn’t even guess, for instance, that Hollis actually goes around and opens the door of the truck for March. He’s parked on the far side of Main Street, beside the Founder’s statue, which for tonight’s celebration someone has dressed with an olive wreath on his stone head and a long, flowing cape tied over his granite shoulders. March touches the Founder’s cold knee for luck, the way all the children in town do. She knows that she’ll think about this moment when Hollis opened the door to his truck for her, over and over again. She’ll remember the stars and the feel of granite. This, after all, is the instant when she did the exact right or wrong thing, depending on what happens next. Will she wonder if she was thinking straight? Will she guess the orange moon above affected her decision, or was it the cold weather, or the way he looked at her, or the wind that was shaking the trees?

You build your world around someone, and then what happens when he disappears? Where do you go-into pieces, into atoms, into the arms of another man? You go shopping, you cook dinner, you work odd hours, you make love to someone else on June nights. But you’re not really there, you’re someplace else where there is blue sky and a road you don’t recognize. If you squint your eyes, you think you see him, in the shadows, beyond the trees. You always imagine that you see him, but he’s never there. It’s only his spirit, that’s what’s there beneath the bed when you kiss your husband, there when you send your daughter off to school. It’s in your coffee cup, your bathwater, your tears. Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he’ll love you forever isn’t finished with you until he’s done.

As they drive through town, March watches Hollis carefully; everything about him is both completely familiar and absolutely alien. When she knew him he didn’t have these lines in his face, and the nervous cough he seems to have now. She thinks of the moment when she first saw him, the way he squinted his eyes in the sun, how dark his hair was, how ready he was to run. It is that boy who is beside her in the pickup truck. That boy who kisses her when they stop at a red light. March is nearly forty; beneath the drugstore tint she has those same gray streaks plaited through her hair which appeared the winter he went away, but this boy doesn’t seem to mind. He wants her not only for who she is, but for who she was: The girl who never got over him. The one who knew him inside out.

The women at the Lyon can only imagine how deep Hollis’s kisses are, since he never kisses any of them, at least not on the mouth. His embrace is hot and greedy, exactly the way March remembers. When the light turns to green March pulls away. She has always considered herself a loyal sort of person, but loyal to whom? Richard knew what he was getting into when he married her. It was Hollis back then, and maybe it still is. Maybe she’s no longer a woman with everything to lose. She’s a girl again. She’s March Murray, whose father is everyone’s favorite lawyer, whose big brother is lazy and drinks too much. She’s the one with dark hair and too much confidence, who does whatever she’s not supposed to when no one’s looking, when no one’s around.

“I’ve been waiting a long time,” Hollis says. “That much is true.”

He smiles, that same predatory grin which always frightened other people, but only served to convince March that she knew him best of all. The difference between a lion and a lamb, some might suggest, is in the naming, not in the beast itself. Both are warm-blooded-isn’t that a fact? Both close their eyes when they settle down to sleep for the night.

As they turn onto the rutted dirt road, Hollis has to switch on the wipers to keep wet leaves from sticking to the windshield. There are tornadoes of leaves, and fallen branches are scattered across the road. It’s getting colder by the minute; it’s the sort of night when pumpkins will freeze on the vine, and grapes will turn hard and become far too bitter to use for jelly or pies. It’s a night when any sparrow or dove foolish enough to nest in this town for the winter will realize a mistake has been made, and survival will depend not on skill but on plain blind luck.

All over town tonight, the wind will drive women from their beds. They’ll think of their first true love and search through their jewelry boxes for trinkets-gold lockets, ticket stubs, strands of hair. March would be one of those women, but instead she’s here, on the road where there were once so many foxes. If truth be told, she’s been here all this time, in this dark and windy place, like a ghost trapped inside the location of her memory.

Hollis pulls over beside the quince bushes, where he parked the other night when he watched March walk the dog. He turns the key in the ignition, and once he does that the wind sounds ferocious. They used to hide and do this whenever they had the chance: pretend there was no one else in the world. Hollis has his arms around her, beneath her coat. He begins to kiss her, the way he used to, but before March can respond, she hears a sound and pulls away. Someone is out on the porch.

“Shit,” Hollis says. “What is she doing there?”

From this distance, Gwen looks like a girl March has never seen before. She’s wearing her black jacket, but under the glow of the yellow porch light, she could be anyone. Gwen’s face is flushed, but the color in her cheeks isn’t from the cold. On this night, when the Founder ran over the hill, she seems to have fallen in love. She can’t stop thinking about Hank-everything he said, everything he did. He held her hand all the way across the hill; before he left, he kissed her goodnight, and she can’t get that kiss out of her mind. In truth, she hopes she never will.

“She’s going inside,” March whispers to Hollis as Gwen fumbles with the door. Once Gwen goes into the house, they wait for her to close the door, but instead she reappears with the dog. How surprisingly responsible. What bad timing.

“She’s taking the dog for a walk,” March says.

Hollis groans and leans his head against the seat.

March laughs, then leans close and kisses him. Who is the child here? Who is the reckless girl? She kisses him again and again. as if daring fate, as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

“That’s right,” Hollis whispers to her, as if she were still that good girl she used to be, only too ready to please. “Give me more,” he tells her.

Just then, Sister turns in the direction of the parked truck and barks, a long yip that is usually meant for rabbits. The dog is staring at the quince bushes, which March hopes can hide Hollis’s truck from Gwen’s view. Thankfully, Sister is on a leash, and Gwen gives the dog a tug in the other direction, back toward the house.

You have to go where you’re taken, don’t you? You have to follow where you’re led. Don’t think, don’t stop, don’t hesitate. Maybe this is destiny; it’s the hand of fate against your skin, the love of your life. If there’s a warning to be heard, March won’t listen. She’s like those foolish doves who have stayed on to nest in the chestnut tree this fall, and who will probably freeze to death before the New Year. She’s kin to the rabbit who dared to cross Sister’s path, then decided it might be best to lie silent, rather than break and run.

Hollis has his hand inside her jeans now; he’s pushed her down so that her back is flat against the seat. She knows the way he likes it, as if love was a secret; or at least, that’s the way he likes it with her. Other women, the ones from the Lyon, would say he prefers to get his business over with fast, and maybe it’s just as well. He’s so intense he can scare some women. Alison Hartwig fainted the first time Hollis fucked her, and now she calls him every day on the telephone, so she can hear his voice and imagine that he loves her before she hangs up.

All this time, March is the one Hollis has wanted. She’s the one who made him miserable, and he hasn’t forgotten that for a moment. Night after night, he’s come here and parked in this same exact space, to stare at this house. Over and over again, he’s anticipated the hour when she’d come back to him, and how good it would be to have her be the one to beg, but maybe he’s waited too long. Maybe all that waiting has tainted things, and left his love with a sour taste. It’s always been this way for Hollis; the more he has of something, the more he wants. Maybe he can never be satisfied, but he knows how to satisfy March; he’s doing it right now, she’s there at the edge as he moves his fingers inside her slowly. He doesn’t stop when she tells him to, and then he stops just when she’s about to come. He kisses her then, he leaves her longing for more; desperate is exactly the way he wants her.

By now, Gwen has unhooked the dog’s leash and gotten herself a soda from the fridge. Maybe she’s wondering why her mother’s out so late, as she goes into the sewing room, where her bed is made up. Maybe she thinks she sees something, there behind the quince, when she looks through the window. On any other night, March would have worried about her daughter, alone in the house, but she can’t think about that now. She’s already agreeing to see Hollis tomorrow, and the next day, and the one after that. Sometimes love is like a house without any doors. It’s a sky filled with so many stars it’s impossible to see a single one. Out in the front yard, the mourning doves are chattering with the cold. Their pale gray feathers are no comfort in the wind, yet they stay. It’s too late, after all; they made their choice at the end of summer. They’ll just have to accept the consequences.

11

Every Wednesday afternoon, at the farmers’ market held in the parking lot of the library, Louise Justice buys fresh herbs. She always fixes her roast chicken the way the Judge likes it, with sage and pepper and plenty of rosemary, for remembrance. In October, the weather can be a tricky thing, but today it’s warm and sunny, with a wide blue sky that brings tears to Louise’s eyes. She knows everyone at the market, and has for years. She waves at Harriet Laughton, who’s buying so much her grandchildren must be coming up from Boston for the weekend. Funny thing-in the sunlight Louise’s own hands look strange to her, with their brown spots and thin, papery skin. She can practically see right down to the bone.

There, on her right hand, she wears the opal her grand-mother left to her, a gift she has come to believe has brought her bad luck. She’s grown so convinced of this that she went down to that new lawyer in town, Janet Travis, and asked for an addendum to the will the Judge drew up for them. She wants the opal sold and the proceeds to go to the Fire-men’s Fund. She’ll be damned if she leaves the dreadful thing to Susie.

No one in town would consider Louise to be unlucky, and she certainly would never reveal anything that might lead to this conviction. It’s no one’s business, is it, really? No one’s but hers alone. She heads for the flats of marigolds Millie Hartwig is selling, making sure to avoid that old Jimmy Parrish, who seems to admire racehorses far more than he does human beings. Well, maybe he’s got something there. When Louise was growing up, on Mount Vernon Street in Boston, she thought life was a fine and glorious thing. She believed that all her dreams would come true, and why not? She was spoiled and pretty and knew how to charm a man. She met the Judge at a Christmas party when she was sixteen and he was twenty, and aside from the times she’s wanted to murder him, which are too numerous to count, she has always loved him. One man, for all these years. One man, who hasn’t loved her back.

Louise has often wondered if Susie hasn’t picked up on her unhappiness, for Louise’s beautiful daughter has never married, and it seems she never will. Not that Susie hasn’t had her share of boyfriends. You can’t live in this town and not be aware that Susie has dated nearly every available man. Currently, she’s seeing Ed Milton, the police chief, and of course Louise is not supposed to know about it, since Susie is a terribly private person, which is downright impossible in a town as small as this. Gossip is a strange thing; it’s both silly and painful, and although people are careful not to talk in front of Louise, she has certainly felt its sting.

“Do not buy the cranberry-walnut tart.”

Harriet Laughton has come up beside her.

“Too much sugar?” Louise guesses.

“Lard,” Harriet informs Louise.

“I’ve cut out all sweets, anyway.” Louise waves to Ken Helm, who does odd jobs for her and is over at the far end of the market, selling bundles of firewood. Louise and Harriet start to walk on together, but Louise spies some yarn and stops to riffle through the display basket. Soft lamb’s wool, splendid stuff. She needs another skein to finish the blanket for Susie’s Christmas present. Not that Susie needs her blanket to stay warm-from what Louise hears, Ed Milton is practically living at her place, buying Susie’s groceries and walking her dogs. Well, good for Susie. Great for her.

“You’d never know what she was up to,” Harriet says now. “From the innocent look of her.”

Louise glances up and sees that Harriet is referring to March Murray, who’s over at the bakery kiosk, reaching for one of the cranberry-walnut tarts. March laughs as she pays the vendor. With her dark hair loose, wearing old jeans, she looks like a girl.

“I hear they can’t get enough of each other,” Harriet whispers. “Just like the bad old days.”

“I’m sure you’ve heard wrong,” Louise says. She can discern a prim tone creeping into her voice. “March Murray is too smart a girl to fool around with the likes of him.”

Louise sees a softening in Harriet’s face, something like pity, which Louise never could stand. As if Louise didn’t comprehend that love has nothing to do with intelligence or common sense. As if she was some fuddy-duddy who didn’t know what was happening for all those years.

“I’m off,” she tells Harriet, and she lets the yarn fall back into the basket. She’ll get it next week, if it’s still what she wants. “See you Thursday,” she calls over her shoulder, for that is their bridge night and has been for thirty-two years. It was almost that long ago that she found out, and for all that time she has kept her mouth shut. She’s done better than most well-trained prisoners of war, and in a way, she’s proud of herself.

Still, October is always difficult for Louise. It was this time of year when she discovered the ring, a square emerald set in eighteen-karat gold, in the pocket of the Judge’s overcoat. She remembers smiling when she opened the little plastic case from the jewelers in Boston, so sure was she that the ring was meant to be her birthday present in November. But for her birthday that year, the Judge gave her a bathrobe, peach silk, from Lord & Taylor. Nice, but no emerald. She waited then, for Christmas. She was sure the small package he placed beneath the tree contained the ring, but it was a thin, gold bracelet. Lovely, of course, but she has never worn it. That bracelet is in the back of her jewelry box, where it will remain.

Although she should get home and start dinner, Louise goes over to the bakery table. She’s always had a soft spot for March Murray, that motherless child, that very foolish girl. Of course Louise has heard about March and Hollis renewing their relationship-it’s all over town that they left the Lyon together on Founder’s Day-but she certainly wouldn’t want Harriet Laughton to be apprised that their reunion is anything more than gossip. For her part, Louise knows more about Hollis than she cares to. She was one of those people who thought Henry Murray was crazy to bring him home in the first place, since she’d been informed, via the Judge, that by the age of thirteen Hollis had been at Juvenile Hall over twenty times. His own family couldn’t handle him, so what did Henry expect? Perhaps Louise’s attitude concerning Hollis was a narrow one, but she still thinks she was right. No. She is certain that she was right. They should have left Hollis up in Boston, where he belonged.

“I guess you’re not going to worry about calories today,” Louise says as she comes up to March.

March has bought two of the tarts Harriet Laughton insists are baked with lard, and a bag of chocolate chip cookies. When she sees it’s Louise beside her, March puts down her purchases so she can embrace her.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” March laughs. “I had an urge for all this.” She looks beautiful in the thin sunlight; her skin is so fresh and she has that sweet, dizzy expression that women with secrets often possess.

Louise waits for March to pay for the baked goods, and that’s when she sees the ring.

“Do you like it?” March has noticed Louise staring and now she holds up her hand. “It was Judith Dale’s.”

“Yes. I recognized it.”

They are heading toward the parking lot now, and Louise simply ignores the pain in her side.

“What an incredible day,” March says, staring up at the blue sky.

“Susie says you’re staying longer than you’d originally planned,” Louise says, tactfully, she hopes.

“There’s so much to go through in that house. It’s like sifting through the past.”

March has always liked Louise, but now she wishes they hadn’t run into each other. She doesn’t want to talk to anyone. She doesn’t want to think. She’s going to have to tell Richard, and yet she can’t. In the evenings, the phone rings and rings, but she doesn’t answer. Instead, she calls his office at odd hours, when she knows he won’t be there and she can leave cheerful messages. Well-meaning little reports which contain absolutely no personal information.

“That’s what Susie says, there’s a lot to be done.” Louise will leave it at that. She doesn’t need to have it all spelled out for her; she can tell what’s going on from the look on March’s face. She used to notice the same thing with the Judge sometimes, that identical dazed expression, half puzzled, half delirious, like a man who’d been struck by lightning and was somehow glad of it.

“Gwen has been getting her homework sent to her, but now she’s after me to let her register for school here, and the craziest thing is, I’m seriously wondering if we should try it for a while.”

Louise nods, although, actually, she feels like crying. She considers March to be a young woman, and she considers all young women to be fools. At twenty you’re convinced you know everything, but forty is even worse; that’s when you’ve realized no one can know everything, and yet when it comes to certain situations, you still believe yourself to be an absolute expert. When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure. That’s what you learn at sixty, and, as it turns out, no one is ever surprised by this bit of news.

They’ve reached an ancient, battered Toyota parked in the last row. Louise waits while March throws open the hatchback and places her purchases inside.

“Ken Helm lent this to me. An old aunt of his used to drive it.”

“Lucy Helm.” Louise nods. Lucy Helm was known to be one of the worst drivers in town. People swore the old lady fell asleep at red lights.

“May be I’ll stay around a little while longer,” March says as she closes the hatchback. “If Gwen really wants to.”

Poor girl, Louise thinks. The excuses one can make for love; the lies one tells.

“Well, if you need anything while you’re here, all you have to do is call,” Louise says.

“You’re a doll.”

March feels a surge of affection for Louise; she hugs her, but when March gets into the borrowed Toyota, she’s shaking. She knows she’s a liar. She’s well aware that Gwen’s infatuation with an old horse and with-according to Susie, who definitely has her sources-a boy who happens to be her first cousin is not what keeps March in Jenkintown. If anything, such variables should be driving her away. If March were her usual self, she’d be shocked at the possibility of Gwen dating a cousin. Instead, she’s convinced herself it’s puppy love, if that, and will quickly pass if left unchallenged.

She has to lie about what’s really holding her here, even to herself. Only this morning, she lied her head off over waffles and coffee at the Bluebird’s lunch counter. She actually kept a straight face while she told Susie she was trying to decide what to do next. Maybe a separation would be good for her and Richard’s relationship, and although she’d been talking to Hollis on the phone, accepting that ride home from him hadn’t led to anything. Why, she might even allow Gwen to sign up at the high school and finish out the semester.

Susie had sat there the entire time with her mouth puckered, as though she’d been eating lemons. For one thing, Susie had already run into Millie Hartwig, who works at the high school cafeteria, and Millie had informed Susie that March Murray’s daughter had registered for classes. For another, Susie couldn’t help but notice there were love bites all up and down March’s neck, which March herself didn’t realize until she went out to her borrowed car to drive home and caught sight of herself in the rearview mirror. After that, March got out a turtleneck sweater to wear, but even dressed in all that insulating wool she gets the chills just thinking about Hollis. She’s like some foolish teenager; she can’t seem to get him out of her mind no matter how hard she tries. Sometimes, he phones her at the exact moment when she’s thinking of him; she carries the phone into the pantry, for privacy, and they talk for hours. Every word he says is interesting to her; she’s never the first to hang up, not even when Gwen knocks on the pantry door and asks what’s going on.

Liar that she’s become, March doesn’t tell Gwen who’s on the phone, just as she doesn’t admit the truth about her destination when she goes out at night. She has to stop at the pharmacy, she needs to walk for the sake of exercise, she and Susie are going to a movie, into Boston, shopping at Laughton’s, to a lecture at the library. She meets him at the end of the driveway, where he’s waiting in his truck, or now that she has Ken Helm’s old car, she drives herself to the old Highway Motel where Route 22 meets up with the Interstate.

She is crazy for him, exactly as she used to be. More so, because back then she was a girl who didn’t know any better; she wasn’t somebody’s wife, somebody’s mother, a grown woman who should, by this time in her life, understand the value of caution. A few nights ago, they were on the phone at two in the morning, whispering about what they’d like to be doing to each other, when Hollis suddenly decided he was coming over. March asked him not to-Gwen was asleep in the sewing room, the dog was in the hallway, stretched out by the door-but he had already hung up on her.

March locked the terrier in the pantry, where it whined all night long. She was waiting for Hollis when he arrived, and she didn’t stop him from kissing her as they stood in the front hall; she didn’t refuse to go up to the attic, or lock the door, or go back to that small metal bed, where they’d made love so many times before. The attic was dusty and there was evidence that mice and starlings had been living there, but March paid no attention. By the time Hollis left, it was already light, although, thankfully, this was one morning when Gwen slept late. March’s lips were puffy and bruised and there were spiderwebs in her hair, but Gwen didn’t seem to notice when she came into the kitchen for some orange juice.

“Where’s the dog?” Gwen had asked, and only then did March remember she’d left the poor creature in the pantry. When she let Sister out, the dog backed away from March, as if it were the only one who knew what a conniver March really was.

The cranberry-walnut tart and cookies she’s bought at the farmers’ market, for instance, have a devious purpose: Hollis and Hank have been invited to tea, and March, although she’s no Judith Dale and wouldn’t dream of baking anything herself, still wants to impress her guests. She wants it to be possible for them to all sit down in the same room and, if nothing more, be civil to one another.

“Don’t have them over,” Gwen said when March approached her with the idea earlier in the day. “Hank’s none of your business, even if we do come from the same family.”

“There’s no reason to do this,” Hollis told March when she went ahead and invited them over for tea. “They’re kids. It doesn’t matter if we accept them-they’re going to do what they want-and I don’t give a damn if they accept us.”

Hollis isn’t pleased with the effects of Hank’s infatuation. Hank is even more dreamy and thoughtless than usual. He knocks over cups of coffee and steps on his own feet; he comes into the kitchen in the morning looking so rumpled and confused you’d think he was sleeping in a bale of hay. That little girl of March’s has him all caught up, and it’s truly pathetic to see.

“Idiot,” Hollis tells him, when Hank is late for school or when he’s forgotten his chores. “Take a good look at yourself.”

Hollis cannot understand how a person could give up so much control. He couldn’t do it; it’s simply not in his nature. The idea of being told what to do, or how to feel, turns him inside out. After all these years, the greatest pleasure he has ever known was paying off his debt to Alan Murray. Hollis still keeps the itemized bill of all that he owed the Murrays in his wallet, folded neatly into quarters. This is the invoice he was presented with on the day of Henry Murray’s funeral, and it charged for every day Hollis had lived with the family; the estimated cost of all meals had been tallied, along with books and clothing, even toothpaste. Each day he continued to live at Fox Hill raised Hollis’s debt, until it seemed he would never pay it off, and yet, he did.

All he had planned to do when he went away was earn enough to take March out of there, but the situation got complicated, as it always does when fast money is offered to someone who’s insatiable. The plan changed daily, in terms of exactly how much he would need. First it was enough for an apartment in another town, then in Boston; then it was a house he needed to present to her, a house bigger than the one where she grew up. Finally, it was the land they had surveyed on that day when they hid behind the stone wall. Nothing less would do.

Hollis didn’t even realize how much time had passed until he came back to town: The boys he’d gone to school with were men now, with wives and families. The linden trees planted around the town square the year he left, thin seedlings that needed to be propped up with posts, had become tall enough to cast shadows that covered the square entirely. If he had been able to buy the land surrounding Olive Tree Lake, he would now be the largest landowner in three counties. If anyone thinks this is meaningless, then he’s never had a banker call him sir; he’s never had one of the residents of town, who once helped tie a defenseless boy to a tree and leave him in the woods at dark, politely wish him a good day and move aside, quickly, to let his old hostage pass by.

Today, when he knocks on the door at Fox Hill-a silly formality, seeing that he owns the place-Hollis has nearly everything he’s ever wanted, but he’s in a foul mood anyway.

“Go ahead,” he tells Hank when March comes to the door. “Go in.”

Hank has dressed in his best clothes for the occasion, and he formally shakes March’s hand.

“You look so much like Alan,” March says.

Hank looks at her, confused, uncertain as to whether she’s greeted him with a compliment or a curse.

“He had your color hair,” March explains, suddenly nervous in the boy’s presence. “But you’re much taller,” she adds when she sees the worried look on Hank’s face.

“Oh.” Hank nods, grateful to March for granting him that dissimilar feature.

“What is this supposed to be?” Hollis asks.

Sister is standing guard in the hallway, emitting a low, throaty growl.

“It’s a West Highland terrier,” March says. “Judith’s.”

“Are you telling me it’s a dog?” Hollis says.

March laughs. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

“Well, then I have to believe it. Seeing how it comes from you.” He moves toward March, and the dog growls again. “What are you looking at?” Hollis asks the terrier, who is watching him warily and snarls when spoken to.

“She seems to hate you,” March teases.

“I don’t mind. Let her.” Hank has gone on ahead, so Hollis takes the opportunity to draw March near. “You’re the one whose opinion interests me.” He circles her waist and whispers, “I could show you what I mean. Let’s get rid of the kids.”

“Kid,” March corrects. “Gwen’s not here.”

Hank is in the living room, stoop-shouldered beneath the low ceiling, disappointed when he’s told Gwen hasn’t appeared.

“You’d better watch out,” Hollis suggests to the boy, after March has gone to get the tea both Hank and Hollis will politely force themselves to drink. “If you mattered to her, she’d be here.” He lets the boy think that one over; maybe now Hank won’t let himself be led around by the nose.

But in fact, Gwen’s decision not to be at home for her mother’s little get-together has nothing to do with Hank, or her desire to be with him. When she left the house early that morning, with a bunch of carrots in her pockets, she had already made up her mind that she wouldn’t be home at the appointed hour. She walked quickly down the road to the Farm in the cold morning air, with no intention of being sociable with Hollis, or allowing her mother to butt into her life. Gwen likes the empty road these days; if she’s quiet enough she can spy weasels running along the stone walls and field mice searching the ground for acorns. To her great surprise, Gwen likes all sorts of things she would never have thought she could tolerate.

Back in California, Gwen would sleep all day if allowed; she’d slam at her clock radio until she hit the snooze button, and be late for school four days out of five. Who was that girl? she wonders now, as she pulls on a second pair of gloves and jumps over ruts in the road. If she passed by that girl right now, she’d think, Poor lazy know-nothing, and she’d keep right on going. Most days, Gwen is at the barn at five-thirty, and Tarot is always waiting for her, pushing his nose up against her as soon as she enters his stall, searching for carrots and apples. Usually, she doesn’t ride him; instead she brings him down to the farthest, widest pasture and lets him take off. To see him run is to witness a miracle. Every once in a while, on those days when Hank doesn’t meet her down at the fields with a thermos of coffee, she does a foolish, dangerous thing. She rides Tarot at full speed, which is nothing compared to what he used to do on the track, but leaves her breathless all the same.

The other morning, when she woke at five, Gwen could not get dressed and rummage through the refrigerator for Tarot’s treat, then run down the road at her usual hour. Hollis was in the hallway. She knew he was there before she leaned up on her elbows in order to peer out the door of the sewing room where she sleeps. She smelled fire, and that’s the way he smells. Later, when Gwen went into the kitchen she noticed the scent of fire on her mother as well. Still, she didn’t say a word. She simply went about her business, despite the lump in her throat. Sure, her mother wants to pretend nothing has happened; she wants to have everyone over for a little tea and cookies and act as if Hollis wasn’t in their kitchen before dawn with his hands all over her. To hell with that, in Gwen’s opinion. To hell with her.

Anyway, maybe Gwen’s wrong in her assessment. Maybe her vision was cloudy and they were simply talking; they’ve known each other forever, after all. Still, whenever Gwen sees Hollis-which, thank goodness, is hardly ever-she always turns away and acts as though she’s unaware of his presence. Even if she’s standing in his field, with a horse that legally belongs to him, she turns the other way.

Mind your own business, that’s what she tells herself when she starts to wonder about her mother and Hollis. Go forward. Concentrate on your own life. That’s what she tells herself, but it isn’t working. She wonders if what she feels for Hollis is hate. It’s not solely on behalf of her poor, unsuspecting father that she feels this; it’s the way Hollis has treated Hank. He’s horrible to Hank, he bosses him around as though Hank were his servant, and Hank doesn’t even seem to notice. That’s what’s so awful. He looks up to Hollis. He thinks the world of him.

The first time Gwen went to Hank’s room, on an afternoon when Hollis had gone to Boston on business, she burst into tears. The room was so neat and tidy and devoid of possessions. It was as if Hank were a boarder, someone merely passing through, when in fact this has been his room for thirteen years. The wool blanket on his bed was threadbare and the paint on the walls was peeling. Gwen sat at the foot of the bed and wept. Hank thought it was something he’d done or said and he kept apologizing, which only made her cry more. There was such loneliness in that room, in the cracks along the ceiling and the bare walls, that Gwen was all the more aware of how lonely she herself has always been.

The strangest thing is that now that she’s really, truly in love with someone, they haven’t had sex. They kiss, they touch each other, but it’s not the right time to do anything more, they both feel that. This is a backward universe she’s in; all that she wouldn’t have understood before makes sense to her now. She doesn’t want her mother in on this, it’s too private, too perfect, and she’s certainly not going to sit and politely sip a cup of tea in the parlor while her mother interrogates Hank about what his favorite subject is at school, or whatever question parents think most reveals a boy’s character.

It is, after all, Gwen’s last day of freedom; she’s scheduled to attend classes at the high school starting tomorrow. And so this afternoon she has trekked over to the library, where Mrs. Miller teaches her how to use the microfilm so she can look Tarot up in old newspapers. The library in Jenkintown is a wonderful place built out of local brownstone. There are two reading rooms, furnished with old leather couches and well-worn chairs. It may not be the Boston Public Library, or the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library that her father takes her to, but so far Gwen has discovered six books about horse racing and Tarot is in two of them. Back then, his full name was Blue Moon’s Tarot’s Deck of Fortune, called after the Blue Moon farm in Virginia, where he was sired. There is his photograph as he heads for the finish at Belmont. There he is in the colors of Guardian Farm-blue and white-in the winners’ circle at Saratoga.

“You like racehorses?” some old man asks Gwen as she pages through the books. It’s Jimmy Parrish, who ran the stable at Guardian and worked at Pimlico when he was a boy.

“I guess I do,” Gwen admits.

Jimmy Parrish sits down across from her and begins to talk about his good old days. He’s so excited Gwen smiles and lets him ramble on as she looks at photographs from great races of the past. She’s not really listening until he starts to talk about Guardian Farm. If he remembers correctly, the families of the two men who were killed filed suit against Mr. Cooper, which pretty much finished the stable and wiped out the family financially. One of the men had been a jockey, the other a trainer from Louisiana, both men who knew their horses. Accidents happen, of course, but with Tarot situations always seemed premeditated. People thought the entire family was crazy when a few months after the out-of-court settlements they saw Belinda Cooper, God rest her soul, riding that racehorse as if he were nothing more dangerous than a Shetland pony.

That is when Gwen closes her book. Dust rises up from between the pages in a little gray cloud. “That’s my name too,” she tells Jimmy. “Cooper.”

When he realizes this girl is Richard Cooper’s daughter, Jimmy throws his arms around her as if she were a long-lost granddaughter. “I can’t believe it’s you,” he cries. He actually becomes so loud and teary that the librarian, Enid Miller, comes over and informs him if he doesn’t quiet down he’ll have to leave, which is what Gwen and Jimmy Parrish decide to do.

“So who was Belinda to me?” Gwen asks when she and Jimmy are leaving the library. Gwen has her arms filled with books she’s checked out. As they go down the stone steps of the library, she keeps her elbow out, in case Jimmy Parrish should slip on the wet leaves and need something to hold on to.

“She was your aunt. Your father’s older sister. Dead nearly twelve years. And her son, who she named Cooper, has been gone for at least five. Your grandparents-the mother and father of Belinda and your dad-died in a terrible accident at the devil’s comer. That’s the turn where Route 22 meets up with Guardian Farm.”

“Kind of a dying family,” Gwen says.

“You’re the last of them,” Jimmy Parrish says. “No more Coopers but you.”

“Yikes,” Gwen says. “Does that make me unlucky?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Jimmy Parrish is kind enough to tell her. “And then, of course, there’s your mother’s side of the family.”

They have reached the Bluebird Coffee Shop. Gwen holds the door open for Jimmy, who is completely thrilled to have found a live one who is not only listening to him but actually appears interested.

“There’s your mother’s brother, Alan.”

“I’ve heard about him.” Gwen remembers the Judge mentioning an Alan.

“He just went to pot after his wife died.”

“She died too?”

They sit down at the counter and Jimmy takes a look at the specials board, even though the specials are always the same at the Bluebird: crab cakes with mustard sauce, BLT on rye, corn chowder.

“I’ll have a cup of your chowder,” he informs their waitress, Alison Hartwig, whose mother will serve Gwen lunch tomorrow in the school cafeteria.

“So what’s with Alan?” Gwen asks after she orders a vanilla Diet Coke.

“He’s a wreck, plain and simple. No one ever sees him, and his boy, Hank, is being raised over at the Farm. I think I’ll have a coffee too,” Jimmy calls to Alison Hartwig. “Black.”

Gwen rolls all this information around in her mind. Why has no one told her this before? This means that Hank is not simply some relative. He’s her first cousin; an embarrassing, odd fact. Is it a crime to fall in love with him? Will people look at them and whisper?

“I hope you know more about racehorses than you do about your family,” Jimmy Parrish says as he spoons sugar into the coffee he’s been served.

“I don’t,” Gwen says.

She has a queasy feeling in her stomach. It sounds as if she and Hank come from the worst possible gene pool. She wishes they weren’t related, that they were perfect strangers who were old enough to make their own plans, without interference from anyone.

“I’ve been riding that horse over at Guardian Farm. The one you were talking about. Tarot.”

Jimmy Parrish has been served his chowder, but now he puts down his spoon. He looks at Gwen, hard, and shakes his head.

“You’re lucky that horse isn’t in his prime, or you’d already be dead.”

“I don’t think so,” Gwen says. She puts a dollar on the counter to pay for her Coke, then grabs all her books. “I’m the one in my family who’s going to live.”

She walks home through the cold late-afternoon sunlight. When she gets to the dirt road, Hank is waiting for her, sitting on a stone fence.

“You didn’t come to tea,” he says, when Gwen perches beside him. “I had to eat all the cookies your mother put out, to be polite. She’s nice.”

“No, she’s not.” Gwen stacks her pile of books between them; her posture is stiff.

“Okay.” Hank realizes he has to be careful here. She’s upset about something, and he has no idea what it might be. “I was only in the house for about half an hour. She seemed nice for that amount of time.”

“We’re first cousins,” Gwen says. “Did you know that?”

Hank leafs through the pages of one of the library books. There is a crow somewhere close by and it starts its insufferable calling.

“Did you know?” Gwen asks.

The grass in the fields is yellow now, and the squirrels are frantically collecting the last of the acorns. She can tell by looking at him: He knew. Gwen shakes her head. “You should have told me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Hank tells her. “That’s why I didn’t say anything. The way we feel is what matters.”

Gwen stares straight ahead, at the maples and the oaks, then reaches to put her hand in his. Maybe some people would disapprove, but Gwen doesn’t care. When Hank closes his hand around hers, that’s it. They’ve made their bargain; they’ve sealed their fate. What she ever did to deserve him, Gwen will never understand. Maybe she’s a better person than she thought she was; maybe there’s a reason why she would be lucky enough to find someone like Hank. They walk across the hill together, and they keep going, past the fences and the old trees, until they can see almost all of Guardian Farm, a sea of gold and green. Beyond the split-rail fence that lines the driveway, there is the piece of road that leads into Route 22.

“The devil’s comer,” Gwen says.

Hank laughs. “Who told you that?”

“Some guy in town.”

There are several logging trucks going by on Route 22; when they honk their horns the sound echoes into the sky.

“Are you saying there’s somebody else?” Hank teases since it is, at the moment, his biggest fear; the doubt Hollis placed there, for his own entertainment. “Some other guy?”

“No.” Gwen grins to think he might be jealous of old Jimmy Parrish. “How about you? Is there somebody you’re dying to be with?”

“You,” he tells her. Exactly what she wanted to hear. “Only you,” he says.

12

March sits on the braided rug in the living room looking at a photograph of her brother taken when he was sixteen. It was summer and Alan’s hair had been bleached almost white by the sun. He wears a polo shirt and jeans and white sneakers and he’s grinning right at the camera. He hadn’t yet failed at school, or marriage, or fatherhood. He was nothing more than a boy who didn’t know when to quit, or how to treat people; he was fun-loving, but selfish, with a regrettable nasty streak. March has driven out to the Marshes five times, and five times he has refused to answer the door. He’s gone, that’s what it is. Someone lives in that shack, all right, but the boy whose photograph March examines has vanished like a handful of dust.

The clock on the mantel is ticking, the one March’s father bought in Boston, the single possession she can’t bring herself to pack away. She has gone through the boxes of photographs, all arranged in albums and dated with Judith Dale’s neat handwriting. March will be keeping only two photographs for herself, to place into frames. One is of her and Hollis, a hazy snapshot in which they look like ragamuffins, with torn shorts and dirty knees, all dark eyes and know-it-all grins. The other is of Judith Dale skating on Olive Tree Lake on a winter day. Judith’s head is tossed back, her skin is luminous; all around her the world is icy and white. Growing up, March never noticed that Judith Dale was beautiful, or that she was young, far younger in that photograph than March is right now.

Today, March is taking a pot of asters to Judith’s grave. It is the perfect day for a solitary mission such as this-Hollis went to Boston on business; Gwen is safely at school. It’s only Richard who holds her back, even after she’s packed up the photograph albums. March spoke to him last night, finally, but he refused to understand.

“I don’t think I’m clear on this,” he kept repeating. “You’re staying?”

It was the school, she told him, so much better for Gwen: fewer drugs, fewer temptations. Just a change, a tryout. She’d forgotten how peaceful it was here, out in the country: she’d actually been inspired to work, so could he send on a box of her tools, and the packet of semiprecious stones in her night table drawer? Gwen was so happy, after all, she was doing so well; why, she’d even begun taking care of that old horse Belinda used to ride.

“Tarot?” Richard had said. “She’s spending time at the Farm?”

For those new to lying, it’s easy to get caught.

“Not exactly,” March had answered.

“Well, what exactly?”

March guessed that Richard had the bedroom window open as he spoke to her, and that the scent of lemons was filling the room. She had taken special care of that tree in their garden, forsaking poppies and jade plants whenever there was a drought, using all her rationed water for that one tree.

“Richard,” she had said, and for a very long time there was no response.

“You’re not going to do this to us, are you?” he had finally asked.

She thinks about the sound of his voice, so far away, as she gets her gloves and coat from the closet, then takes the asters from the table in the front hall. When she goes to the door, the dog follows, blocking her way.

“Move,” March tells it.

The dog looks up at the closet where its leash is kept on a shelf, then makes a noise, somewhere between a yip and a bark.

“Oh, all right,” March tells the thing. “But behave.”

She grabs the leash, and allows Sister to run ahead to the Toyota.

“Stay away from the flowers,” March says as the dog situates itself beside the asters. “Don’t eat them.”

When March gets to the cemetery, there are no other cars in sight. She parks in a pile of wet, brown leaves, then clips on the dog’s leash and takes the flowers.

“Don’t pull,” she tells Sister, who seems to know exactly where they’re going.

There’s a driving range which borders the cemetery, and March’s father used to joke that was the reason why they couldn’t keep gravediggers on the job. Man after man had gotten beaned on the head, and every one of those stray balls had been hit by Bill Justice, who continued to be a terrible golfer even though he went out to practice nearly every day, in an effort to improve his weekly game with Henry Murray. Now March wonders if the Judge only said he was going to the driving range; if, in fact, he spent those times with Judith Dale. She wonders too if her father knew-if he closed his eyes to what was going on in spite of his warm feelings for Louise. Amazing what people will tolerate. Richard, for instance, knows the way March feels about Hollis, and yet before he hung up the phone he’d said, Just come back. It will be all right. We’ll manage.

They have reached Judith’s grave, and although the dog sits quietly, there’s a tremor in its leg.

“Good girl,” March croons, but the dog is shivering now.

Wet leaves have attached themselves to March’s boots and to Sister’s white coat. It’s extremely quiet here, not even a jet overhead.

“Your favorites,” March tells Judith Dale as she places the pot of flowers at the foot of the grave site, which is still bare earth.

March sits on the grass beside the grave, and the dog comes to lie beside her, so close March can feel it shivering through fabric and fur. They walk back to the car slowly, until Sister decides to chase a few scarlet leaves, the last ones that fall from a tall maple. They stop at the knoll from which March can see her father’s plain gray headstone, and nearby, the headstone marking the spot where Alan’s young wife was laid to rest. When they get to the car, Sister sits in the front seat. March navigates the narrow road, and then, as she’s about to turn onto a larger drive, something runs in front of the car. Between the falling leaves and the asphalt there is a flash of red. March steps on the brake, hard.

Nothing but leaves and silence; March would have thought she’d imagined what passed before her, but Sister is scratching at the window, barking like mad. Then, from beneath a hedge of evergreens, the creature takes off again. It’s one of the last of the foxes, a great-great-grandson of one who survived the open hunting season all those years ago. It’s running as fast as it can, headed for the open fields west of the cemetery. Red lightning that doesn’t look back, it’s gone in the blink of an eye.

March remains there, with her foot on the brake, and Sister’s barks echoing. As a little girl, March used to wait out on the front porch in the dark, hoping to see one of the foxes who were so numerous back then. She could never stay up late enough, so she came up with a plan. She’d catch one for her own and keep him in a box in the kitchen, in one of those crates they used to store potatoes and yams. She’d make certain he stayed warm under a flannel blanket, she’d feed him buttered toast and train him to dance to music, in a circle, on his toes. On some nights, she’d allow him to sleep beside her in her bed, his pointed nose on her pillow, and she’d sing him to sleep.

“Don’t be silly,” Judith Dale told her one summer night, when March wasn’t more than seven or eight, and Mrs. Dale had discovered her out past her bedtime, poised on the porch with a fishing net, a hammer, and the vegetable crate. “You’ll never catch a fox that way.”

Mrs. Dale brought March to the chestnut tree, where she drew a circle in the dirt with a stick. She took some sugar cubes from her pocket, the kind she favored for her coffee and tea. She let March crush the sugar cubes, then sprinkle them around the circle.

“Spread it thin,” Judith told her, and March was especially pleased that Judith clapped her hands, approving her work when it was done.

“Bullshit,” Alan had responded when March informed him that she’d trap a fox by the morning. And when indeed all the sugar was found to be gone, Alan laughed out loud. “Anything could have eaten that sugar, dummy. Raccoons, stray dogs, mice. There are any number of explanations, Marcheline, and none are as stupid as yours.”

But later that day, Mrs. Dale took March inside the circle and pointed out the tracks of a fox’s lovely, sly paws. That’s when March decided that if she couldn’t keep a fox in the kitchen, she’d have one in the woods. For a very long time, she left out treats. Even after Hollis had come to live with them, she was sometimes found drawing a circle with a stick, setting out bits of sugar, or some cookies, or a fresh corn muffin she’d stolen from the pantry.

“Is that for your boyfriend?” Hollis said to her once, when she was distributing slices of apple around the circle.

“No,” she said, and then she’d turned her back on him. You’re my boyfriend, is what she was thinking, and after all this time, she’s thinking it still.

When the fox disappears, March turns onto Route 22 and heads for Guardian Farm, hoping that Hollis will be back from Boston. The autumn light is sharp, and March reaches for her sunglasses. She switches on the radio and sings along to a song she didn’t think she knew the words to. She has the sense that she’s driving backward in time; the sky is so much smaller here than it is out west, a bowl of heaven set above their pastures and their town. She eases into the turn off Route 22 carefully, since it’s a place where it’s difficult to see oncoming traffic. She drives along the fields the Coopers always planted, but which are now thick with little more than wild clematis and witch hazel. There’s only one tended patch, where Hank has been raising pumpkins, and that crop has done well. There are several rows of huge, fat pumpkins, still on their thick, ropy vines.

March remembers coming here with Hollis and wishing the Farm belonged to them. The house looked so much grander and more elegant back then, and Annabeth Cooper’s perennial gardens were amazing, especially her rose garden, where the blooms were as big as cabbages. March used to study Richard and Belinda with real interest. How strange it was that a rich girl would wear torn sweaters and keep her hair bunched into a rubber band. How odd that Richard should cry when he discovered a worthless old crow someone had shot for sport. She found them so curious, like creatures from a distant planet; she couldn’t help but be interested, and she stayed interested long after Hollis grew tired of their spying game.

It’s Hollis she spies now, out by his truck, back from Boston, where he’s met with one of his lawyers concerning an acquisition of more condos in Orlando. The dogs are milling around, and every once in a while he calls to them harshly, when one nips another, or when they all begin to bark, an off-key plaintive sound that carries over the hill. Still, Hollis is in a better mood than usual; he always gets this way when he buys something. For a brief time at least, he’s not concerned with getting more. There’s enough for everyone, Judith Dale always told him when he sat down at the dinner table, but anyone could tell he didn’t believe her.

Hollis is wearing a gray suit made in Italy which cost more than any single item of clothing anyone in this town has ever owned. He’s learned that people are foolish enough to believe what they see, so he dressed rich for his trip into Boston. He’s up in the cab of the truck, in spite of his expensive suit, when March drives in. The dogs start howling and begin to circle the Toyota. In the front seat, Sister hops up to look out the window; seeing those yapping red dogs, the terrier goes berserk. If March let Sister out of the car now, it would attack the entire pack, for all the good that would do.

“Call off your hounds,” March says when she gets. out of the car.

“Kick them,” Hollis suggests as he lifts a box out of the truck. He’s gotten a new computer in Boston so he can hook up directly to his bank. He can sit at the desk in the parlor, where old Mr. Cooper smoked his cigars, and manage his finances beside a window which overlooks one of the prettiest views of his property.

March follows Hollis into the house. Just being this close to him makes her feel all jangly, as if someone has shaken her like a globe filled with snow. She can feel his energy snapping at her, charging her up, even when his attention is turned to this computer in a box.

“I’ll be right back,” he tells her. “Make yourself comfortable.”

March hasn’t been inside this house for a long time, and now that she is, she’s certainly not comfortable. If anything, she’s disoriented. This isn’t the way she remembers the Coopers’ kitchen, with its polished copper sinks and the long oak table that was always piled high with wonderful things to eat. The Coopers hired an Italian cook they called Antsy, so named because she couldn’t stay still for a minute, unless she was baking something delicious. There was a housekeeper as well, a woman from the village, the mother of one of the girls from school; Alison Hartwig was the girl’s name, a quiet blue-eyed girl who didn’t have much to say.

The kitchen now has a spartan quality; that which isn’t a necessity isn’t here. Tiles that had to be ripped up when some pipes burst one terribly cold winter have never been replaced. The slate countertops are cloudy from years of thoughtless cleaning with Comet. The copper sinks have turned the color of moldy leaves. And yet the kitchen is clean. There are two coffee cups, rinsed and drying on a wooden rack; there’s not a crumb on any of the counters, not a dish left out on the table.

When Hollis comes back, he goes to the sink to get himself some cool water. After he’s drained the glass, he comes to stand beside March. He takes her hand and examines it.

“She used to wear this on her left hand,” he says of Judith’s emerald. “Like a wedding ring.”

March leans in close to kiss him, but Hollis takes a step back.

“What?” March asks.

He takes her other hand, her left hand, on which she wears her wedding ring. “If you were the one who’d gone away, I would have waited. No matter how long it took.”

“Well, I did until I just couldn’t anymore,” March says, trying to pull away.

“Wouldn’t,” Hollis says back.

March laughs. He used to do this to her all the time, contradict her however he could, just to get his way. Then she sees. It’s no laughing matter. He’s not letting go of her hand.

There is no measuring love, other than all or nothing or that space in between. This is all, she sees that in him. This is more than everything. Could she live without this, what he’s offering to her? Could she turn away and settle for anything less? Another man would say, I can’t tell you what to do or what to believe. Another man would play this as though it were a game.

“Want to know what I think?” he says to March.

She raises her chin and looks at him, even though she’s afraid to find out. He seems extremely pleased with himself, as if he’d figured the answer to a difficult riddle.

“I think you were never married to him.”

“Oh, really?” She tries to sound amused, but that’s not how she’s feeling. She’s feeling as though she can’t stop looking at him: she can’t even try.

“Really,” he says.

The white shirt he’s wearing looks crisp and well pressed, but it turns out the fabric is smooth to the touch, a delicate linen that feels like silk. Hollis kisses her so deeply that her stomach lurches; if she ever had any willpower, it gives way. He’s got his arms around her, so that she has her back against the sink. She can feel the cold copper against her back. Hollis pulls down the zipper of her jeans. He’s calling her baby, he’s telling her it’s always been this way between them and it always will be. No one could ever love her the way he does, not in this lifetime, not in this world.

“Come on,” Hollis says, when he’s got her jeans and her underpants pulled down, as if she planned to stop him. As if she could stop herself. She knows she should tell him to wait. He has Hank living with him; how can they be sure the boy isn’t already home from school? It’s a bright afternoon, anyone could turn up at the door. Ken Helm with a check for the wood he’s culled from land Hollis owns. Harriet Laughton collecting for the library fund.

But March doesn’t tell him no. How could she? She wants him more at this moment than she’s ever wanted anything: air or memory, life or breath. She wraps her legs around him, with her back pressed into that cold copper sink. She wants him to do whatever pleases him; she wants him to do it all. She’s so hot that the copper behind her is growing warm to the touch; soon the metal will ping with heat, ready to burn. The way he thrusts himself inside her is incredibly greedy, but she’s greedy too. That’s the secret Hollis knows about her. She’s no different than he is.

“You want it, don’t you?” is what she thinks he’s whispering to her, or maybe she’s only admitting this fact to herself.

He’s making love to her in a way he never did before; he’s hungrier, more impassioned. March moves her hand beneath the fabric of his shirt. It’s still him, that same boy. There is his heart, right in her hand. She doesn’t care what anyone thinks. Let them say what they wish; let them gossip. She places both hands on the sink. palms down, to support her weight while he fucks her like this, as if the world were about to end, as if he could never get enough. The metal sink is pressing against her, cutting into her skin, so that later she will have little indentations in her flesh, and blisters, as though she’s been burned.

He has his face against her neck, and she can feel all that heat inside him. She hears him say her name in a strange, garbled way, and then she’s gone. She’s shattered into pure energy; she’s been absorbed into whatever he is, that sulfur, that heat. There is no way to measure this; no scale will do. March finds that she’s crying; the heat that has owned her rises to form a single sob as she arches her head back and wraps herself around him, tighter still.

Outside, there is plenty of sunlight. Not a cloud in the sky. The dogs mill around the back door and whimper. No leaves fall from the maple trees beyond the driveway. No birds fly overhead. And even later, when the blue dusk begins to cross the horizon, it will still be a rare and nearly perfect day. Poor Sister, locked in the car for so long, barking for hours, will yelp hoarsely when March finally comes out of the house. The dog will eye March resentfully as they start down the driveway, then turn onto the back road. Halfway home, March will stop beside a stone wall where the bee balm still grows. She’ll remove her wedding band to find a white circle; to hide that mark, she’ll switch the emerald onto her left hand, and although she’d meant to rush home and start supper, she’ll stay beside the wall for longer than she’d intended, until the road ahead is completely dark.

13

Tonight, Gwen will wear all black, but she certainly doesn’t plan any tricks, only a treat. She has a present for Hank, which she hopes to give him at Chris’s Halloween party. Hank is such a serious person, finding the right gift for him is no easy task. No CDs or tapes, no jewelry or flashy clothes. None of that would do. Instead, Gwen has brought along a sterling silver compass she discovered in the attic. It’s an old-fashioned piece, and Gwen hopes it still shows true north.

She wants to be with Hank tonight. She has been with so many boys she never gave a damn about; selfish, spoiled guys who liked to joke about the girls they fucked, rating each on a score of one to ten. Subzero, they laughingly called those whom, like her friend Minnie, they deemed too unattractive to bother with. And to think, Gwen actually put up with that. She stood there and listened to them tear her best friend apart and she pretended that she didn’t hear or didn’t care.

With Hank, it’s different. It’s real. And that’s why she’s nervous: This time, it matters.

“You look terrific,” March says when Gwen comes downstairs, ready for the party.

Gwen is wearing her short black dress, but she’s gone easy on the mascara and eyeliner. Instead of spiking up her hair, she’s let it dry naturally, and it has a soft, pretty shape. She’s desperate for Hank to think she looks good, but she still can’t take a compliment and merely shrugs at her mother’s approval.

“We’re already late,” Gwen says, ducking March’s embrace when she tries to give Gwen a hug. Impatient, Gwen gets her own jacket and her mother’s coat from the closet.

“You may not care if you keep your date waiting,” Gwen informs her mother as they finally head for the car. “But I do.”

It’s the sort of chilly, spooky night when it’s possible to see one’s own breath in the air; perfect for Halloween.

“My date?” March says, rattled by the notion that Gwen may know more than March gives her credit for.

Gwen glares at her mother, then gets into the Toyota, which March has just bought outright from Ken Helm for six hundred dollars, borrowing the money from Hollis. Gwen slams her door to make her point. She really has had enough: she’s been carrying her resentment around for some time and, like it or not, it’s a heavy load.

“Are you talking about Susie?” March asks when she slides behind the wheel. She isn’t ready to discuss Hollis with Gwen; it’s not time, and it may never be. I can’t turn him down, I can’t say no to him, I want him all the time, I always have and I always will. Is that what she’s supposed to say to her daughter? Is that the comforting tale she should tell?

“That’s who you’re meeting tonight?” Gwen asks, her voice even more hoarse than usual. “Susie?”

March takes too long to answer. Gwen snorts and looks out into the night.

“Just like I thought,” Gwen fumes. “The truth really is an alien language to you.”

“Okay,” March says. “You want the truth? I’m meeting Hollis.” She starts the car and pulls onto the dirt road at a speed that’s too fast for the turn.

“Like I didn’t know,” Gwen mutters under her breath.

“It’s no big deal,” March insists. “We’ve known each other forever. We grew up together.”

Gwen is feeling something weird in her throat. She can’t stand for this to happen to her father, who is the nicest man she knows. All right, he’s not the most conversational guy in the world unless you’re talking about beetles. There have been family dinners when no one has said a word during the entire meal. But Gwen has been in the car with her father when he’s stopped to watch a wood spider spin its web. She’s seen him talk to a stray bear cub, when they were at Yosemite for her tenth birthday, and to this day, she would swear the bear listened.

Gwen knows that her father has been sending March cards. She found one this morning. A store-bought card that said Thinking of you. “I miss you every day,” he had written and Gwen actually cried to see that he’d been made to embarrass himself. A man like her father, so settled in silence, had to come out and shout what he felt, and her mother still didn’t seem to care.

“We’re going out to dinner at Dimitri’s. It’s not exactly a crime.” And yet March must feel it is, since she’s so busy defending herself.

“Fine,” Gwen says. “It’s none of my business.”

She knows her mother lies about where she goes. Whatever, Gwen thinks to herself when her mother says she has an errand to run or that she’s going out with Susie. Sure, at this time of night, my mother’s going food shopping. That’s what she’d tell Minnie if the two of them still spoke on the phone. Like I believe it. Like I believe anything she says.

Hank knows about them too. God, how could he not? Once, he was waiting for her at the end of the driveway when she came to visit Tarot. He insisted they walk to school early, right then, and he had a funny look on his face, as if he felt sorry for her. Gwen glanced at the house then and realized the Toyota was parked there. March had spent the night, and Gwen hadn’t even known. She’d just assumed her mother was still sleeping when she’d left the house at five-fifteen.

Another time, she saw them when she took Sister for a walk. They were in the driveway, parked in his truck. Gwen had looked away as quickly as she could, but she’d seen her mother kissing him. She’d seen March’s head tilted back and her mouth open. After that, Gwen had run all the way back to the porch, but it was too late; she’d already witnessed too much.

“You’re making a big deal out of nothing,” March says as they drive toward town.

“Look, you don’t have to explain anything to me. It’s your life.”

Gwen slinks down farther in her seat and looks out her window. The trick-or-treaters are out in full force, wandering up and down the High Road and Main Street dressed as ghosts and ballerinas and Ninjas. It’s as if the children have taken over; they’re everywhere, crossing streets and lawns, running through the darkness with flashlights and bags filled with candy.

“Thanks for the ride,” Gwen says when they pull up to Chris’s house, and she gets out before her mother can say anything more. What a relief to be walking up the path to the party. There’s already a crowd inside, and a pile of coats in the front hall. The music is turned up so high that the bass vibrates through the walls and into Gwen’s skin.

“Finally,” both Chris and Lori shout when Gwen comes into the kitchen, where Chris’s mom is mixing up a punch recipe which includes orange soda and grapefruit juice. The girls are all in black-everyone is supposed to be dressed accordingly for this event-and Chris sports a black witch’s wig over her blond hair.

“You look fabulous,” Lori tells Gwen.

“You think so?” Gwen says uncertainly. She has to learn to take a compliment. She has to stop being so uptight.

Chris’s mom finishes the refreshments, then retires to the den, since she’s promised to give them “space” for this party. As soon as she’s gone, the guy Lori’s started dating, Alex Mahoney, takes out a fifth of vodka and doctors the punch. Everyone’s laughing about how plastered they plan to get, except for Gwen, who’s too busy watching Hank come in through the back door. His face is flushed from the raw weather and there are leaves in his pale hair. He’s wearing a threadbare black overcoat-one of Hollis’s castoffs, no doubt-jeans, and a clean white shirt. Gwen knows him-he ironed the shirt himself; he was careful and thorough and that’s why he’s late. Standing here, in this crowded kitchen, she could not love him more.

“Here you go, old boy,” Alex greets Hank. handing over a glass of the punch. “This should do the trick.”

Hank grins, but he puts the glass on the table, and heads straight for Gwen. He bends down so he can whisper.

“You look beautiful.”

“Thanks,” Gwen says. She actually does it. She accepts a compliment. If she can do that, anything can happen. Tonight feels like the night of her dreams. She wraps her arms around Hank and knows that he’s the one. She cannot remember being happier than when she is dancing with him, or when she perches on the arm of a couch to watch him play darts. By midnight, Gwen is ready to leave, so they can go up to Olive Tree Lake and be alone. Anyway, the group who’ve gotten plastered from the spiked punch are getting somewhat obnoxious. It’s definitely time to leave.

“You know what we should do next?” Lori’s new boyfriend, Alex, is saying. “Go down to the Marshes.”

“Oooooh.”

Someone is making spooky noises. A girl laughs, but it’s a short, trumpeting sound.

“Seriously,” Alex says. “We’ll bring a few cherry bombs.”

“Smoke out the Coward?” another boy guesses.

“Oh, yeah. Like you’d have the guts,” Chris teases.

Several people laugh now.

“Let sleeping cowards lie,” one of them suggests.

Gwen is listening to all this, disgusted, but when she turns to Hank to discuss how sophomoric these guys are, he’s gone. She looks in the kitchen and in the hall. Nothing.

“Have you seen Hank?” she asks Lori, and anyone else she recognizes, but the answer is always no. Gwen has a panicked feeling. It’s as if, while she wasn’t looking, everything’s gone wrong. She grabs her coat and heads outside. What would it mean if he left her at the party and took off? How could it be that he’s already halfway down the block, black coat flapping out behind him?

Gwen runs after Hank, and when she catches up to him she hits him in the back, right between the shoulder blades.

“How could you do that to me?” she cries when he spins to face her. Gwen should be embarrassed, there are tears in her eyes, but she’s not. “Is that how you treat someone you care about? You go and leave them?”

Hank’s face is pale, and it’s not easy to read his expression on this dark street, but all at once, Gwen realizes she’s not the only one who’s crying.

“What is it?” Gwen says. “What’s wrong?”

“The Coward,” Hank says. “The guy in the Marshes they wanted to smoke out? That’s my father.”

They walk through town in silence. There are a few stray trick-or-treaters ringing doorbells, but most have gone home to bed. A quarter-moon has risen, but the night is unusually dark. Hank keeps his hands in the pockets of his overcoat, and he walks fast, so that Gwen has to trot to keep up with him. Forsaking their original plans, they do not go to Olive Tree Lake-where many of the couples from the party have already trekked, looking for privacy and romance. Instead, they start for the hill.

“It’s not your fault that Alan is your father,” Gwen says.

Hank smiles, but he doesn’t look happy. “Yeah? Then why do I feel like it is?”

“Maybe he’s not as bad as everybody says.”

Hank clearly doesn’t want to discuss this. He speeds up his pace and they walk on in silence, an unusual and lonely condition for the two of them to find themselves in. When the house on Fox Hill is in sight, Hank backs off.

“I’m tired,” he says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

So much for Gwen’s perfect night. It’s been ruined; it’s been murdered. There is no way she’s going home now.

“Go ahead, if that’s what you want,” she tells Hank. “I’m not afraid to check out the Marshes.”

Gwen turns and takes off, not thinking of how rash her decision is; not certain, in fact, of where it is she’s going.

“Hey, wait a second,” Hank shouts. “Wait up. You can’t go there.”

But it’s too late; she’s in motion. Gwen is running in the direction she believes leads to the Marshes. She can hear Hank calling her, but she’s too upset and angry to stop. The sound of her breathing is filling up her head and she can hear things flying from tree to tree; she hopes that they’re birds and not bats. She heads east, or what she thinks of as east; she’s surprisingly fast when she puts her mind to getting where she wants to go.

Gwen hears Hank calling, but she doesn’t stop, not until the trees begin to thin out. The grass is taller here, and there’s the smell of salt. In the moonlight, everything is silver. An owl glides over an inlet, without warning, without a sound. The silver grass moves in the wind; where Gwen walks, it’s waist-high and she has to be careful to avoid the places where the mud seems deepest. People can sink so deeply into this bog they disappear forever, or at least that’s what Lori has told her.

It’s extremely quiet here. Sound dissolves. Why, Gwen can hear her own heartbeat. Behind her and in front of her is a sea of grass. The few trees which grow here are huge oaks, and some stringy pines. You can smell the pine if you breathe deeply. If you listen carefully, you can hear past the silence to the echo of something moving. All around are fiddler crabs, traversing the mud in the moonlight. Luckily, it’s low tide, or Gwen would be sloshing through knee-deep water. Instead, she has to make her way over the crabs, tentatively, trying to avoid crushing them.

Hank comes up behind her, and grabs her with such force that Gwen almost loses her balance.

“Are you crazy?” His breathing is ragged from running. His jaw is pulsating. “You don’t just wander around in the Marshes. This isn’t a joke.”

Gwen throws her arms around him. What will she do if she ever loses him? How would she ever survive?

“I’m sorry about your father,” she whispers.

“There’s the place they want to bomb,” Hank says now. “His house.”

Gwen steps away to look in the direction Hank nods toward. Two big, old apple trees are all she sees; that, and the moonlit grass.

“Behind the trees,” Hank says.

When Gwen squints she can make out the tumbledown house. That’s a porch. An old gate. A railing.

“I want to see it,” she says. “Let’s go closer.”

“No,” Hank says. “He’ll hear us if we go closer.”

“I don’t care if he does.”

Gwen looks at Hank. If he tells her not to, if he tries to boss her around, something between them will be over. She didn’t realize this, but now she knows it to be true. Thankfully, he doesn’t. He stays there and waits while Gwen navigates through the marsh grass and the scratchy sea lavender.

The water has begun to rise, enough so that Gwen can feel how cold it is through the soles of her boots. Funny thing, there’s a garden gate in front of the house, but no fence. All you have to do is scoot around the gate, and make your way past the apple trees, then past some old blackberry bushes and over a cluster of raspberry canes. Maybe the fruit here was planted by Aaron Jenkins, the Founder, or maybe blackbirds dropped seeds down from the sky which managed to sprout in spite of the sandy soil. Either way, the bushes are now an overgrown warren, occupied by sparrows and rabbits and evil-tempered raccoons.

Gwen has to do this, go past the bushes and continue on. She refuses to be the kind of girl who gets scared off easily, whose opinion echoes her boyfriend’s, who can’t stand up for herself. She’ll be damned if she ends up like her mother, ready to do anything, even lie, for a man. All the same, Gwen is shivering as she walks up to the house. She doesn’t have to look back to know that Hank is watching her. She concentrates, trying to stop her heart from beating so fast.

As she gets closer she notices scattered glass, the remnants of windows broken by boys from town. The porch steps sag, but Gwen goes up them anyway. She looks through the window nearest the door, but it’s difficult to see inside. She can make out a table and chairs, some blankets on the floor, and a little potbellied coal stove. It looks like a place where nobody lives, but he’s in there. Gwen can feel his presence. He’s scared, like those sparrows in the bushes who sense Gwen’s proximity. He’s got his eyes shut tight, and he’s praying that whoever’s out there will go away, which is exactly what Gwen does. But before she leaves, she reaches into her pocket. She wants him to have something, and the old compass she meant to give Hank is all she has. She places it on the threshold, then pushes the door open, only a little, but enough to smell the mildew and dust from inside.

Heading back to Hank is tougher going. The tide is coming in fast now; before long, Gwen’s boots will be soaked. The leather will be ruined and she may have to throw them away, and yet she takes the time to look behind her. Unless she is mistaken, the compass is no longer on the front porch, and so she feels free to run the rest of the way; she can run until she reaches Hank at last.

14

Everyone saw March and Hollis together on Halloween night. They’re common knowledge now, discussed in the deli aisle of the Red Apple market and in the reading room at the library. They were sitting beside each other all through their dinner at Dimitri’s, not across from one another like normal, civilized people. The waitress over there, Regina Gordon, doesn’t like to tell tales, but honestly, they couldn’t keep their hands to themselves. They were practically doing it right there at the table, and several customers noticed when he reached his hand under her sweater. Why they had bothered to go out to dinner at all was a mystery to Regina, since it was clear all they wanted was each other.

Ed Milton is the one who finally informs Susanna Justice of her friend’s affair. He tells Susie right after they make love, at her place, a cottage so small he can talk to her from bed while she fixes them hot fudge sundaes. Susie’s dogs, Chester, the golden Lab, and Duffy, the black one, watch her every move, drooling onto her bare feet.

“Bullshit,” Susie says when he tells her about Hollis and March. “I’d be the first to know.”

“Well, you’re probably the three hundredth to know,” Ed informs her. He’s a big, good-looking man who moved up here from New York City, and his only complaint about small-town life is that there isn’t a decent bagel or a good cup of cappuccino to be found. He misses his daughter, an ill-tempered twelve-year-old, who comes up from New York for one weekend a month, legal holidays, and all of July. Ed has great blue eyes, and he cries at sad movies-God, even Susie’s dogs are wild about him. If she let herself, Susie could get involved with him. And this is the reason she’s ready to argue whenever she has a chance-to ward off anything deeper than what they already have.

“You know what I’m going to do?” Susie says, half in jest. “I’ll call them both and get the real story.”

Ed gets out of bed and stands between Susie and the phone. He’s one of the few men Susie has known who look better without clothes than with them.

“Stay out of it,” Ed says. “That guy is trouble.”

The hot fudge is ready, but Susie doesn’t bother with it, even though the ice cream she’s scooped has started to melt. “You sound like you know something.”

“I’ve heard rumors, that’s all.” Already, he’s starting to back off. This often happens when Susie is reporting on local issues, whenever a source realizes he’s said too much. “It’s your friend’s business, not yours,” Ed adds. “Besides”-he really did have a great smile-“love is strange.”

Susie has always wondered where Hollis was during those years he was away, but nobody else has ever seemed interested. Out making money, people usually joked. Or, I don’t know, but when you find out tell me-I’d like to be as rich as that bastard.

Susie finds herself thinking about Hollis all that day, and into the next. She’s got him so much on the brain, in spite of how she dislikes him, that she ignores her daily chores to focus on him instead. He’s like some terrible puzzle, made up of equal parts flattery and contempt, and she’s still trying to figure what bothers her most about him-the way he’s manipulated the town fathers, with his wisely placed donations that have allowed him to buy up and redistrict most of Main Street, or the way he’s maneuvered March back into his life-when she pulls up to her parents’ house the following evening. It’s a Wednesday, the night when Louise Justice roasts her famous rosemary chicken. Susie kisses her father hello, then goes into the kitchen, to watch her mother cook. She steals bits and pieces from the salad on the counter, then gets herself a cold beer.

“Hear any good gossip lately?” she asks her mother.

Louise has begun to fix plates of chicken and rice. “What are you after?” she asks drolly. “A good murder? Financial ruin?”

“Love,” Susie says. “Or maybe it’s more like insanity. I’ve been hearing all sorts of things about March.”

Louise Justice spoons out the snap beans. When she’s upset her hands always shake slightly, as they do now. “Tell March she’s making a mistake,” Louise says. “He’s not worth it.”

“Geez,” Susie exclaims. “Did everyone in town know about this before I did?”

“Maybe you didn’t want to know.”

This statement from her mother brings Susie up short. Louise is right, of course. It’s simply that Susie had no idea that her mother could be so insightful.

“You seem extremely sure that March is making a mistake,” Susie says now.

They’ve brought the plates over to the table; any minute the Judge will come in from his study.

“I am.”

Again, Susie is surprised, this time by her mother’s certainty.

“For one thing,” Louise says, “he killed Belinda.”

“What?” Susie says. She tilts her head to search her mother’s expression so quickly she can feel the vertebrae in her neck pop.

Louise has gone to get a glass of club soda for the Judge, which he always takes with a slice of lemon. Susie follows on her heels.

“Do you have any proof of that?” Susie’s adrenaline is going like crazy. She is a reporter, after all, even if it’s only for The Bugle.

“If I had the proof, don’t you think I would have gone to the police?” Louise pours a glass of club soda for Susie as well. A good thing because Susie’s mouth is now parched; as dry as dust. “But I don’t need proof. I know. He did it.”

Louise’s hands are shaking badly as she returns the club soda to the refrigerator, but thankfully Susie doesn’t see. Louise has always kept her suspicions to herself, which hasn’t been easy, and which, she now realizes, was a mistake. People used to do more of that-look the other way-and Louise is as guilty as anyone else. The last time she saw Belinda was almost twelve years ago, only a few months before she died. They were both on the board of the Library Association back then, and there had been a meeting to discuss the coming year’s cultural series. It was late when the meeting finally ended-Harriet Laughton had chosen to be difficult, insisting that her son, a rather boring botanist, be asked to lecture-and people were hurrying to get home. Louise was on her way to her parked car, when she noticed Belinda headed for her truck. It was a bitter, windy night, and the shutters which framed the library windows were banging against the bricks. Belinda was carrying an armful of papers and proposals, since she was then the association secretary.

“What a meeting,” Louise said as she approached Belinda from what must have been her blind side.

Belinda was so startled that she dropped her pile of papers.

“I’m so sorry,” Louise had said.

“It’s nothing.” Belinda was always polite; she’d been carefully trained by her mother, Annabeth. Why, you could probably wake her in the middle of the night and she would say please and thank you. “I got spooked.” Belinda smiled gamely.

“Well, it’s that kind of night,” Louise had granted.

They’d both crouched down to gather the notes and proposals and that was when Belinda’s sweater was pushed up above her forearm. She quickly tugged her sleeve back down, but it was too late. Louise had seen the line of bruises.

“I need iron tablets,” Belinda had declared. “Anemia’s the problem.”

Once they’d gathered the papers, they both stood up. Louise remembers the chill she felt down her spine. Something is not right, she was thinking. She recalled seeing other bruises; although Belinda had the sort of pale, freckled skin which was susceptible to chafing and injury, there were too many instances when she’d been hurt. At a meeting the month before, Louise had noticed a mark in the shape of a butterfly on Belinda’s cheek. The little boy, Cooper, had hit her with a toy truck, by accident, or at least that had been the explanation. When she sprained her wrist, and Harriet Laughton asked how it had happened, Belinda said her horse had bumped against her, and all that summer her wrist continued to pain her as she took the minutes for the association’s meeting. Belinda had taken to wearing long-sleeved shirts in August; she had stopped looking her friends in the eye. All at once, in that parking lot, Louise was certain that she knew what the problem was, and what it had been all along. It’s him.

“Well,” Susie Justice informs Louise after hearing this story. “You have no proof whatsoever. Maybe she did need iron. Maybe she really was anemic, and bruised easily.”

“All right,” Louise says, as she goes to call the Judge in for dinner. “Fine. Think what you want to think.”

“Mom,” Susie says, following after. “You can’t know for sure.”

“There was the imprint of a hand on her arm. It might not have been clear, but I saw it. Do you want me to believe she did that to herself?” They can hear the Judge’s footsteps on the stairs. “I know Hollis did that to her.”

All through the meal, that story of Belinda nags at Susie, and when she leaves, she doesn’t go straight home, but heads for Fox Hill instead. The trees wave their branches at her; the last leaves are falling, so many that Susie has to switch on her windshield wipers. Pulling up in front of her friend’s house, Susie continues to have a sinking feeling. She should probably go home and mind her own business; only a fool listens to unfounded denunciations. After all, she wouldn’t take one person’s version of an incident if she were writing an article for The Bugle. But that one person is her mother, and Susie can’t shake the feeling that Louise is right.

Susanna Justice is so deep in thought that she doesn’t hear Gwen approach until the girl knocks on her window.

“Jesus, you scared me.” Susie laughs. She swings her door open and gets out. Gwen has been walking Mrs. Dale’s little terrier. “Is it a pain for you to have to take care of Judith’s dog?” Susie asks as they head for the house.

“Sister’s okay,” Gwen says. She bends down and unclasps the terrier’s leash once they’re inside the hallway, then pats the dog on the head. “My mom’s not here.”

“Oh?” Susie says, taking off her coat anyway.

“She probably won’t be back for a while,” Gwen says. “She’s out with you.”

“Ouch,” Susie says, following Gwen into the kitchen. “Sorry.” She accepts the Diet Coke Gwen offers. “I hope I had a good time. Where was I, anyway?”

“She said you and she were going to a restaurant down in Boston. French and Cuban. You read about it in The Globe.” Gwen gets some ice for their sodas. “My mother is getting to be a really good liar. She knows I know, but she won’t admit anything. They’re really good friends. They grew up together. I’m supposed to fall for that.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” Susie says, “she hasn’t told me about Hollis either.”

“It doesn’t make me feel any better. But thanks for trying.”

Gwen goes to the sink and spills out her soda. This morning, when she went to the Farm to take Tarot out to the fields, Hollis was leaving his house. When he saw her, he stopped in the driveway and stared, his distaste perfectly evident. He hates her, that much is obvious. He wishes she didn’t exist. It’s a bother to have March be concerned about a thankless daughter, but there’s more-Gwen realized this when she came home and caught sight of herself in the mirror. She could see how much she resembles her father, in the angle of her cheekbones, her thin, long nose, the set of her jaw. Those are his blue eyes which look back at her from the glass, pale as the sky.

Gwen has been phoning her father nearly every evening. They talk about the weather, about frost and rain, daylight and current constellations. They talk about the field trips he’s been taking with his graduate students, the latest up to Oregon in search of Psoid beetles, which are decimating some orchards in that area. They discuss Gwen’s schoolwork and joke about the decrepit tomcat who lives in their garage and eats the tins of food they leave out for him, but coolly pretends not to know them. They speak of anything and everything, except what is happening to their family. They manage, however, to talk around it.

Are you happy there? her father has asked Gwen in a puzzled tone. Do you want to stay? Do you want to come home? How is your mother? he asks, always.

She lies to her father. Apparently lying must run in their blood, because it’s getting easier for Gwen as well. Don’t worry, we’ll be home soon. Definitely by Thanksgiving. That’s what she says, when in fact she knows her mother has already accepted Louise Justice’s invitation for the holiday. What should she tell him? That she wants to stay on as much as her mother does? That the boy she’s crazy about is her first cousin?

Yesterday when Gwen spoke with her father, she had an idea that he knew what was happening in spite of her lies. He listened, all right, but when she was done telling him how they’d be back before long, he asked if he should come see them. He could get reservations and be there by tomorrow, or the next day, or early the following week.

Gwen thought about the look on her mother’s face that time she saw her kissing Hollis in his parked truck. She thought about the way her mother’s eyes had closed, and how she’d arched her neck.

“I don’t think so, Dad,” she said to her father. “This might not be a good time.”

Tonight, Gwen goes to her room at ten-thirty, to bed she says, but really to phone her father, and after that, to call Hank. She leaves Susie waiting in the kitchen, and she can’t help but feel a tinge of satisfaction when she thinks how surprised her mother will be to find good old Susie parked in their house. It’s nearly midnight by the time March does get home. There’s a full moon out, and frost on all the fields. March lets herself in the door quietly, but the damned dog barks to greet her.

“Be quiet,” March tells Sister.

March’s face is flushed from the cold. They’ve stopped checking into that awful motel, and have begun to go to that funny little room off the kitchen March never even knew existed when she used to visit the Coopers. The room must have been meant for a maid or a cook; maybe it was Antsy-the cook responsible for all those delicious meals-who lived there. It’s a dingy, chilly place, but that doesn’t stop them any more than the knowledge that Hank is upstairs finishing his homework.

It has come to this: They don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves. It’s true, so March will just have to admit it. It’s always been this way when they’re together, and it’s happening all over again. Why, at this point March isn’t even certain she exists without Hollis. When she leaves their bed, in an attempt to get home and pretend to her daughter that their lives are still normal, that’s the time when she feels as if she’s entered into a dream. Everything seems gray and she’s unsteady on her own, as if a strong wind could tip her over. If she stopped to think about what she was doing, she wouldn’t believe it. Less than an hour ago, while Hank was studying for a math exam, and her daughter was left alone with a lie, March was down on her knees in that small room off the kitchen, not caring about anything but pleasing Hollis. The floor is old pine, and rotting, and now March feels tiny splinters in her palms and her knees. Hollis is a different kind of lover than he used to be. He was always sure of himself, but now he wants to be completely in control, and March doesn’t fight that. In a way, it’s a relief. March doesn’t have to think when she’s with him, or make a decision, or state a preference. She can tell, from the way he touches her, that he’s been with a lot of women, too many, but she’s the one he wants, and she always has been, and that alone makes her forget all reason.

“Stop it,” March whispers to the dog when it jumps up to greet her.

“Sneaking in?”

Susanna Justice has been standing in the hallway, watching as March gingerly removes her boots.

“Good Lord,” March says, clutching at her chest. She’s wearing jeans and a pale blue sweater Judith Dale sent as a birthday gift years ago. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

“Here’s the thing I’m upset about. Why is it that everyone in town knew about it before I did?”

“Knew what? That I was having a heart attack?” March takes her coat off and hangs it in the closet. By now, every word she says feels like a lie.

“That’s not what you’re having,” Susie says.

So, March sees that Susie still has the annoying habit of judging others.

“Whatever I’m doing is my business.”

“Don’t you realize everyone is talking about you? Your love life is the main topic of conversation in town.”

“And have you been defending me?” March says, with a bitter edge.

“I defended you to your daughter. Sort of.”

“Oh, shit.” March’s cheeks are now flushed bright pink. “I told her I was out with you.”

“Do you think she’s an idiot?”

“Do you think I am?” March says.

“Actually, yes.”

They both grin at that notion.

“I think you’re insane,” Susie hastens to add.

March’s grin widens, the big smile of someone who no longer cares about sanity.

“I’m serious,” Susie says.

“Overly so,” March agrees.

March insists on making some tea; once they’re in the kitchen, she fills the kettle, sets it on the stove, then grabs a bag of chocolate chip cookies and brings them to the table.

“You don’t know the things people say about Hollis, March.”

“Please.” March bites off half a cookie. “They’ve always disliked him.”

“I’m not talking about silly remarks about how he made his money.” It’s all so unsubstantiated Susie knows she shouldn’t say more. As a reporter she should kick herself for passing on unfounded suspicions, but this is her oldest friend. In good conscience, she can’t keep her mouth shut. “My mother thinks he may have had something to do with Belinda’s death.”

March looks at Susie, wide-eyed. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Well, I’m not. She told me so at dinner.”

“It’s ridiculous. Does she have any proof? Did the police ever suspect Belinda’s death was anything but normal?”

“My mom saw bruises on her.”

“Come on. And for all these years your mother never said anything? And what if she did see a bruise? For all we know, Belinda could have had a boyfriend on the side who beat her.”

“So you think she might have been beaten?”

“I think people hate Hollis-your mother included-just because he won’t put up with their bullshit. Can you understand why he’s so suspicious of everyone?”

Susie bites into a cookie. Louise Justice doesn’t usually make false accusations, and Susie still feels something grating at her. “I’m worried,” she says.

“You’re always worried.”

“I still wish you would have told me,” Susie says.

“Well, I would’ve.” March grins. “But I thought you’d disapprove.”

“Who, me?”

“Yes, you.”

They both laugh. No one, after all, could disapprove more.

“Stop worrying about me,” March says. “You don’t have to.”

A friend is someone you tell the truth to, but Susie stops herself from doing that because the truth is, she’s not going to quit worrying.

“I wish I could be happy for you,” Susie says later, after they’ve finished their tea, along with the entire bag of cookies.

“Try to be,” March says, as she walks Susie to the door, then out to the porch.

March throws her arms around her old friend, and they stand there for a while, even though the weather has taken a turn and is much colder than had been predicted. All along the stone fences, the bittersweet berries have become orange. People will soon be covering their beds with their heaviest quilts, their warmest blankets. Cats won’t be forced out for the night, and those people in town who take their dogs for a late walk will see their breath form into clouds. Susie Justice will have to clear the frost off her windshield with the palm of her hand before she gets into her truck. As she drives away, she’ll roll down her window. She’ll bite her tongue and say no more; she’ll simply wave to March, who’s out there on the porch, dressed only in her jeans and her sweater, with no coat and no gloves and no protection from the cold.

15

Richard Cooper arrived today, in spite of a storm that was rattling up and down the East Coast. Ken Helm picked him up at Logan, and later that evening, at the bar of the Lyon Cafe, Ken tells people he would have recognized Richard anywhere. Sure, Richard’s not a kid anymore, but he looks the same anyway. He’s tall and thin, the way all the Coopers were, and he’s just as distracted as ever, although he can certainly tell a good joke, Ken Helm will attest to that. Richard Cooper’s got thousands of bug jokes he’s picked up at entomology conferences. He’s got a Why did the beetle cross the road? series which cracks up his students completely, although right now he tends to favor tick jokes. What’s the difference between a tick and a lawyer? he asked Ken Helm as they were driving up on I-95. It’s one he heard at a conference in Spokane last winter. The tick drops off after it’s sucked your blood.

Richard’s students appreciate him for more than his jokes. They respect him for all those aspects of his personality which most annoy March. He gets lost in what he does and can discuss a single topic, a variety of fungus-inhabiting Tenebrionidae, for instance, for hours. He’s too kindhearted, and doesn’t stand up for himself. As a graduate student, several discoveries he made in the field were claimed by his adviser, but Richard never cared about such things as who gets credit-it’s the discovery that matters to him. It’s doing the right thing. When he believes in something, he won’t back down. He’s tenacious as hell when he has to be, not unlike the trout-stream beetle, which will cling to anything, defying icy streams and swift currents in order to get where it is convinced it must go.

This clarity, this single-mindedness of purpose, is the reason why Belinda inherited Guardian Farm and Richard was left with nothing. His father was trying to teach him a lesson about obedience, and before Mr. Cooper could reverse his rash decision to disinherit his son both he and Richard’s mother were killed at the turn onto Route 22. For all these years he’s been away, Richard has only come back for funerals. His parents. His sister. His sister’s only child. Now they have laid Judith Dale to rest in the same cemetery, and Richard plans to pay his respects at the grave site. But he doesn’t have long to do so. It’s late Friday afternoon when he arrives, and he has to present a lecture to his graduate seminar on Monday morning. He hasn’t asked his neighbors to feed the stray cat living in his garage or bring in his mail. He has his return ticket for the noon plane on Sunday, and he’s made reservations for March and Gwen as well. Just in case.

If luck is on his side, they’ll all be out of here in less than forty-eight hours. Yes, it’s true, he believes in fate. He’s a scientist who happens to be convinced of the reality of destiny. His colleagues might mock this philosophy, but then let them explain why one sand beetle wanders into a spider’s web while another passes by, unharmed. Love, it now seems, is not what Richard thought it would be. It’s thicker and heavier and much more complicated than he would ever have imagined. He knows that his wife has been with another man, a man he happens to despise and holds responsible for his sister’s death-and yet here he is, chatting with Ken Helm, insisting that Ken take the forty bucks he’s offering for fetching him from the airport. Love has made him surprise himself. He would never have believed it possible, but it’s turned out that he is a man who can walk up to a closed door on a murky November day, wearing his one good suit, and knock without hesitation, waiting while the rain comes down around him, even though he’s not wanted. He can do this and not think twice, just the way he can spend hours watching a wounded cedar beetle and weep over its rare beauty, as well as its agony.

Richard is certain that other species fall in love-primates, of course, and canines-but he has wondered about his beetles. There are people who would surely get a chuckle out of the mere suggestion, but in Richard’s opinion it’s pure vanity to presume that love exists only on our terms. A red leaf may be the universe for the tortoise beetle or the ladybird. A single touch the ecstasy of a lifetime. And so, here he is, in love despite everything. It is he, stupider than any beetle, and far more obstinate, who has traveled three thousand miles, even though he fully expects to be turned away.

Gwen answers the door, and as soon as she sees Richard she throws her arms around him.

“Daddy,” she cries, although he doesn’t remember her calling him this before-it was Pop, he thinks, or Pa.

Gwen pulls Richard into the hallway, where a little white terrier jumps on his legs.

“Who is this?” Richard asks. He puts down his overnight case, then crouches to pet the dog.

“It’s Sister.” Gwen cannot believe how glad she is to see her father. He seems so real. So him. “She belonged to Mrs. Dale.”

“Well, Sister,” Richard says. The dog has politely sat down before him, and now tilts its head to listen when he speaks. “How do you do?”

They do like hell, if the truth be known. All of a sudden, Gwen is the one in charge of everything, like it or not. Her mother once saw to all of the chores, but no longer. March can’t seem to deal with the trivial details of domestic life, they seem beyond her somehow, small but impossible tasks. If Gwen doesn’t do her own laundry, she has no clothes. If she doesn’t go food shopping or make the beds, no one else will. Once, while hurrying through the village on her way to meet her friend Chris, Gwen passed by some woman who had her collar turned up and a dreamy look on her face, and it wasn’t until Gwen and Chris had ordered french fries and Cokes at the Bluebird Coffee Shop that she realized the woman she’d walked past was her mother.

Gwen is now responsible for herself in some deep, irrevocable way. There is no one to tell her what to do; for all intents and purposes, she’s on her own. And although this is exactly what she once thought she wanted, her situation now brings her to tears.

“What’s wrong?” her father asks, but how can she tell him?

“I’m fine,” Gwen insists. “I’m just glad to see you.”

“You look wonderful,” Richard tells his daughter. Although seeing her so grown-up and so pretty without all that makeup makes him realize how much a person can change in a short period of time. Wasn’t it only weeks ago that he worried constantly? That he feared she would return home with some new part of her body pierced and some new drug in her backpack?

Richard hangs his wet raincoat in the closet. His shoes are soaked, as are the cuffs of his slacks, but he will simply have to do. He can’t make himself any more presentable before seeing March.

“Well?” he says when he turns back to Gwen.

“Well, what?” Gwen asks.

“Your mother. I’d like to talk to her.”

I don’t believe you would, Gwen thinks. To her father, however, she suggests that her mother’s schedule is erratic.

“Then let’s fix some coffee so it’s ready when she gets here,” Richard suggests.

The rain outside has become sleet, which hits against the window as though stones were being tossed from above. Coffee on a night like this isn’t a bad idea. Richard has to duck to pass through the doorway into the kitchen. He’d forgotten how different the scale of these old New England houses can be; how wide the pine floorboards, how low the ceilings, how tilted the rooms from years of settling.

“Coffeepot?” Richard asks.

He used to cook when he first came calling on March. He and Alan’s wife, Julie, had a great time of it, she as his amicable assistant, he willing to try any new recipe. Once they fixed pasta with a maple syrup topping; another time they tried something called bootheel pie, made out of turnips and celery and onions.

“Filters?” he asks.

Gwen sits on a stool, her legs pulled up. She has spent this afternoon with Hank, walking Tarot all the way into the village and then back again. When Hank kissed her, the horse tried his best to come between them.

“Forget it, buddy boy,” Hank teased. “She’s mine.”

Just for that, Gwen kissed the old racehorse on his soft nose. His breath was surprisingly sweet, like new hay.

Hank had let out a groan. “I can’t believe you did that.”

“Would you ever lie to me?” Gwen had asked then.

“What are the circumstances? Is it that I know you’re kissing a horse who has terrible breath? Or is it that I know there’s going to be a nuclear war and we have only twelve hours to live, and I have to decide whether to ruin the last twelve hours of your life with fear, or let you enjoy the little time you have left?”

“Nuclear war.”

Gwen had climbed onto the stone wall, then had pulled herself onto Tarot’s back, where she stretched out, as though the horse were an extremely tall and comfortable couch.

“I’d tell you.” Hank had grabbed the lead and they’d begun a slow walk back to the Farm. He didn’t even have to consider; that’s what impressed Gwen most. “What about you?” Hank had asked. “Would you tell the truth?”

Tarot had stumbled then, and Gwen had been forced to hang on to his mane: then she’d jumped off, so that Hank could lift Tarot’s rear left leg and see to the problem. There was a tiny, sharp rock wedged into the frog of the horse’s hoof, which Hank removed with a penknife. Gwen never did get to answer. Just as well, since she hadn’t known what to say at the time. But now, in this kitchen, watching her father crouch down to search the cabinets under the counters for coffee filters, it has all become quite clear. It’s not the lie that’s the problem: it’s the distance the lie forges between you.

“Daddy, don’t bother with the coffee.” This is what Gwen has to say, even when she sees the look on her father’s face. “She won’t be back until late. She never is.” Gwen swallows; but it doesn’t help. Words such as these always hurt when you say them. “She’s with him every night. She may not come home at all.”

Richard blinks, as if by doing so he could bring into focus a vision other than the one Gwen is offering.

“I’m sorry,” Gwen says. She feels as though everything is her fault. She’s only fifteen, why does she have to feel so damned responsible? She can’t even tell her father about Hank, for fear he’ll disapprove. When her father leaves the room, to make a fire in the fireplace, Gwen decides to finish the coffee he started, and she brings him a cup, with a little milk and a little more sugar, the way he likes it.

Richard gratefully accepts the coffee, and for one delightful instant he has the sense of being fortunate. She is a good girl, he sees that. Gwen pulls up a stool for herself beside the easy chair where he’s settled. She’s a good person.

Sister sits by the window and barks, and Richard finds himself wondering if Gwen is wrong about March, if perhaps that’s her at the door now. The visitor, however, is only a rabbit, one who brazenly sits on the porch in order to escape the bad weather.

“We never had rabbits around here when I was growing up,” Richard tells his daughter. “There were too many foxes for that. If you walked through the woods at night, you’d see them. Especially at dusk. At first you’d think you were imagining footsteps.”

Sister has forsaken the door and come to join them, stretching out on the braided rug.

“Everything would be gray, even the horizon. And then you’d see it, all at once.”

“A fox.” Gwen smiles.

Richard nods. “Once in a while, in the winter, after a snow, you’d come upon a dozen or more of them, and then you’d know something was happening that no human could understand, or even recognize. They call it a foxes’ circle, a meeting held as if there were a board of directors of the woods. I think about the foxes’ circle when I do fieldwork. There’s world upon world out there, with different rules.”

“I wonder why they all disappeared.”

“They found a single rabid specimen one season and that was the end of foxes on this hill.”

It was the year when Hollis left town. Richard recalls that each time he came to call on March, he’d hear gunfire in the woods. He was grateful to Hollis back then; in leaving, Hollis had given Richard an opportunity he’d never guessed he would have. Funny the things you remember. Richard definitely remembers that March would smile whenever she opened the door and saw him. He knows he didn’t imagine that.

“When I was really little,” he says now, “maybe five or so, my sister found an orphaned fox. She kept the kit in her bedroom, secretly of course, because my mother would have had an outright conniption and made us all submit to a series of rabies shots if she ever caught sight of the thing. My sister kept an opossum one year, and then there was a crow with a broken wing that I found-she took care of that crow for months. My mother went crazy when she discovered wild animals had been in the house, but my sister was surprisingly strong-willed.”

“Belinda.”

“That’s right.” Richard regrets not telling Gwen more about his family, but for the longest time his personal history seemed extremely distant. Now, it’s back. All he has to do is listen and he can hear gunfire in the woods. He can see the way the crumbs fell down on the ground whenever his sister reached for the stale bread she kept in her coat pockets, ready should she happen to discover some homeless or injured creature while walking in the woods. This is what Richard thought when she wrote to tell him she had married Hollis. Only this time the creature she’d chosen to care for was much more dangerous than an opossum or a crow or a fox.

“When the kit was nearly full grown, Belinda let it into the woods. But it kept coming back. You’d walk out the door, and there it would be. Or maybe it wasn’t a fox at all.” Richard places his coffee cup on the table and pets Sister’s head. “Maybe it was one of those dreadful red dogs people say were bred from foxes.”

“There are still some of those at Guardian Farm,” Gwen says.

“Yes.” Richard leans his head back against the soft fabric of the easy chair. He thinks this type of stuff is called chintz, but he doesn’t know for sure. “I’m not surprised. There were always dogs hanging around, begging. My sister always set out food for them. She was much too kindhearted.”

Richard has only begun to realize how tired he is, in spite of the coffee. He has a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, which makes him think he should call Ken Helm and go back to the airport right now, but he doesn’t. Instead, he falls asleep right there, in the chair. Gwen covers him with a blanket Judith Dale bought on a trip to Ireland taken with the Friends of the Library one summer. It pains Gwen to see her father sleeping in a chair, but what can she do? Shake him to consciousness? Tell him to flee? Don’t hurt yourself, is what you say to a child, not a parent, and a man like Richard Cooper is not prone to take other people’s advice, not once he’s made up his mind.

There’s a draft in the living room, and Sister curls up beside Richard’s feet. On the mantel, the old clock March’s father bought in Boston keeps time. The sleet continues until the roads are slick with ice and fallen leaves. It’s so bad that by the time the first pale light of morning begins to break through the clouds, March has to inch along on the back road in the old Toyota. She is staying with Hollis later and later; this time, as she was leaving, he pulled her back to him. Susie thinks he’s so evil, but he was concerned about March driving in such bad weather. People think they know him, but they don’t. They don’t know that he cries in his sleep, or that he needs to be comforted from the worst of his dreams, over and over again.

When March does finally get home, she has to carefully make her way up the frozen path, and hold on to the railing so as not to slip and break her neck on her way to the front door. She’s not taken a coat. She’s so hot these days; she’s burning up. All she’s wearing are jeans and a borrowed wool sweater of Hollis’s. She hasn’t bothered with underwear either; she’s much too overheated for even the flimsiest silk. Inside, the house feels stuffy and close; there’s the scent of coffee and of wet dog. There’s something else too, a faint odor of regret which is sifting over the floorboards and the rugs.

As soon as she walks into the room, she sees that the man she’s spent the last eighteen years with has come for her, and he appears exhausted by the effort. Richard looks so uncomfortable, folded up in that chair, in his best suit, which is now rumpled. The dog rouses and shakes itself from sleep, but Richard doesn’t hear the clink of its collar. He doesn’t hear March come closer, and crouch beside him. He’s dreaming about her though, and in his dream she is surrounded by falling leaves, each one a brilliant yellow, as if fashioned from pure gold.

Richard doesn’t wake until March takes his hand. As soon as he opens his eyes and looks at her face, he knows it’s over. She pities him, that’s what he sees, and pity is not what he wants.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to fly to San Francisco with me on Sunday?” Richard laughs. He was supposed to keep this idea to himself until they’d spoken at length, but obviously he can’t do that.

In spite of herself, March laughs. He never did like small talk.

“Should I take that as a yes?” Richard asks.

“It’s not that I don’t love you,” March says.

Richard cannot help but wonder how many times this phrase has been spoken, and how many people who’ve recited these words have believed they were being kind. What makes a person love another? That’s what Richard wonders, as March tells him that she’ll be staying on, and that she never meant to hurt him. Are March’s dark eyes the element that always gets to him? Is it the way her beautiful mouth twists to one side when she smiles?

Richard goes upstairs to grab a few hours of sleep in March’s bed. When he wakes, the bright sunshine which blasts through the ice-covered windows is blinding. He gets his suit, having draped his trousers and jacket over a chair so he will appear presentable when he goes to the cemetery. He wants to look as though nothing is wrong when he goes downstairs and kisses his daughter good morning, when he speaks cordially to March and asks if he can use the Toyota in her driveway to run his errands. March has been crying; her face is all puffy and her eyes are red. Looking at her, knowing that she’s been with Hollis and will continue to be with him, brings Richard immense sadness.

What would another man do? Carry her off, make demands, beat her until she gave in to him, stand there and cry? Richard Cooper is the same man he was before this happened to him. He’s the man who leaves a check on the kitchen counter because he worries that his wife will run out of cash. He’s the man who brings flowers to the graves of his loved ones, and says a silent prayer for each one. It’s the same Richard Cooper who trades stories with Jimmy Parrish about racehorses who’ve been dead a quarter of a century or more over lunch at the Lyon Cafe, who calls for another round of beers and some chili-cheese fries, then makes certain he grabs the check before Jimmy can reach into his pocket for his own leather wallet. He’s the man who drives to Guardian Farm late in the day and parks in the driveway where he has a good view of the house where he grew up, despite the uncertain November light.

When he sees Hollis slam through the front door, on his way to collect bills and circulars from a mailbox set out where Richard’s mother’s roses used to grow, Richard doesn’t step on the gas and careen through the fence to run his rival down. Instead, he watches as some Canada geese pass by, high overhead. In the pastures there are still a few red dragonflies, the kind Richard used to collect when he was a boy. He used to keep them in a jelly jar, until he realized that whenever he caught one he damaged its wings, which marked it for death. That’s what he thinks about now as he watches Hollis, who has lifted one hand to shade his eyes against the sun as he tries to figure out who’s there, parked in March’s car. By the time Hollis does understand who it is in his driveway, Richard will have already made a U-turn. There’s no point in staying any longer. He’ll leave a note for Gwen if she’s not at the house when he stops to drop off this car, then call Ken Helm for a ride. He intends to trade in his tickets for a plane that leaves tonight. He’d just as soon sleep somewhere in midair, high above Chicago or soaring over the Rockies, as he would in someone’s easy chair.

Gwen is in the barn when the Toyota makes that U-turn. She knows that her father will be gone before she gets back to Fox Hill. Standing there. watching him, she feels like crying. Maybe she should have insisted on going on his errands with him; maybe she should have tried to talk her mother into leaving. Gwen now considers herself to be a guilty party. She didn’t say, I want to go back with you. She didn’t take his side. Difficult as it is to admit, she wants to be here, saddling Tarot, meeting Hank later in the day at the library, where’s he’s working on his senior thesis. Traitor that she is, she doesn’t run after her father. She lets Tarot eat sugar from her hand while waiting for Hollis to go back inside the house. That’s one thing she’ll do to honor her father-she’ll avoid Hollis at all costs. When Hollis has finally slammed the door shut behind him, Gwen leads the horse out of the barn. She’d planned to walk him to the sunniest pasture, where the ice has already melted, but seeing her father makes her want to go miles away.

The footing is too slippery for riding, but Gwen doesn’t care. She’s completely unschooled and does everything wrong, but it doesn’t matter with a horse like Tarot. He makes his way over the ice, then onto the packed dirt in the driveway. Gwen feels sure enough of him to give him his head, and let him take charge of matters. When he goes into the woods, right before the devil’s corner, Gwen doesn’t protest. Tarot walks quickly over brambles and fallen leaves; when they pass under low branches, Gwen ducks and rests her face against his neck. She can feel his blood, just beneath his skin; when he breathes, the air fills with smoke. He’s like a dragon, ancient and fearless. He doesn’t spook at anything, not when pheasants fly out of the bushes, not when they come upon a deer, drinking from an icy stream.

Gwen can only guess what they must have done to this horse to make him mean enough to kill two men. He was a machine, a winning machine. Hay in, shit out, and run like hell. Run so fast they can never catch you. She has seen marks in Tarot’s flesh. He’s been beaten, long ago, in another life that will always be a mystery. History is personal, Gwen understands that now. All you are seeing is what’s before you, the rest is guesswork. Still, she believes that he was beaten with a chain, at least once. There’s a circular indentation on his flank, and each time she runs her hand over that wound, Tarot throws his head back in a move so serious, so potentially killing, that Gwen’s respect for him is renewed.

Now, as he jumps a fallen tree, Gwen holds on for dear life. She tells herself riding Tarot isn’t any more dangerous than being on the back of Josh Krauss’s out-of-control Honda roaring down the El Camino at midnight. All the same, she closes her eyes when they come to the thickest part of the woods, and when she opens them again, the Marshes are before her, all gold and brown. Herons rise from the grass. Ice covers the inlets. They’re trotting through frozen mud now, over hermit crabs and minnows. Maybe it’s the old apple tree which calls to the horse, or maybe it’s the wild berries; either way, Tarot has come to graze in the Coward’s front yard.

“Not here,” Gwen tells the horse. “Let’s go.”

When Tarot refuses to move, Gwen kicks him, but she hasn’t the heart to do anything more than tap, and Tarot doesn’t even notice her boots against his flanks. He’s come upon a pile of frozen apples, and Gwen had better settle down, since he’s not leaving anytime soon.

The Coward sees the girl as she slips off the horse, and for a moment, he thinks it’s Belinda out there, who used to ride this same horse when she came to visit him. Other people brought food and clothes-Judith Dale, of course, and Louise Justice occasionally-but Belinda brought him what he truly yearned for. Photographs of his son. School papers. Spelling tests. Paintings of boats and of starry nights. The first tooth his boy lost, which the Coward still keeps in a saltshaker beneath his bed. Locks of pale hair, retrieved from the kitchen floor after a haircut.

Belinda used to sit on his porch and cry sometimes; once, she spent the night, curled up on a blanket on his floor. She had hair the color of roses, and on the night when she stayed with him her lip was split open; it hurt too much for her to drink the water the Coward offered her. Although he knows that Belinda died years ago, she seems to have reappeared beneath his apple tree. The Coward pulls on his boots and hurries outside. He’s ready to greet Belinda with a hug, but when she turns around he sees it’s only the girl who was here before, the one who left him the old compass he was given on his twelfth birthday, when there was still hope for him.

“I’m not trespassing,” Gwen says quickly. Maybe she’s been crying about her father and maybe she hasn’t been. This bright sunlight could bring tears to anyone’s eyes. “It’s this horse. He loves apples.”

“All right,” the Coward says in a surprisingly mild voice. Now he sees, there are indeed tears on this girl’s cheeks. “Let him eat.”

The Coward sits on the rickety front steps of his porch. The ice makes everything in the distance shine like diamonds. The Coward blinks in the light. He has always believed that if vodka looked like anything, it would look like ice. Gin, on the other hand, was pure, clean snow.

“You don’t know me.” the girl says.

She has come to sit beside him on the steps, which cannot be a pleasant experience, the Coward is certain, since he can’t remember the last time he bathed. But in fact, his odor is no more offensive than marsh grass or old apples, slightly vinegary.

“I’m Gwen,” the girl says. “My father is Richard Cooper. My mother is March.”

The Coward appraises her. His niece, if what she’s saying is true. Well, she does have the Cooper nose, straight and narrow, and those pale blue eyes.

“I don’t take after my mother, if that’s what you’re thinking. But you’re my uncle all the same.”

“For all the good it will do you,” the Coward says.

Gwen laughs. “Screwed-up family.”

“You have no idea,” the Coward tells her.

Gwen rests her chin on her hand and watches Tarot munch apples. It’s actually beautiful out here, if you don’t mind the isolation. If loneliness isn’t a factor. Before she can say another word, the Coward has risen from the steps and is already heading for his house. He can’t take too much of people. Five minutes is just about tops.

“Where are you going?” Gwen asks.

He doesn’t want to think about his family. That’s sorrow, plain and simple, and besides, he’s got better things to do.

“I’m going inside,” he tells the girl.

“To drink?” The horse has come near, so Gwen stands and reaches for the reins. “That’s what you do, right? It’s like your occupation or something, isn’t it? Being a drunk?”

“Drunkard,” the Coward corrects.

He squints against the glare of the diamonds in the Marshes. If he wants to, he can go inside and pretend there’s no one beneath his apple tree.

“In case you’re interested, your son doesn’t drink at all. He won’t even have a beer. Even if everyone else is completely wasted, he won’t touch the stuff.”

The Coward has reached his front door, but he doesn’t go inside.

“You’d be proud of him,” Gwen says.

Although the Coward’s back is toward her, she knows he’s listening.

“If you ever took the trouble to know him.”

When the Coward turns to face this girl, she has her hands on her hips. Clearly, she’s not the sort to back down from things. If she loves you, she’ll fight for you, and that’s what she appears to be doing right now.

“What makes you think I have a choice on that topic?” The Coward’s voice sounds harsh.

“Because you do,” Gwen says. “You just do.”

The Coward watches as she leads the horse out of his yard, around the garden gate, then into the Marshes, where the ice has begun to melt in the thin afternoon sunlight. There’s something hot in the center of the Coward’s chest, so he sits back down on his porch. The floorboards are loose; beneath them is a den of raccoons. When the Coward walks across these marshes, to Route 22, and the liquor store beyond, that is his choice. In all these years, he has not stopped to think other choices were his to make as well.

Do what you want, do what you will, do what you have to, do what you think you cannot.

He feels sick inside. If he’s having a stroke, then it’s a suitable penance for all the ruin he’s brought upon his tired body. If it’s a broken heart, he deserves that too. Tonight will be so chilly he’ll have to burn extra wood in his old stove, and the smoke will billow out into the Marshes like a flock of blackbirds. He’ll drink ice and snow, he’ll drink himself senseless, and he’ll be surprised to discover that when he wakes the next day, on his hard, cold floor, he’ll still hear that girl’s words ringing in his ears.