Here On Earth

16

How much snow will fall this winter? That’s what people want to know. How much wood should be stored beside the front porch? How much cash allotted to the Snow Shovelers’ Fund, which pays local boys to excavate driveways and sidewalks for the town’s senior citizens? Judgment is, there’s a long, hard season in store, at least among those who frequent the Lyon Cafe, and this theory has been seconded by the patrons of the reading room at the library as well. Just see how high the hornets have built their nests, always a sign of deep snow to come. Sheep and horses have especially thick coats for November. Squirrels are still storing chestnuts. Warblers have already migrated south, moving through town much earlier than usual, forsaking their nests in the ivy.

Ken Helm has a mountain of firewood outside his small house. He’s been chopping wood all summer and throughout the fall. His wife and two sons don’t even notice the sound anymore, but they hear it in their dreams; a rhythmic hewing that echoes whenever they close their eyes. Susanna Justice drives out to order wood for the season, for her parents and for herself, as she does every year. It doesn’t take much to heat Susie’s little cottage, but she’s heard this winter’s going to be a killer.

“The Judge always gets his delivery first,” Ken tells Susie after she’s ordered two cords and is making out the check. “My favorite customer.”

Susie smiles, but her mind is elsewhere. She’s a bulldog all right; she can’t let go, especially when she’s got the sense that she’s onto something. Yesterday she went into Boston to speak with the oncologist at Children’s Hospital who was in charge of Belinda and Hollis’s son, Cooper. Cooper was diagnosed with leukemia when he was four, and although the doctor refused to let Susie see the boy’s records, he insisted nothing was out of the ordinary. Nothing out of the ordinary to get a death sentence for your four-year-old. Nothing out of the ordinary to be married to a man as distant and mean as Hollis, to hold your little boy in your arms all the way home from Boston after the doctor informs you of a diagnosis as cruel as that.

“Is Hollis still letting you cull through his woods?” she asks when she hands Ken Helm his check.

“I pay him good money for it,” Ken says, defensively, as if she’d accused him of dealing with the devil. “I wouldn’t take anything from him for free. I pay for the use of his land, but that doesn’t mean I like him.”

As soon as Susie hears that twist in Ken’s voice, she knows he wants to tell her something. When she began working at The Bugle, it took a while before she understood that just because people don’t answer directly doesn’t mean they won’t eventually tell all. Ken will talk, all right, if Susie asks the right questions.

“Were you using his woods back when Belinda was alive?”

Ken Helm has been accompanying Susie to her parked truck. Now, he stops.

“I didn’t say anything about Belinda.”

“That’s true. You didn’t.” He knows something, all right.

“Is there something you wanted to ask me about her?” Ken holds his hand above his eyes to block the sun, but the result is, Susie can’t gauge his reaction.

“It’s probably nothing,” Susie admits. “I heard some talk about Belinda and Hollis. Just gossip.”

“What’d you hear? That he killed her?”

Jesus, Susie thinks. Everyone does know.

Ken stares straight ahead at the mountainous pile of wood beside his house. The line of his jaw seems unusually tight.

“That’s right,” Susie says, in an easy tone, not wanting to scare him off. “I heard he might have.”

“That’s not gossip,” Ken Helm says. “That’s a fact of life.”

Susie’s heart is racing. To calm herself, she shifts her gaze to stare at the woodpile along with Ken. It’s taller than the roof of his house. Taller than many of the trees.

“Is there some proof?” Susie says.

Ken whistles through his teeth for his dog, a golden retriever who’s strayed too close to the road which runs past.

“Anything at all?” Susie asks.

“The proof is that I know and everyone in this town who had anything to do with Belinda knows the way he treated her. She forgave him not seven but seventy-seven times. You’d see her face, and you knew. Whether or not he killed her with his bare hands doesn’t matter. He’s responsible for her death.” Ken’s dog trots over and Ken pats the retriever’s head. “Just as I’m responsible.”

Susie looks at Ken Helm, surprised at this assessment from a man she’s always known, but has never thought to talk to before. “Why would you say that?” Susie asks. “What did you have to do with her death?”

“I knew what she was going through, and I didn’t do anything.”

Susie can’t imagine that Belinda, who was extremely private and, although well liked by everyone, had no real friends, would ever confide in Ken.

“I was driving home one night, and I saw her in the road. I stopped, and she got into my truck. She said she’d hurt her arm, and I took her over to St. Bridget’s. Now, of course, they’ve got a whole section of the place named after him, but back then when I said I’d call Hollis for her, Belinda got all panicky. I mean panicky. So I waited for her, and when the doctor was through, I drove her home.” Ken’s dog has gone over to the woodpile, probably searching for mice, and Ken whistles again, more sharply this time. “Her arm was broken.”

“Did she tell you how it happened?”

“No, but after that, she came here sometimes. When she needed a ride to the hospital. I always did it, and I never said a word to anyone. Not even to my wife.”

“You’re not the only one responsible if everyone knew what was happening.”

Ken shakes his head. “One time I was asleep, and I woke up for no reason, and when I looked out the window I thought there was a ghost out there. She was wearing something white, I guess that was it. She had the kid with her that time-he was only a baby and I figure she didn’t want to leave him with Hollis. I can’t say that I blame her. Nobody wanted to confront him, but we should have. We should have gone to him.”

It is getting colder, even now, but Susie and Ken stand there, unmoving.

“ ‘If your hand or foot should cause you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to enter into life crippled or lame than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into the eternal fire.’ Matthew 18:8.” Ken Helm pauses to clear his throat. “It would have been a blessing if someone had stopped him.”

They finally head toward Susie’s parked truck. When they get there, Susie shakes Ken’s hand before she opens the door. She has never before noticed that his eyes are green.

“It’s the sun,” he says, to explain why his eyes are watering, and of course Susie nods, even though the sky is filled with clouds and the light is hazy at best.

“Don’t worry about the Judge’s delivery,” Ken says as Susie gets into her truck. “I’ll make him a nice, neat woodpile.”

On the way home, Susie stops at the Red Apple to pick up a few things-some yogurt, a box of fancy bakery-style cookies-but instead of turning left on Route 22 and going home to have lunch with her dogs, as she usually does, she turns right and drives to St. Bridget’s Hospital. Leave it be, Ed keeps telling her, but how is she supposed to do that, especially now that she has that vision of Belinda dressed in white standing beside the woodpile in Ken Helm’s yard?

Susie parks in the nurses’ lot, and props her Bugle parking sticker up against the windshield. The bad thing about living in a small town is that everyone knows your business, but it’s a good thing too, since it makes for connections which crisscross each other more often than the strands of a spider’s web. Susie has known Maude Hurley in the billing department at the hospital for ages. In fact, she dated Maude’s son, Dave, for quite a while, and remembers mostly that he was a terrific ice-skater and too perfunctory in bed. Maude, however, was a pistol, and Susie always enjoyed going to her house for Sunday dinners. Now, when she goes to the billing office, Susie brings the fancy chocolate chip cookies as an offering, but she doesn’t need to bribe Maude for information.

“Honey, everybody knew about Belinda,” Maude says.

But unfortunately, all of Belinda’s hospitalizations date to the time before admissions were computerized. Try as she might, Maude can’t call up anything on her terminal.

“That’s that,” Susie says, disappointed and starting in on the chocolate chip cookies herself.

“Not likely,” Maude says, and she leads Susie down to the basement of St. Bridget’s, to a room filled with ancient, mildewed files, suggesting that if anyone discovers her, Susie should say she’s gathering information for the hospital’s fiftieth anniversary.

Maude, Susie believes, would have made a great mother-in-law, and she gives the older woman a hug before getting down to work. It takes an hour and a half, but Susie finally finds what’s left of Belinda’s file. The file, however, covers only the last two years of Belinda’s life. The upside, if one can call it that, is that even in that relatively short period of time there were four admissions. More than average, Susie would guess, but proof of nothing. Two of the entries are illegible, but the other two-“broken mandible,” “fifteen stitches”-send chills along Susie’s spine. What, exactly, she can do with this information, she’s not sure, at least not until she notices Dr. Henderson’s name at the top of the page in the listing for the patient’s physician.

Susie eats from a container of yogurt while sitting in her parked truck; then she heads over to Main Street, where, to her surprise, Dr. Henderson agrees to see her, although he has a waiting room filled with patients.

“Are you writing an article about Belinda?” he asks when she brings up the name.

“I’m just interested.”

“In?”

“The circumstances of her death, for one.”

Susie would have guessed that Dr. Henderson, who’s known to be cool and businesslike. would insist that the circumstances of a patient’s death were privileged information, but he seems relieved to be talking about this subject. He takes off his glasses and leans back in his chair.

“Acute pneumonia,” he tells Susie. “Which, of course, is absolute bullshit.”

“Excuse me?” Susie says.

“She died because he let her die. I could have done something if someone had called me. By the time she was brought into the hospital-and then only because Judith Dale had happened to stop by and Judith had understood how desperate the circumstances were-Belinda’s fever was raging and she couldn’t breathe. She died of neglect.”

“But she’d been your patient for years, surely you must have sensed something was wrong with her situation at home before that?”

“My dear, something’s wrong in every situation if you look hard enough.”

“Well, let me ask you this. Did you feel that some of her physical ailments, not the pneumonia of course, but the broken bones, the bruises, were caused by her husband?”

“It doesn’t matter what I feel,” Dr. Henderson says in his coolest tone. “Did I see him hit her? No. Did she ever confide in me that she was abused in any way? No. She did not.”

Susie Justice can feel a pulse in the side of her throat.

“But she’s dead,” Susie says.

“That,” Dr. Henderson allows, “is the sad truth.”

That night, after Susie has told Ed Milton everything, he simply shakes his head. They’re at his place, an apartment on the High Road, and he’s cooking fettucini Alfredo, which smells even better because Susie is starving, in spite of the yogurt and the box of cookies she ate earlier in the day.

“All you have on him,” Ed says, “is that he was guilty of ignoring her.”

“Come on,” Susie says. “It’s like some secret that everybody knew, including that damned Dr. Henderson who always acts as if he was higher than God.”

“Everybody thinks. If you ask me, she killed herself.”

“How can you say that?” Susie can’t wait for dinner and has gotten a jar of olives from the fridge. She stopped at home to get her mail and bring the dogs along with her, who seem oddly comfortable here at Ed’s place. Best of all, Ed doesn’t complain when two extremely smelly and slobbery canine specimens stretch out on his couch.

“She could have phoned Dr. Henderson herself. It sounds like she wanted to die.”

“That’s horrible,” Susie says, but she is not entirely sure he’s wrong. “So what do I do now?” she asks.

Ed Milton smiles. He used to hate it when cases didn’t get solved; now he figures that some situations are simply beyond human control. “Belinda died twelve years ago, and it seems that legally Hollis had nothing to do with it. He probably smacked her around, but there are no comprehensive hospital records to back that up and no eyewitnesses. Basically, you have nothing.”

“I don’t accept that,” Susie says, which may be the moment when Ed finishes falling head over heels for her.

“You don’t have the makings for a criminal case,” Ed says. “What you have, Susie, is a moral issue, and it’s one which can’t be tried in front of your dad.”

Susie doesn’t ask Ed’s opinion about whether or not she should pass this new information on to March, who, it’s quite clear, doesn’t want to hear anything negative. This is not a new dilemma for Susanna Justice. Since that summer when she saw her father walk past the roses and knew he was in love, she has been wrestling with this puzzle: How do you tell an awful truth to someone you care for and wish to protect? She thinks about the nights when her father phoned home to say he had to work late, and the sinking feeling she had in her stomach whenever she took that message and had to report back to her mother, as if she and not the Judge were the liar.

Once, and only once, she tried to tell her mother. She was a freshman at Oberlin and home for the holidays. She was full of herself, and how much she had learned in a single semester. She was certain of everything a woman could be, all of which, of course, her mother was not. They had been wrapping presents at the dining room table, bickering over why Susie would not be allowed to move out of the dorm and into an apartment with her then boyfriend, when the argument had become heated.

“End of conversation,” Louise had finally said. “Your father will not allow it.”

“My father!” Susie had shouted. Why, he was probably with his mistress at the very moment they were wrapping his Christmas presents in gold paper. “Why should I listen to anything he has to say about morality? If you knew what he was really like, you’d walk out of here and divorce him!”

Louise Justice had gotten up and slapped Susie across the face. Louise had never hit anyone before, but she hit Susie so hard she left a mark on her cheek, making certain to silence her daughter before she could divulge anything more.

“You don’t know the first thing about love,” Louise Justice had told Susie that night. “And you certainly don’t know anything about marriage.”

This assessment is probably still true, Susie thinks as she takes off her clothes and gets into bed with Ed Milton later that night. She circles her arms around Ed and kisses him. Does she love him or not? How will she ever know? She loves the way he is in bed, she trusts his opinions, values what he thinks, yearns to see him at odd hours of the day. So what does all that add up to?

Look at the trouble love brings. Look at the mess it makes. Who knows what caused Belinda to marry Hollis-bad judgment or compassion or desire, maybe even loneliness. Who can tell why March would throw everything away for a worthless man, or why Bill Justice, the most honest man in town, would tell bold-faced lies every day of his life. There, in Ed Milton’s bed. Susanna Justice suddenly needs to know if she’s the only one so completely in the dark about such matters. Ed is honest; he’ll tell the truth. His back is to her, and the hour is late, but she asks Ed anyway. Have you ever been in love? She’s certain that he laughs when he turns to her, but in the morning she can’t quite remember if he actually said, Not before, or if, perhaps, that was only what she wanted to hear.

17

On Saturday morning, Gwen hurries to meet Hank at the coffee shop, so rushed for time that she forgets to touch the Founder’s knee for luck as she runs past the statue. Hank left a note taped to Tarot’s stall for her to find when she went to feed and groom the horse earlier, inviting her to meet him for breakfast.

He’s at a rear booth, and Gwen tosses herself into the seat across from him. “What’s the occasion?” She grins. “Is it your treat?”

“For once.” Hank hands her a menu. “He’s actually paying me to do some work, so I figured I’d take you out.”

Gwen notices then, there’s a cardboard box on the floor beside the booth. Inside are cans of paint and rollers.

“He’s fixing up the house,” Hank explains.

“Mr. Cheapskate? Hard to believe.” Gwen peruses her menu. “Ooh,” she says. “Banana-nut pancakes.”

“He wants to impress someone.”

Gwen puts her menu down. This is more than a date for breakfast. Hank has something he wants to tell her. “My mother?”

Hank nods, then orders for them both when Alison Hartwig, their waitress, comes over.

“He wants your mom to move in with him,” Hank says when the waitress moves on. “He’s planning on it.”

“She won’t.” Gwen sounds sure of herself, but she has a funny feeling in her stomach.

“I’m painting the upstairs bedroom today,” Hank says. “Linen white.”

“Fuck him,” Gwen says.

“Yeah, well,” Hank murmurs, torn between the two of them.

“I’m glad you warned me,” Gwen tells him.

Of course she can’t eat when their food is served; the idea of living in Hollis’s house makes her completely sick. She wanders through town when Hank goes back to finish painting, and sits on a bench in the town square beneath the bare linden trees. She has the feeling that she’s on a train that’s going full speed, and whether she stays on board or jumps off doesn’t matter. Either way, she’ll crash.

When Gwen gets back to Fox Hill in the afternoon, she finds her mother working at the kitchen table. It’s cold in the house, and March is wearing two sweaters and two pairs of wool socks as she sets flat pieces of turquoise into a bracelet she plans to use as a sample piece at the crafts store in the village, and perhaps show to some jewelry stores down in Boston.

“It is freezing in here,” Gwen says. She keeps her ski jacket on and zipped.

“I know. Something’s wrong with the heat. Hollis came over to check it out, and the whole system may need to be replaced.”

He probably broke it himself, Gwen thinks. Just the first of many good reasons for them to move in with him. “Maybe I should call that guy Ken and see if he can fix it,” she suggests.

“No, don’t,” March says. “Hollis thinks Ken charges too much. He’ll fix it himself.”

Gwen bets he’ll do precisely that. He’ll fix it so they’ll freeze to death in their beds if they stay.

“We’re happy here, aren’t we?” Gwen asks suddenly.

“Of course we are,” March answers, startled by her daughter’s serious tone. “We’re fine,” she insists.

Funny that Gwen asks if they are happy in this house; Hollis, after all, has been trying to convince March to move in with him. It makes sense of course, and yet she’s hesitated. Mostly, it’s true, because of Gwen, the same reason she hesitated all those years ago, in her garden. Maybe she hasn’t been the best mother lately, maybe she’s been thoughtless and selfish, but she still knows right from wrong. Or would it be so wrong to move in with him? Wouldn’t it be more honest? More up-front?

Today when Hollis came to look at the oil burner, he didn’t have time to stay. He told March he was fixing up the house at Guardian Farm, that she’s certain to change her mind, and that he was, at that very moment, expecting a stonemason to arrive at his door. Already, he’s had a cleaning service come out from the village to vacuum the rugs and wash the windows and polish all that old furniture Annabeth Cooper bought in New York. He even sent the dogs to the kennel to be bathed, and when they returned their clean coats were so red it was easy to understand how those rumors insisting they’d been bred from foxes had first begun. The refrigerator has been stocked with cream and salmon, fresh fruit and juices. Hollis hired Dr. Henderson’s youngest daughter, Miranda, who runs a catering service, to bring him a month’s supply of dinners that can be kept frozen until needed.

In truth, those dinners aren’t all Hollis plans to freeze. He has removed the thermal coupling from the oil burner in the basement of the house on Fox Hill. No big deal, he merely wants to cut off the heating output and help make the place more unattractive. It’s his house, and he would be well within his rights to insist that March move out, but he wants her to come to him of her own free will. Sometimes, however, free will requires a little intervention. Which is why Hollis is waiting at the barn the next morning when Gwen arrives. It is five-thirty when she gets there and she hasn’t slept well; she doesn’t even sense Hollis’s presence until she’s already given fresh water to Tarot, as well as to Geronimo and that stupid pony who always tries to bite her.

“What are you doing here?” Gwen asks when she notices Hollis in a comer.

“I own the place,” Hollis says. “After all.”

Gwen can’t help but note how restless Tarot is with Hollis in sight. As soon as Hollis approaches, Tarot kicks at the wall.

“Kind of a waste to keep this old man,” Hollis says. The contempt in his voice makes Gwen take a step closer to Tarot. Hollis and the horse are staring at each other. “Every once in a while I think about putting him out of his misery.”

Gwen feels a chill. She can recognize a threat.

“He’s not in misery,” Gwen says.

“I’ve been thinking that we could help each other out. You and me. Believe it or not.”

“Really?” Gwen’s throat is dry. He wants her to become an accomplice to something.

“I’d like your mother to move in with me, and I don’t want you to screw it up.” Like the last time, that’s what Hollis is thinking. When you fucked up our plans without even being born. “In fact, I want you to think it’s a great idea.”

“Good luck,” Gwen says. “Because that’s never going to happen.”

Gwen is totally freezing, but she couldn’t leave if she wanted to. Hollis is blocking her way, standing in the doorway of the barn. There’s a lamp right above him that casts a particularly harsh light. At this hour, he looks his age; he looks like an old man himself. He’s the one who should be put out of his misery.

“All you have to do is be positive. Tell your mother you want to move. In return, I won’t shoot him.”

Gwen takes a deep breath. She hopes she can bluff him. “Not good enough.”

Hollis stares straight at her.

“I want the horse,” Gwen tells him.

Hollis laughs at that.

“I mean it. I want it on paper. A legal document that says I’m the owner.”

Hollis can’t help but smile. She’s smarter than he would have guessed. Too bad she has no idea who she’s dealing with.

“Fine,” Hollis says. “My lawyers will draw up the transfer of ownership. I’ll have it to you by next week.”

“Fine,” Gwen agrees, hoping only that she won’t start to cry until she gets out of there. When she leaves, she runs. She’s done it. Tarot is hers. She runs and she runs, but it seems to take forever to get away. She feels as if she’s done a terrible thing, selling out her own mother for a horse, but she’s done it, and she’s not going to cry about it, at least not for long.

By the end of the week, they’re ready to move. They have so few possessions the old Toyota’s rear seat is not even filled. Like explorers in the New World, they travel light. Hank is waiting for them over at Guardian Farm, to help unload the car.

“I painted your room blue,” he tells Gwen. It’s the little room off the kitchen, which Hollis won’t be using anymore.

“Thanks,” Gwen says, gathering together her school-books. “But I would have preferred you bombed it.”

Gwen reaches for Sister, who’s in a panic. The red dogs are all barking, and although the terrier yips right back, it’s hiding behind a box of shoes and clothes.

“Come on,” Gwen says to the dog. “Be prepared to enter hell.” She shoos away the annoying mutts and carries Sister up to the house.

While March unloads the trunk, Hollis comes up behind her and circles his arms around her waist. March can feel the heat from his body, even in places where he isn’t touching her. Funny, but she’s thinking about the lemon tree in her backyard at home. She’s thinking about the sound of gunfire all those years ago when the hunting ban was lifted; how you could find a trail of blood every time you went for a walk in the woods.

Hollis kisses the back of her neck and holds her against him.

“You’re not going to regret this,” he tells her, and March lets herself sink back against him.

When she follows Hollis up to the door, March doesn’t dwell on how empty the house on Fox Hill looked when they left. She doesn’t let herself get all caught up in guilt about how Richard will react when he comes home tonight and finds her message on his answering machine: She and Gwen will no longer be at the same number. Her words replayed on his machine will be calm, but there is no way to disguise their new phone number. It is, after all, one Richard has memorized; it was his when he lived at Guardian Farm.

There are lace curtains on all the windows in the bedroom where Mr. and Mrs. Cooper used to sleep, and the fresh white paint Hank hurried to finish on time is luminous in daylight. But daylight is not what matters here. They have their meals at the old kitchen table, they go about their business, but all the while, March is looking out the window, waiting for dusk, when she can go upstairs with Hollis. The blue satin duvet cover on the quilt is one Annabeth Cooper ordered from France, hand-stitched and amazingly silky beneath the skin, and the bed is larger than the old wooden bed March has at home.

On this bed, you dream things you can’t discuss with anyone. Nights last longer on this bed; they begin before a suitcase is unpacked, before dinner is served, before morning, before noon. Always, she dreams she is falling and there’s no way to stop. It’s dream fucking that goes on here, the kind that overtakes you so that you don’t bother to lock the door or make certain the window shades are pulled down. It’s the kind of fucking that makes you cry out loud, makes you beg, then dissolve, that urges you to do what you’ve never done before. If someone knows you inside out, he knows when to start and when to stop. Don’t think about the other women he’s been with. Don’t care if these women have felt absolutely certain they were the only ones, if he’s told them he’s never had it so good, not like this; if he’s done it again and again. You know it’s always been you, that’s what he tells you, and that’s what you believe. It’s the way it was, isn’t it, when you were so young the future seemed limitless, and it was impossible to tell where you ended and he began.

Don’t think about the crows calling from the trees, or the sound of the front door slamming. What does it matter anyway? Let the dogs bark; let the hours pass by. It’s all a dream, and it’s yours, and it always will be. Give in to it, that’s what he whispers. Don’t bother bathing or combing your hair. Just do what he tells you, do it all night; go down on your knees and do it the way he likes it. Let it last an eternity, because, in all honesty, there’s no going back. Doors have been shut, suitcases unpacked; days have come and gone and you’re still here.

In the mornings, when March goes downstairs to make coffee, she doesn’t say much. If she sees Hank or Gwen before they leave for school, she might offer to fix breakfast; she might stand at the window to wave goodbye, but her attention is limited. She cannot make sense of Gwen and Hank’s conversations, or maybe she just doesn’t want to. She stays in the dream. She used to be so orderly, but now she has to hand-wash her underwear, since she’s run out of clothes. She’s lost count of what day it is; she hasn’t even bothered to change the sheets on their bed. And yet, she’s convinced she needn’t worry. Outside, there is wind and dreadful weather, but it can’t hurt her. He’ll tell her what to do and what to think, and after a while, if she stays here long enough, what to dream as well.

Since they’ve moved in, Gwen is the one who never sleeps. If she does happen to nap for a short time, she never has dreams, only black pools of unconsciousness. In the little bedroom painted blue, Gwen is camped out like a woman at war, ready to move on to the next battleground. She keeps her clothes in her backpack and her other belongings-books and makeup, even her alarm clock-in an orange crate beside the bed. She sleeps fully dressed on top of her blanket. There are circles under her eyes, and in only a few days, she’s had so many cigarettes behind her closed door that the room stinks of smoke in spite of the recent coat of paint. Sister is holed up in the room with Gwen; the terrier only goes outside to pee, and even then Sister continually growls at the band of red dogs, who are far too curious and ill-mannered.

As it’s turned out, this place is hell. Oh, Gwen would have said to Minnie, her old friend, if they were still talking, what have I done to deserve this? Chris and Lori think she’s so damned lucky, to be living in the same house as her boyfriend. Wouldn’t they love to be in her shoes? Well, as implausible as it might seem, not only have Gwen and Hank not taken advantage of the situation-in spite of how easy it would be to sneak into each other’s bedrooms-Gwen has not even kissed Hank, not once, since she moved in. It’s not that Gwen doesn’t love him any longer, she does, more than ever. But she wants something pure. She wants the opposite of what her mother has, and, Gwen is well aware of what that is.

She hears them going at it, upstairs, on the other side of the house. At first she thought she was imagining the sounds. Shouldn’t it be impossible to hear in a house as grand as this? Shouldn’t the plaster walls be well insulated? Shouldn’t there be some privacy? But she hears them, each and every night. Her mother’s cries of ardor. His disgusting noises. When she can’t stand it anymore, she gets out of bed and goes outside. She lets the screen door close behind her, but Sister usually noses the door open to chase after her. The nights are now so cold that all breath becomes smoke. In the barn, Gwen checks to make sure the horses’ water hasn’t turned to ice. She pats Tarot, and he nudges her sleepily, snuffling at her pockets for sugar. Sister hates horses, but despises the red dogs stretched out in the driveway even more, so the terrier follows Gwen into Tarot’s stall. When Gwen pulls up a stool, so she can sit down and have a cigarette, Sister lies at her feet.

“Poor Sister,” Gwen says to the dog, who wags its tail at the cadence of a friendly human voice. “You’re not the bitch you once were, are you?”

There are pieces of straw in the dog’s fur, and the creature flinches whenever Tarot shudders in his sleep. Tarot’s lungs are watery and old and he makes a rushing sound when he breathes out. For two weeks running, Hollis has sworn that the purchase agreement will arrive at the end of the week, but Gwen is starting to get nervous. As soon as she finally does get ownership, she plans to get a safety-deposit box at the bank so she’ll never lose the papers. She runs her hand over the horse’s soft nose. She has the strongest sense that she needs to keep him safe, and for some reason, this gives her courage. When she has legal ownership, she’ll leave. That’s what she’s decided, and although she hasn’t had the heart to tell Hank, she believes that he knows. It’s the way he watches her, as if she were already gone.

When Gwen can’t keep her eyes open any longer, she carries Sister out of the stall and closes up behind her. There’s a light on in the kitchen, and relief washes over Gwen. Hank has been waiting up for her with a fresh pot of coffee. They sit in silence. at two in the morning, as if they were an old married couple, drinking coffee and holding hands. They’re trapped by circumstance. They can feel their situation chipping away at what they might have had.

Hank knows that if it weren’t for the horse, Gwen would have already left. Her intention to leave Hank behind is not because she doesn’t love him; it’s because she knows he can take care of himself. On this night, however, they don’t talk about how their future is unraveling; they don’t think about all they have to lose. They go into that small bedroom off the kitchen and curl up together on the single bed, on top of the woolen blanket, arms entwined. If she could, Gwen would whisper that she loved him. If he could, he would vow that everything would turn out right. But that’s not the way things are now, and they both know it. That’s not the way things are at all.

18

This year, the Harvest Fair, which is always set out in the basement of Town Hall, is more crowded than usual, and March’s booth-used clothing, the one she promised Regina Gordon she would run-has done a booming business-good news for the children’s section of the library, to which all proceeds will be donated.

“I never thought I’d see you here,” Susanna Justice says when she comes to look through a pile of old vests. She pulls out a double-breasted houndstooth which would look great with her brown corduroy slacks.

“Neither did I.” March laughs. “I’m not the type.”

They’ve been tentative with each other since March moved in with Hollis. Susie has taken everyone’s advice and kept her mouth shut, but no one bothered to tell her that once she did, she wouldn’t have much to say.

“Well,” Susie says.

“Well.” March grins. “You look great.”

Actually, it’s March who looks beautiful. She’s wearing old painter’s pants and a heavy red sweater she paid three dollars for this morning, bought from her very own booth. In Susie’s estimation, March has lost weight. The angles of her face are more prominent. Her dark eyes more intense. March smiles when she catches Susie staring, and that’s when Susie thinks, It’s love that’s done this to her.

“My mother is still counting on you for Thanksgiving,” Susie says.

“That’s so sweet of her, but I have Hollis to think about. He hates Thanksgiving. He thinks turkey’s inedible.”

“Bring him anyway.” Susie actually manages to sound cheerful. “He can have a bologna sandwich.”

Just because she’s stopped pestering March doesn’t mean Susie has given up her research concerning Hollis. She has been down to Juvenile Hall in Boston, but even with some strings pulled by a friend of Ed’s on the force, she found nothing. It’s as if Hollis never existed, or maybe someone simply wiped the slate clean, Henry Murray probably, with his ridiculously big heart and his faith in humankind. Still, Susie continues to feel if she only looks hard enough, she’ll turn up hard evidence against Hollis, if not enough to send March running for cover, then at least enough to make her think twice.

“Even if Hollis doesn’t want to favor us with his company, you can still come to dinner with Gwen and Hank.”

“Easy for you to say.” March laughs.

“Extremely easy.” Susie is not laughing. “Nobody’s telling me what to do.”

“It’s not what you think,” March says. “He’s not like that. You know me, Susie. Do you think I’d let someone boss me around? At my age?”

“Okay. I hope I’m wrong.”

When Susie hugs March she notices the scent of lavender, a sad odor in Susie’s opinion, one that marks the past and all things best forgotten. Most likely, there were traces of lavender cologne on the secondhand sweater March bought for herself, and the fragrance now clings to its new owner. In the end, what a friend wants for herself, that’s what you have to want for her as well. Good fortune in all things, that’s what Susie wishes for March, that and no mistake so terrible it cannot be rectified.

Susie moves on to used books. Just in time, March can’t help but think; Hollis is approaching with two cups of hot coffee. You just have to know how to handle him, that’s the piece Susie doesn’t understand.

“Good old Susie-Q,” Hollis says when he comes to March’s booth and spies Susanna Justice nearby.

There are dozens of stands and far too many customers, at least to Hollis’s mind. He’s never been to a Harvest Fair, and he doesn’t plan to come again. He’s only here to keep an eye on March, probably a good thing since some guy is taking an awfully long time checking out an ill-fitting sports coat, soliciting March’s fashion advice. It’s Bud Horace, Hollis recognizes him now, the dogcatcher. Well, Bud’s spending a little too long talking to March, and Hollis doesn’t like that look on his face.

“Let’s go,” Hollis says to March when Bud finally pays for his damned sports coat and leaves.

“I think I’m committed to another two hours.” March looks over her shoulder for Regina Gordon, who has everyone’s schedule written down on a legal pad, but before March can spy Regina, Hollis has already gone over to speak to Mimi Frank, who has taken the day off from the Bon Bon Salon in order to man the applesauce stand.

“How about it? Can you keep an eye on the clothing?” Hollis asks Mimi. “Personally, I think you have the energy to take care of two stands. I wouldn’t say that to many people.”

Mimi smiles up at Hollis; everyone notices how competent she is. “Honey, don’t worry about it,” she says.

“You charmed Mimi Frank,” March says when Hollis helps her on with her coat. “That’s hard to believe.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Hollis says.

“We’re gone.” March is hoping for humor as they walk out of Town Hall, but somehow her words fall flat.

They don’t have much to say to each other as they head for Hollis’s truck; anyway, it would be hard to have a decent conversation with the wind blowing the way it is. When they reach the statue of the Founder, March pats his knee for luck. She has the oddest feeling that she dare not pass by the statue without giving in to this silly, superstitious act, as if on this blustery day she was, indeed, in desperate need of luck.

“Should we go to the Bluebird for lunch?” March asks Hollis.

“And see more of these idiot townsfolk? I don’t think my stomach could take it.”

After they’ve gotten into the truck, Hollis pulls her close and holds his face against hers and whispers about why he wants to be alone with her, how he wants to take her up to bed and show her how much he loves her, and March feels less jittery about the way he’s been acting lately. But then Hollis starts talking about Bud Horace, and how Bud had better keep his dick in his pants. Did Hollis always speak this way? March truly can’t remember. Did he always get angry so fast?

They’re all pathetic, that’s what he’s saying now, with their moronic fund-raisers and their false cheer. He could buy them and sell them, he could do it in seconds flat; he could have them down on their knees and begging, each and every one, the members of the town council and shopkeepers alike, if he held out a big enough check. And where do they get off looking at him, looking at March? Where does that fucking Bud Horace think he’s going to go with his used sports coat and his goddamned smile?

“Trust me,” March says to Hollis when they stop for a red light. “I don’t even know what Bud Horace looks like. Why should I? I’m only interested in you.”

She kisses him then, hard and deep, but she has the nagging feeling that she’s faking something. And worse-that she’d better. He’s always been jealous, she knows that. Well, so has she. If he doesn’t want other men looking at her, so what? It’s because he loves her, that’s all. It’s because he cares.

She needs to concentrate less on the what-ifs and more on the here and nows. She needs to take pleasure in going day by day. Since they’ve begun living together, they don’t go out very much, or at least March doesn’t. She has set up a work space on the third floor, in an old guest bedroom, and she’s begun to work on holiday presents: beautiful silver pendants, one for Susie and another for Gwen, luminous little things to slip onto silver chains, formed into the shape of crescent moons. March works when Hollis goes off in the mornings, to check his properties, and when he’s at meetings in the evenings. She doesn’t even realize how often she’s alone until she’s run out of silver, and has to ask Hollis to pick up more on his next trip into Boston.

But Hollis’s next trip to the city falls on a Sunday, so all the shops will be closed, and March won’t be able to get her silver after all. It’s an emergency meeting with his lawyer, something about a hurricane and his property in Florida. March is still in bed and Hollis is in the shower on the morning he’s to go to Boston, when the phone rings. It’s early, and again March feels anxious-she’s afraid the caller will be Hollis’s lawyer, with bad news that will set him off. Or worse, that Richard will finally phone here. But when March picks up the receiver it’s only Ken Helm, calling to let her know that the big chestnut tree over on the hill has blight.

“I can’t promise we can save it,” Ken tells her, “but we can try.”

As they speak, March can hear Ken’s wife and kids in the background. Ken will be lucky to have enough in the bank to pay his mortgage this month, and yet here he is, worrying about a chestnut tree on a Sunday morning.

March rolls over onto her stomach. It’s warm under the satin quilt. She’s only wearing panties, and doesn’t want to get out of bed, especially not to go look at a tree, but Ken seems so serious when he speaks about the effects of blight.

“All right,” March finally agrees. “I’ll meet you there at ten. Right after Hollis leaves.”

When March reaches to replace the phone onto the night table she sees that Hollis has been watching her. He has a towel around his waist and his wet hair is plastered to his head and the way he’s staring at her makes her feel guilty, about what, however, she’s not certain.

“Hey.” March smiles. “Come back to bed.”

He walks toward her without a word; he’s amazingly quick, or maybe it only seems that way, but before March knows it, he’s torn the blue quilt off and has grabbed her by her wrists, wrenching her to her feet.

“Who the hell was that?” is what she thinks he’s shouting.

“Wait a second,” March says.

He’s really hurting her; any more pressure would probably snap her wrist bones.

“Hollis!” she says.

“Who was that on the phone?” He pulls her over to the dressing table, then shoves her against the mirror. The glass is icy cold against March’s bare skin. “Who were you going to meet?”

“It was Ken.”

“Don’t fuck with me, March.” His voice sounds completely empty.

“I’m not.” Her heart is beating much too fast, as if she were scared of him.

“I mean it.”

“So do I. It was Ken Helm on the phone.” Thank God it was only Ken, that’s what she’s thinking. That is the one and only thought she can manage. “That old tree on Fox Hill is dying and he wants me to meet him to okay some work.”

Hollis looks at her closely. He may not believe her yet.

“That’s not your property. Why would he ask for your okay?”

“He probably thought it was too trivial to bother you with.” March can feel herself sweet-talking Hollis. That’s what she’s doing, and it turns out she’s good at it. Who would have guessed? She’s not only a good liar, she is better than average at flattery. Already, Hollis is easing up on her wrists and she’s no longer pushed against the mirror. She doesn’t want to think about the way glass breaks, a jagged, unreliable shattering, so that you never can tell who will get hurt. “It’s a stupid tree. That’s all. He wouldn’t have thought you’d be interested.”

Hollis is still looking at her, but the situation no longer seems as dangerous. Maybe it never was, March thinks. It probably never was. He raises her wrists to his mouth, kissing first one, then the other, right at the most delicate spot, where the veins crisscross.

“I thought you went crazy on me,” March says, relieved.

It turns out that her legs are shaking. They probably have been all along, but she doesn’t realize this fact until he draws her closer to the edge of the dressing table. This is where Annabeth Cooper used to carefully apply her lipstick and rouge; she had three hairbrushes, all made of tortoiseshell, all imported from France.

Hollis pulls March nearer still, close enough so he can ease off her panties and fuck her right there, without saying a word, without asking.

“Listen,” he tells her when he’s done, “tell Ken Helm to do whatever he wants. I don’t mind paying to save that tree.”

When Hollis leaves, March stands at the bedroom window. He didn’t hit her, that’s all she knows. He wouldn’t do that to her. She watches Hollis get into his truck and drive away. She knows what people say about Belinda, but she doesn’t care. Hollis never loved Belinda, and she was a fool to marry him. This is what no one has ever understood, including Susie: He is different with March, and when all is said and done, he didn’t mean to hurt her. He’d never do that.

She’ll think about the yard at Fox Hill, that’s what she’ll do. She’ll think about the nights when she and Hollis sat out there, searching for privacy and for stars. Whose tree is it, March now wonders, that chestnut so old there isn’t another like it in the entire county? Does it belong to the man who owns the land where it grows, or the woman who looked into its branches every day for three years, or the person who can save it from blight? Does it belong to those doves who come back year after year to nest, or to the sky above, or to the earth in which its roots are settled?

March showers for a long time, hoping to get rid of those cold, blue marks Hollis left on her skin where he grabbed her and held on too tightly. When she faces the mirror she notices the white strands in her hair. She should go into town to the Bon Bon and have it colored, or buy a package of dye at the pharmacy, but she’s simply in no mood for that. Instead, she pulls her hair back into an elastic band; she gets dressed in an old thermal undershirt of Hollis’s and a pair of jeans, then pulls on her boots. What will happen to those foolish doves if the tree has to be chopped down? They should have been chased away in October; March should have shaken a broom at them until they were forced to flee from their own bad judgment.

When she’s dressed, March makes tea and toast with butter, but she’s really not hungry. The way he twisted her wrists hurt, and the way he fucked her hurt as well, but she’s not going to think about that. Nothing happened, after all. Not really. It’s just that some mornings you want breakfast, and some you don’t. When Hank comes downstairs, still half asleep and uncomfortable in March’s presence, she suggests he have her toast. As she washes up the few dishes in the sink, March can look through the window to see Gwen in a nearby pasture, exercising that old racehorse. From this distance they look so small, horse and girl both, like toys made of tin.

“Are you okay?” Hank asks when he brings his dishes to the sink. He insists on washing his own plate and coffee cup.

“I have to go over to Fox Hill and meet Ken Helm, and I guess I don’t feel like it.”

Hank offers to drive her over. He’s had his license for ages, he explains, and he never gets to drive because Hollis doesn’t allow him use of the truck. Hank has been saving every cent he manages to get hold of for a car of his own, although whatever he could afford wouldn’t even be half as good as March’s beat-up Toyota. As they leave the house, March tosses Hank the keys; then she grabs two letters she plans to leave for the letter carrier to pick up when he makes his delivery. One envelope is addressed to a jewelry shop on Newbury Street and the other to a craft store in Cambridge. March sent both shops photos of her bracelets, and neither has responded, so she’s giving it one more try, suggesting to both that she display some of her pieces on a commission basis. At this point, March is seriously broke. If she wanted to buy a package of hair dye, she’d have to put it on Hollis’s tab at the pharmacy. Last week she had to ask Hollis for ten dollars so she could give Gwen her weekly lunch money, and although he was more than generous, she hates to be one of those people who can’t pull their own weight.

“Do you mind dumping these in the mailbox for me?” she asks Hank. “I’ll let Gwen know we’re going.” As Hank heads for the mailbox, March walks toward the pasture, waving. “We have to go up to Fox Hill to look at a sick tree,” she calls.

Gwen looks up and blinks. She sees Hank on his way from the mailbox to the Toyota. “We?” She’s so used to her mother’s recent detachment, her interest only in Hollis, that Gwen is too startled to do anything more than nod.

“We’ll be back before you know it.”

Hank has started the Toyota and now drives over to pick up March. “That threw her for a loop.” March laughs when she gets in. “You and me together.” March notices that Hank is too tall for the Toyota and has to scrunch down in his seat. He looks so serious and so young that March feels moved. He’s shy and uncomfortable about making conversation and he hasn’t had much practice driving. When he least expects it, he has to swerve to avoid hitting a rabbit, and they nearly barrel right into a stone fence.

“Sorry,” Hank tells March.

“It’s all right.” March says. He looks amazingly like Alan, had Alan been sweet-tempered. “Those rabbits think they own the place.”

Hank nods. It’s awkward being with March, and he’s relieved when they reach the house on Fox Hill to find that Ken Helm is already there. These woods were once filled with chestnut trees, but in forty years the species has been all but destroyed, and now it seems this old specimen will meet a similar fate.

“Drastic measures,” Ken says grimly as they join him to study the tree. “That’s what we need.”

He’ll cut off most of the limbs in the hopes of salvaging the trunk, even though he’s doubtful that the tree can be saved. March tells him to go ahead and do as he sees fit, still, she worries about the doves who are peering down at them from their nest.

“They’re going to have to move,” Ken tells March as he goes to get his saw and ladder from his truck.

“I want to make sure nothing happens to them,” March calls.

“I’ll do my best,” Ken says. “I can’t do more.”

Hank has been leaning against a small maple tree, looking at the empty house. He has almost no memory of ever living here, except for the day of the fire. He remembers more than most people would guess; that the fire seemed liquid, for instance, that it looked so pretty he wanted to reach out and touch the flames, but his mother wouldn’t let him. She told him no.

“Let’s go inside and see how the place looks,” March suggests.

“I don’t think so,” Hank says.

“Oh, come on. Let’s take a peek.”

March goes on ahead, and Hank finds himself following. The house hasn’t been unoccupied that long, but the pipes have been drained, and it’s colder inside than it is out. Aside from a few big pieces of furniture-the dining room table, the couch-it’s empty. They can hear an echo as they walk through the rooms, like the past coming right back at them. Hank goes to the doorway into the kitchen; he knows exactly what he’s looking for. To the right of the frame, where the wallpaper is worn, he can see charred wood. He found this one day when he was visiting Mrs. Dale, and after that he always felt he had to revisit the spot, as though paying his respects.

“I’ll be outside,” he calls to March.

“That was a stupid suggestion of mine,” March says later when she comes out to the porch. “You must be upset when you come here. You must think of your mother.”

“I’m fine.” Something has caught in Hank’s throat, and he coughs. “But if it’s all right with you, I think I’ll stay here for a while and help Mr. Helm.”

“Sure,” March says, and she pats his shoulder when she walks by.

She feels sorry for him, Hank saw it in her face. Well, pity is meaningless, that’s what Hank’s been taught. It’s what you do that counts, Hollis has always said, and in Hank’s experience, Hollis is right. He remembers perfectly well the day Hollis came for him. They were living down in the Marshes and it was freezing cold; there was ice in Hank’s hair. His father had passed out and the fire in the coal stove had died; there was nothing but embers. He remembers how light spilled into the room when Hollis opened the door. Hank’s father was on the floor, and Hollis rolled Alan’s limp body over with his foot, then bent down to peer into his face. Hank was not yet five, but he already knew it did no good to complain; hunger and cold were the facts of his life, so he didn’t say a word. He remembers, though, the look on Hollis’s face, the absolute certainty there. How curious a man of conviction had seemed to Hank, how rare.

“Get what you want to take with you,” Hollis had said. “Hurry up.”

Because of Hollis’s tone, because of the way he was standing there-and how tall he seemed and how completely confident-Hank never thought to question him. He got the stuffed bear the ladies from the library had given him on Christmas, and his wool sweater, and he didn’t look back when Hollis closed the door. But now, for the first time, Hank has questions; it’s what he’s been instructed to do that’s the problem. He’s supposed to keep an eye on March: If she goes somewhere, he’s to tag along, as he did today. If he sees her setting out mail for the postman, he’s to grab it and hand it over to Hollis. When he raised the issue of March’s privacy with Hollis, Hollis laughed out loud.

“You really think there’s such a thing as privacy?” Hollis had said. “That’s just some bullshit they hand out to keep people in line. If you love someone, you do what you have to. You don’t think about what other people might say.”

Well, Hank has done as Hollis asked, he has March’s letters in his jacket pocket right now, secured when she went to say goodbye to Gwen. He’s done what he’s supposed to do, and when he hands the letters over Hollis will pat him on the back. Usually that’s enough for Hank-just the tiniest bit of appreciation, a nod to a job well done. But this time is different. What Hank has done in stealing March’s letters is wrong, that’s the way he sees it. And the most awful thing is, once he’s begun to question Hollis’s motives on this, he has other questions as well, especially concerning Belinda.

“She was driving me crazy,” Hollis used to explain, whenever he and Belinda would fight. “Some people have to be taught a lesson,” he’d tell Hank. “You’ll understand when you’re older, when you’ve had to settle for what you never wanted in the first place.”

Now, when Hank thinks about the way Belinda looked after they’d had a fight, he feels sick. He thinks about the sounds he thought he’d only dreamed when he first came to live with them. Frankly, he doesn’t like the conclusions he’s reached.

March calls out a goodbye to Ken and drives off, leaving Hank to help. Mostly, Ken needs the branches he cuts down to be sawed into pieces, then thrown into the bed of his truck, a job Hank is glad to do, since the work is almost hard enough to keep him from thinking.

“Good job, kid,” Ken Helm says when they’re done for the day. Ken will be back in the morning, to finish the job. “I guess I have to give you a percentage after I bill Hollis. Maybe I should charge him double.”

Hank laughs. “It’s okay.” All the same, he’s grateful when Ken Helm slips him a twenty. When all the dead wood has been toted away, they both shield their eyes and look upward.

“ ‘Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth, but store them in heaven, where neither moth nor woodworms destroy them, and thieves cannot break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart also be.’ ”

“That sounds like good advice,” Hank says.

“It is.” Ken nods. “Matthew 6:19. I didn’t want to say anything to March, but that nest is going to have to go.”

“I figured.”

“Some people don’t like to hear the truth.”

And, Hank thinks as he watches Ken drive off, some people don’t like to tell it. Hank, for instance, hasn’t told anyone about the old man who has taken to following him. He didn’t even notice at first, but for the past week or two he’s felt someone watching him. He heard noises when he brought old Geronimo and Coop’s ornery pony out to the pasture. A branch breaking. An intake of breath. He has taken to looking over his shoulder, even when he and Gwen are walking home from school on the deserted High Road. Recently, he’d begun to see bits and pieces of the old man. A footprint in an icy field. A thread snagged on some witch hazel.

Hank tried to train his eyes to look beyond what he saw. A twisted oak had hands. A stack of hay wore worn leather boots. Then. one day, Hank looked behind him on the road and there was the old man, thin as a stick, pale as winter, with an unkempt beard and clothes far too big for his frame. Hank felt panic rise in his throat. He had the urge to grab the old man or to run away, but he did neither. He kept walking, and before long he realized it was his father who was following him. He knew because the old man would not cross onto Hollis’s property; instead he disappeared into the Marshes, without a sound.

What would be the point of having a father now? Hank’s all but grown, he’s managed without; he’d be embarrassed to be claimed by a pathetic drunk who doesn’t seem to know when his boots are on the wrong feet. It makes no sense; not now. It’s Hollis who raised him, Hollis to whom he owes his allegiance. All the same, Hank finds himself thinking of his father, the way he used to examine a bottle of gin before he began to drink, as if there was some promise deep inside. Well, there are no promises, that was the problem; not in drink and not in life, not now and not ever.

The door to the empty house is rattling as the wind picks up; March must have forgotten the latch. Hank is on his way to check when he sees the old man. He just won’t stop. He’s everywhere.

“What do you want?” Hank shouts.

The Coward is wearing a thick black coat Louise Justice brought him one year when the Judge grew tired of it.

“Stop following me around.” Hank can feel his face flush with anger. He doesn’t owe this guy anything, after all, not even courtesy.

The Coward is tall, like Hank, but he weighs perhaps a hundred and twenty pounds. He wants to say something, but instead he stands there, silent, his hands in his pockets.

“I want you to cut it out.” Hank’s actually sweating. Crazy, but he’s nervous being alone with his own father, not that he thinks of him that way. “Okay? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Hank wishes he could be nastier, but it’s not in his nature. He could, if he wanted, blow this old man over with one breath. He could break him in two.

“Do you understand?” Hank asks, and for some reason he feels a burning behind his eyes, as though he might cry.

The Coward finds his son to be so beautiful it seems inconceivable that they could be the same species. Yet they are; they’re flesh and blood. What he would not give to embrace this boy, to be a father for a minute or a day. But they are at a standstill, with nowhere to go. Here is the most difficult aspect of forgiveness: You have to ask in order to receive it. This, the Coward cannot do. He can stand there, on this cold November day, but he cannot ask for what he needs. And so it is his fate to wait in silence for another day, done in by his own fear, once again.

By the time Hank is done latching the door, the Coward has disappeared back into the woods. Since the hour when Hollis came for him, Hank has never looked back. But he’s looking back now, and when he does he sees that the man on the floor they stepped over when they left that shack was consumed with grief, sick with alcohol. Hank can’t help himself, he pities his father. He almost wishes he hadn’t chased him off. Oh, he knows Hollis would consider this a weakness in him. Pity is for women, and babies, and fools. Your father got what he deserved, that’s what Hollis would say.

No one gets what he deserves, that’s what Hank is thinking now. Things happen, and sometimes it all goes wrong. An entire life can become a dead end. Hank considers this for a very long time, and by the time he’s done thinking, he’s no longer sure that Hollis has all the answers. Before he leaves, Hank goes to the garden shed for the ladder he always used for cleaning out Mrs. Dale’s gutters. It’s a heavy old ladder, but reliable and strong. He leans it against the chestnut tree and climbs up carefully. By tomorrow, Ken Helm will finish lopping off most of the branches, in the hopes that the blight will be stopped and new growth will begin in the spring.

For as long as he can remember, Hank has done as he’s been told; a good boy, dedicated as a dog, thankful for scraps. A fact from Hollis was a fact indeed; no questions asked, and none need be. Now he’s wondering if he’s been misled, and if judgment is not such a simple thing. If he’s a good boy, why did he steal the letters March meant to send? Why, on that day when Hollis came for him, did he not kneel down beside his father and kiss him goodbye, the very least any son could do?

As he goes higher on the old ladder, Hank is unsure of what he believes, but he does know one thing-everyone deserves at least this: fresh air, clear skies, the sight of the earth from the vantage point of an old tree. His hands tremble when he takes the nest, but he’s careful as he comes back down the ladder. He places the nest on the ground while he carries the ladder over to a tall crab apple tree he helped Mrs. Dale plant a few years back. It was one of her favorites, an early bloomer with huge white flowers. Hank brings the ladder over, then grabs the nest, climbs up, and positions the nest into place. When he’s back on the ground, Hank claps his hands together to clean off the dirt. He may not have accomplished much, but at least that’s done. March won’t have to worry about the doves, although, in Hank’s opinion, she had better start to worry about herself instead.

19

Hollis has begun to have his dream about the horse again, that awful dream that always wakes him in the middle of the night and leaves him out of breath and sweaty and ready to run. He supposes that you cannot really murder a horse; that is something humans do to each other. You kill a horse, just as you would a cow or a sheep, but somehow it’s not the same. It’s uglier. It gives you nightmares, year in and year out and maybe even for the rest of your life.

If you are going to do it, Hollis knows, do it speedily and in the dark. Plan it out carefully, and be aware of what hours the grooms and the trainers keep. Make certain to get half your money up front, and be sure it’s a great deal of money. After all, the owner of a dead racehorse stands to collect quite a bit from his insurance company. That’s why he’s paying you. All you have to realize is a single indelible fact: Just because you walk away after you’ve been paid doesn’t mean you won’t be dreaming about it afterwards, when you’re no longer as hungry or as young.

Here’s the thing about killing a horse-its screams are far worse than any sound a man can produce. Wear earplugs, work fast; be sure you’re done and over the fence before they realize their pain. It’s a lot of money for someone with no education and no training and no heart at all. It’s a small fortune, if you can stand the way they scream when you shatter their cannon bones and knees with a hammer or a wrench. When you start to have bad dreams, go back and ask for more money from the owners. Don’t call it blackmail; it’s simply an extra payment for a job well done. After all, the horse wasn’t running well, and that’s what such horses are meant to do. Invest your money wisely, in land and condominiums and the market, and do it before you get hurt, because there will always be a horse who will fight for its life.

That is the one he always dreams about, the last one in Miami, a job so botched the owner never collected, even though the horse had been a Preakness winner and was insured for two million. Horses have hotter blood than humans, that’s what Hollis believes, and he was covered with blood by the time he was finished. He had to stand in the shower for hours, and even then the cold water was a pale remedy. That horse, a white thoroughbred, had refused to go down. Hollis had blood under his fingernails and all over his boots; two weeks later, after he’d headed back to Massachusetts, he was brushing his teeth in the bathroom of his rented rooms above the Lyon Cafe when he found horse’s blood in the rim of his ear. A single red thread which couldn’t tie him to any crime, and could be easily scrubbed away with a damp washcloth, and yet that mark seems to have been a curse. He still does not like to look at himself in the mirror, for fear he’ll see blood, and to this day he despises the color red. That horse continues to follow Hollis while he sleeps. He runs in pastures that are as red as blood; he races through guilt and grief. Kill something, and it’s yours forever. At night, you will be at your victim’s mercy, but that’s only temporary. Dreams, after all, are worthless things-Hollis knows that. They can’t reach you on the street where you walk; they can only torment a man with a conscience, any fool who allows it.

Now that the dream is back, Hollis often gets out of bed in the dark. He leaves March sleeping, and goes to sit in Mr. Cooper’s parlor, in the leather chair where Mr. Cooper liked to relax and smoke his cigars. He watches the light break through the sky above the Farm. Blood buys things and it always has. It was his dream to stand on top of Fox Hill and own everything in sight, and now he has made it all so real that if any trespasser comes by he’ll find himself hauled off to jail. It’s his, the acres of woodland, the houses, the fences, even this chair, where Mr. Cooper liked to read the Sunday paper, unaware that he was being watched through the window by a boy who owned nothing, not even the clothes on his back, which had been paid for out of the goodness of Henry Murray’s heart.

“Everything you have I own,” Alan Murray told Hollis when he came back from his father’s funeral.

Well, he’s fixed that, hasn’t he? Sitting in the dark, Hollis thinks about his money. He thinks about the woman, asleep in his bed. Why is it he continues to feel so poor? Why is he waiting for March to bolt out the door? He’s been worrying about Richard Cooper, who’s not giving up so easily and who has taken to calling. Hollis has been hanging up on him, but sooner or later March will answer the phone, and that won’t do. He’ll see to it the way he’s seen to the mail, so that March hasn’t received any responses from the stores that want to sell her work. A woman who has her own money can leave you when you least expect it; she can walk off anytime.

Long before anyone in the house is awake, before Hank has fed the dogs, before Gwen has written a letter to her father or March has set about making a cranberry coffee cake to bring to the Justices’ Thanksgiving dinner, Hollis has taken care of the phone lines.

“Must be some wire down,” he says, when March tries to contact Susie to ask if there’s anything else she should bring to dinner.

“Are you sure you won’t go with us?” March asks.

“Dinner with those old coots?” Hollis grins. “I don’t think so. I’ll stick to frozen food.”

Hollis has actually encouraged March to take the kids and go to dinner; their absence will give him the chance to look through her suitcase and her dresser drawers to make sure she hasn’t managed to receive any letters from Richard before Hollis could retrieve the mail.

“I want you to have fun,” Hollis tells March. “Enjoy yourself. Take Hank-he can eat the Justices out of house and home for a change.”

“Remember,” March says when they’re ready to leave, “you can always change your mind and come for dessert.”

“I’ll think about it,” Hollis tells her, even though he’d rather be tied into a straitjacket than have a meal with the Justices.

“Hollis isn’t going?” Hank asks when March comes out to the car.

Hank is in the backseat, and March hands him the coffee cake. “He hates polite society. You know that.”

“Well, I’m sure it hates him right back,” Gwen says. She’s sitting in the front seat, with Sister on her lap.

“You’re bringing the dog?” March asks.

“I’m not leaving her here.”

Hank looks over his shoulder at the house. “Maybe I should stay.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” Gwen says. “Don’t you feel sorry for him.”

“It’s not that,” Hank insists.

Gwen smiles in spite of herself; it’s exactly that.

“It’s a holiday, that’s all,” Hank says.

“Well, you’re coming with us,” March says. “Hollis wants you to. One of the reasons Louise is getting a twenty-five-pound turkey is because I’m bringing two teenagers.”

When they get to the Justices’, Gwen and Hank take Sister for a walk, since March wants the dog to stay in the car during dinner. Actually, it’s a pleasure for the two of them to be alone in the smoky air, because today everything smells like roasted chestnuts and burning wood and cinnamon wafting from the windows of the bakery, where they’re working overtime to fill holiday orders.

“I wish you wouldn’t be so concerned about Hollis,” Gwen says as they walk past front lawns and fences. They’ve let the dog run on ahead through the last of the fallen leaves, those which haven’t been blown away or turned into dust. “He still hasn’t given me the ownership papers for Tarot.”

“He will,” Hank tells her. “He keeps his word.”

“Yeah, right. I’ll bet he does.”

“He does,” Hank vows. “You’ll see.”

Hank and Gwen take a longer walk than they’d intended, but the Justices’ house is crowded even without their presence. Dr. and Mrs. Henderson are there, along with the Laughtons, Harriet and Larry-all of them so polite and stuffy that Hollis would have gone nuts in their presence. The Hendersons’ daughter Miranda is there, free as a bird since her divorce last spring. Ed Milton has of course been invited, along with his twelve-year-old daughter, Lindsay, as has Janet Travis, the new attorney in town-since a resident of ten years is still considered a recent arrival-and her husband, Mitch, who teaches social studies at the high school.

“Where were you this morning?” Susie asks, after she’s hugged March and taken the coffee cake out of her hands. She can’t help but wonder if March knows that some of the white in her hair has grown in; March looks older with her hair like this, and her face seems drawn. “I’ve been trying to call you to ask you to pick up some eggnog.” Susie lifts the foil and peers at the cake. “Cranberry,” she says. “Yum.”

“I was home.” March hangs up her coat and follows Susie into the Justices’ kitchen. “Baking that cake.”

“Well, I called and called and no one ever answered.” Susie pours them each a glass of red wine. “Do you believe how many old folks are out there?”

“Ed Milton’s not old.” March samples the sweet potato casserole cooling on the counter. “He’s cute.”

“Don’t get all excited,” Susie tells her. “It’s not serious.”

Louise Justice comes into the kitchen, catching that last bit of conversation. “That’s what Susie always says. You’d think she was a frivolous person, if you didn’t know her better.”

“Here’s a drawback,” Susie says. “His daughter hates me. If she keeps being so nasty, I’m going to be nasty right back.”

“She’s twelve,” Louise says. “In six years she’ll be off to college and you’ll see her at Christmas vacation if you’re lucky. And for now, she lives with her mother in New York. They moved to Roslyn, out on Long Island, this past summer, and Lindsay likes seventh grade a lot more than she thought she would.”

Susie and March both give Louise a look.

“I didn’t pry,” Louise swears. “Lindsay volunteered the information. Which she would with you too,” she tells Susie. “If you gave her the chance.”

Louise now sets them to work. March is to ladle corn chowder from the pot into a tureen. Susie is to remove the oyster stuffing from the cooling turkey.

“I guess Hollis decided not to show,” Susie says. “Surprise, surprise.”

“He’s opted for a frozen dinner and peace and quiet,” March says.

“At least he let you come,” Susie says.

“You wouldn’t have wanted him here, considering how you feel. Both of you.” March is looking straight at Louise.

“I told her about your theory,” Susie admits to her mother. “About Hollis and Belinda. I’m sorry.”

“I’m glad you did,” Louise says.

“You are?” Susie is surprised and rather relieved.

“I am, although I know that March will make her own choices no matter what we say. Won’t you, dear?”

“That’s right,” March agrees. “So I’d appreciate you butting out, unless you’re willing to let me take over your lives.”

“Touché,” Louise says.

Susie pours herself and March more red wine, and gets some cold Chablis from the fridge for her mother. Louise nods and takes a sip of wine. Sometimes, in the old days, the Murrays would bring Judith Dale with them when invited to the Justices’ holiday dinners. Judith would bring her special dishes: her apple brown Betty, her green beans with almonds, her onion soup with its delicious, thick crust. She worked well beside Louise in the kitchen, and Louise always told the Judge how lucky the Murrays had been to find Judith. Why, one year, before she knew anything, she sat Judith next to the Judge, and if she’d been more observant she would have noticed that neither of them spoke a word throughout that dinner, as if proximity and desire had made them mute. For all Louise knows, they may have been holding hands under the table all through dinner. She does remember how surprised and pleased she was when the Judge offered to help Judith clear the table, since he usually didn’t think to attend to household chores.

“Are you okay, Mom?” Susie asks as she slips the bowl of stuffing into the oven to keep warm.

Louise has a house full of guests and she’s standing there, doing nothing, with a glass of wine in her hand.

“Perfectly fine,” Louise says.

She goes to help March take out the soup bowls from a high cabinet. Every time March reaches for a bowl that emerald ring which used to belong to Judith shimmers, as if it were made of some mysterious liquid. Louise tells herself she’d better snap out of her reverie and stop the self-pity; a ring, after all, is not a heart, it’s not a soul or a husband beside you in bed every night. It’s a rock that’s only worth something in the first place because someone has decided to give it value.

The Judge now comes in. “There’s the turkey,” he says. His one holiday task: to carve. Louise has left out the knife he likes best and the large silver fork which belonged to her mother.

As usual, the Judge is wearing a suit and tie; he seems much too tall for the kitchen. He carves the turkey, teasing the women as they travel back and forth to the dining room, bringing out platters of food. He’s the same man who’s stood here in Louise’s kitchen every Thanksgiving, but today something is different. The Judge’s hands shake as he carves. It’s a slight tremor, so mild no one would notice, except Louise.

When the Judge is done with the turkey, he goes to wash his hands. From the window above the sink, he can look into the yard. “Well, well,” he says when he spies Gwen and Hank out there. “The reluctant guests?”

“They don’t consider adults to be human,” March jokes.

“I’ll lasso them,” the Judge says. “I’ll offer food, that should do the trick.”

As he goes out, a cold blast of air rips through the kitchen. The Judge is so tall he has to crouch to maneuver past the branches of a peach tree Louise planted in the first year of their marriage. This was the Judge’s parents’ house until the older Justices retired to Florida; Bill grew up here and Louise often thought of that when she was tempted to throw him out. She simply couldn’t imagine him living anywhere else. And anyway, it’s too late to think about such matters. What’s done is done.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” Susie now asks her.

Louise moves her hand to her face, as if smoothing something out. Susie and March both look concerned. Louise must have slipped and shown them a bit of her pain. She must have let something through.

“A touch of the virus,” Louise says. “Absolutely nothing.”

The three women stand by the back door and look out. The terrier is in a pile of leaves, chewing on a stick, while Hank and Gwen whisper to each other.

“Everybody inside,” they hear the Judge’s voice call.

The dog starts running toward the Judge as soon as it hears his voice, and has leapt into his arms before the Judge knows what hits him.

“Wow, is that dog crazy about you,” Hank says. “Look at her.”

The terrier is making yipping noises as it licks the Judge’s face.

“Stop that, Sister,” the Judge says, but he seems extremely pleased to be holding this creature to his chest, in spite of the burrs in its fur and the mud on its feet.

At the door, Louise Justice turns pale. Clearly, this was their dog-his and Judith’s-and now, in spite of the chilled wine, Louise has a mouthful of grief. Susie had begged for a dog when she was young, but the Judge had always said no. Too much hair and dirt and fuss.

“Mom,” Susie says softly. She doesn’t understand this-could it be that her mother knows about Judith Dale and the Judge? “Maybe you’d better get the dog out of here,” Susie suggests to March.

“I’m sorry,” March apologizes. She and Susie exchange a worried look. “I wasn’t thinking. I’ll put the dog in the car.”

“No,” Louise says. “Don’t.”

Outside, they can see that the Judge is crouched down; he’s scratching the terrier’s head. These girls in the kitchen, March and Susie, feel sorry for her, Louise is well aware of that. But what do they know about love? You make bargains you’d never imagine you’d agreed to, and you do it over and over again.

“I’m fine,” Louise says. “We’ll start with the chowder, before it turns to ice.”

These girls think in black and white, love or rejection, yes or no. Louise watches the Judge as he makes his way to her back door and she feels the intensity of being together for nearly fifty years. She knows him completely, and not at all. She made her choices, just as March and Susie are doing. Young people believe that regret is something you will never feel if you simply do as you please, but sometimes it’s a matter of degree. Would Louise have preferred not to have the Judge at her table? Would she have preferred to have raised Susie alone, or have some other man watching TV with her in the evenings, someone easygoing, someone whose affections she could be sure of?

“We’re sitting down to chowder,” Louise tells the Judge when he comes inside.

The Judge has muddy paw prints on his pant legs; the suit will have to be sent to the dry cleaner.

“Look at this mess,” he says. When he brushes the leaves off his jacket, there’s the tremor, in his hands.

“It’s not so bad,” Louise says, cleaning off the lapels. “It’s a miracle fabric.”

The Judge laughs. “I can always trust you to perform miracles.”

“Hardly.” Louise snorts. He was charming as a young man, so tall, so much fun in spite of his serious nature. She loved him then and she loves him still. Someone else might have left, but she stayed, and here she is, beside him.

“What’s wrong with that daughter of Ed Milton’s?” the Judge asks. “I’ve never seen a more sullen child.”

He wasn’t really there when Susie went through her worst times, at exactly the same age. Susie hated herself and everyone else, but the Judge was too busy to know. He was working, or over at Fox Hill, and maybe Louise was too quick to settle all of the daily details and problems before his car pulled into the driveway.

“The poor thing is twelve and she’s worried that Susie will be a wicked stepmother,” Louise tells the Judge. “I’m sure it will work out fine.”

Hank and Gwen come in now, embarrassed to be late, worried about the dog.

“I’ll leave my dog in the mudroom,” Gwen tells Mrs. Justice. “If that’s okay.”

So it’s her dog now. The Judge smiles to hear that, and Louise notices he has the look he always has when he’s thinking about Judith.

“That’s perfectly fine.” Although Louise is addressing Gwen, it’s the Judge she’s looking at. “Whatever makes you happy.”

By the time they finally leave the Justices’ it’s late and so cold they see their breath in the air. They have all overeaten, even Sister, who was slipped a plate of turkey and stuffing. It’s a dark and beautiful night, dreamy and black, filled with the silhouettes of bare trees.

“Thanks for taking me with you,” Hank says when they pull up to the Farm. “The food was great.”

The dogs in the driveway rouse themselves and head over. Hank has brought them a bag full of leftovers which he sets down in the driveway.

“I can see why you like him,” March says to Gwen.

Gwen’s got Sister under her arm. Just being with all those normal people tonight has made Gwen realize how much she hates living out here. She watches Hank pet those dreadful dogs, the ones Belinda first took in out of pity.

“You don’t see anything,” Gwen tells her mother.

March stays in the driveway when Gwen goes inside. March has had several glasses of wine and she feels a little tipsy. She had fun tonight, something she hasn’t had in quite a while. Finally, she and Hank walk toward the house together, and that’s when March realizes that Hollis’s truck is gone. They go inside and look around, but no one is home.

“If you’re worried, I could take your car and look for him,” Hank offers.

“No,” March says. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

After Hank goes up to bed, March tries to call Susie, to talk about Ed Milton and his daughter, but the phone still isn’t working. Maybe the wires have frozen; the house is cold, and outside the temperature is dropping. March makes herself a pot of tea and takes it into the parlor. She can view the driveway from here, and sometime after midnight she spies headlights when Hollis arrives.

“Hey,” Hollis says when he comes into the parlor and sees March. He grins and takes off his gloves. “How was it?”

“Great,” March says. She’s relieved that he smiles, as if there was a right and wrong answer to his question and she’s scored correctly. Since Hollis seems to be in a decent mood she dares to venture a question of her own. “Where were you?”

“Me?” Hollis sits down in the easy chair across from March. The cold is still on his skin and he rubs his hands together. “I took a ride up to Olive Tree Lake, to look at that development going up there and see if I want to buy into the project. Then I drove past the Justices’, but the party must have broken up. I guess I missed dessert.”

“And it was good too.” March has the funniest feeling about tonight. Hollis isn’t looking at her. He hasn’t looked at her once. “You’re sure everything’s all right?”

“The only problem is how cold it is in here,” Hollis says. “The burner’s not doing the job.”

“The phone’s not working either.”

Hollis goes to the fireplace and sets out some kindling and two logs. He bends down, one knee in the ashes. He has always found it best not to look at whoever he’s lying to, although, in point of fact, nothing he’s told March is an outright fabrication. He was up at Olive Tree Lake, true enough; he’s simply failed to mention that he was there fucking Alison Hartwig. It wasn’t as though he planned it. He drove down to the Red Apple to get a big bag of dog food, and there she was, buying eggnog and soda to bring home to her kids and her mother. He knew he was going to fuck her the minute he saw her; he knew it would be good to fuck someone he didn’t give a damn about.

He has always been at March’s mercy, and that’s a problem. His own love for her is an agony. It makes him feel like a beggar, even now, and he can’t have that. Let someone else beg. Let Alison Hartwig beg him to fuck her. At least it won’t be him down on his knees.

March has come up behind him. She places one hand on his shoulder, and her touch makes him feel like weeping. But he doesn’t. He’s not even certain if he’s capable of crying. People said that, when his son died-Look at him, has he once cried? Well, maybe he has no tear ducts, or maybe he’s not human, but he can’t do it, and what’s more, he won’t.

“I missed you tonight,” March says.

Hollis reaches to take her hand then, but he’s careful not to look at her. He keeps his eyes trained on the fire before him, and he doesn’t dare let anything get in his way.

20

When the cold comes to New England it arrives in sheets of sleet and ice. In December, the wind wraps itself around bare trees and twists in between husbands and wives asleep in their beds. It shakes the shingles from the roofs and sifts through cracks in the plaster. The only green things left are the holly bushes and the old boxwood hedges in the village, and these are often painted white with snow. Chipmunks and weasels come to nest in basements and barns; owls find their way into attics. At night, the dark is blue and bluer still, a sapphire of night. During some winters, it is so cold that tears freeze before they fall and a pony’s breath may turn to ice inside its nostrils and lead to suffocation.

This year, December is so clear and icy cold the air itself seems as if it were a bell about to be rung. A Christmas tree is always put up on the first Friday of the month in front of Town Hall, beside the statue of the Founder, who, to ensure the festivity of the season, will be decorated with a wreath of ivy until the New Year. One week of frigid weather is nothing to a New Englander, but after two a person’s patience can be tried. The Lyon Cafe always does its best business at this time of year. Some people say the surge in popularity is due to the hard cider served only in December, but the old-timers know it’s because there’s nothing better to do. The best there is at this time of year is cider and gossip, and at the Lyon Cafe, on a cold December night, it’s possible to find both.

“Is everyone in the entire universe here?” Susanna Justice asks her mother when they step into the Lyon after a meeting of the library committee. Louise has attended as the secretary of the organization-a position she, thankfully, will be giving up at the end of the year-Susie, as a reporter who still has to go home and think of something interesting to write about the fund-raising drive in time for tomorrow’s Bugle.

“Order the cider,” Louise tells her daughter as she sets off to grab a table and Susie heads for the bar. There’s some serious drinking going on at the Lyon, and the noise level is such that Susie and Louise have to sit close together at their table, with their heads nearly touching, in order to hear one another.

“I hope you’re going to mention Harriet Laughton in your article,” Louise says. “She’s the heart and soul of the fund-raising committee. I wanted to ask March to join the committee, but I can never seem to get hold of her.”

“I know. I couldn’t either.”

Susie had been calling and calling, with no success. When Richard phoned her to say he also couldn’t reach March and hadn’t heard from Gwen for several weeks, she went out to Guardian Farm, and she didn’t like what she found.

“What do you want?” Hollis said to her when she got out of her truck. Susie was so startled by the hostility of his tone that she took a step backward; she shaded her eyes against the sun, the better to gauge his expression, but there was nothing to see. Just an angry man, staring her down.

“Actually, I want to see March,” Susie had said. “Is that a criminal offense or something?”

All she got for an answer was the wind, flapping between them. A loose shutter on the house banged back and forth. Susie could practically see Hollis reaching inside himself for a way to get rid of her, a lie to tell. Funny how she’d never noticed before how much he’d aged; his posture was that of a young man, but that’s not what he was anymore.

“What are you going to do, Hollis? Call the police and have me escorted off your property?”

Before he could respond, March came to the door. She ran out to hug Susie, then insisted on dragging her into the kitchen for a cup of tea.

“Why didn’t you tell me Susie was here?” March said to Hollis. “You hate company, that’s all there is to it.”

She had thrown her arms around him, and Hollis had let her kiss him. For an instant, he seemed happy, there in her embrace.

“‘He’s all bark,” March said to Susie as they headed for the house. “Oolong.” March had remembered her friend’s favorite tea. “Right?”

“Right.”

Once in the kitchen. Susie couldn’t help but notice how streaked with white March’s dark hair had become. March had stopped coloring it. and now simply drew it away from her face with silver clips. Hollis had come in after them, but after he allowed March to tease him about being antisocial. he withdrew to the parlor. Still, Susie had the sense he was listening.

“I’m worried about you,” she told March after she’d been served a mug of tea. The house was cold and dim; March was wearing a heavy gray sweater that looked like one of Hollis’s castoffs.

“You’re always worried about me.” March laughed. She explained that she would have been over to see Susie, but her Toyota had suddenly died. As soon as Hollis finished working on it, she’d come for a visit. “You don’t have to worry,” she’d insisted.

But sitting in the Lyon with her mother, Susie is still worried. “To tell you the truth, I wish March had never come back here,” Susie admits as she and Louise sip cider in the crowded tavern. “What does she see in him?”

“Ah, love,” Louise says with a surprising amount of bitterness.

Susie tilts her head and studies her mother.

“Didn’t you think I knew?” Louise says. “How could I not?”

“Are you talking about Dad?”

“I didn’t think it was a suitable topic for discussion. I still don’t.”

Louise checks the buttons on her sweater, as if something was undone. Clearly, even talking around the edges of the Judge’s relationship with Mrs. Dale is tremendously difficult. Watching her mother, Susie feels extreme tenderness.

“Then we won’t discuss it,” Susie says.

“Fine.” Louise takes her daughter’s hand in her own. “That’s settled.”

“Unless you ever want to,” Susie can’t help adding.

“Susie,” Louise warns.

“Fine. Next topic.”

“Did you call Richard Cooper back and let him know you went to see March?”

“I did. He’s all broken up about March leaving, but his main concern is that Gwen’s living out there. I can’t say that I blame him.”

“I saw her down in the Marshes,” Louise says. “That girl, Gwen.”

“Are you serious?”

“I brought out some groceries and warm clothes sent by the library committee-there was a wonderful sweater, a hundred percent wool-and I put everything on the porch, the way I always do because Alan doesn’t like it if you knock on the door. That’s when I saw her.”

“Inside the house?” Susie can hardly believe it. “I thought he didn’t speak to anyone.”

“Well,” Louise says, “he’s obviously talking to her.”

In fact, Gwen has been going out to the Marshes most afternoons. Hank has so many chores to do, along with any after-school jobs he can find, as well as working on his senior thesis, that Gwen has too much time on her hands. She sometimes rides Tarot out to the Marshes, but usually she leads him, so he’ll get a little exercise without having to carry her weight. Despite the cold, Tarot is content to accompany her; there are still some withered apples on the ground in the Coward’s yard, and the grass is high and salty. The Coward has begun to tell Gwen about her family: How beloved her grandfather Henry was. How her other grandparents, the Coopers, were said to think so well of themselves they had to deflate their heads every morning or else they’d sail away on the strength of their own vanity. He has recounted a few small details about the fire, when his wife died, if only to suggest the reasons he has plunged into this life he now leads. The weirdest thing is, when he speaks about himself he uses the third person: Alan Murray couldn’t go into that house. He stood there and stood there, but he couldn’t move.

“So who are you now if you’re not him?” Gwen has asked.

“I’m someone else,” the Coward has told her, as if that information was as plain as the nose on his face.

That someone is often so far gone when Gwen comes to visit that he can’t stand up. Once, she found him shivering on the floor. Another time, he was inches away from the smoldering ashes of his stove. Gwen knows where he keeps his liquor-the bottles are stored beneath the floorboards near his bed. On those occasions when he’s not completely smashed, the Coward tells her what the village used to be like when he was a boy. Olive Tree Lake was so clear you could drink the water in a cup. Foxes trotted along back roads. Blue herons nested in the Marshes.

Gwen tries to bring the Coward treats, usually bread and butter, his favorite, but she doesn’t chide him about his drinking. She knows how it feels to have somebody on your case, the way her mother used to be; it never does any good. It’s cold in the Coward’s house, and filthy as well, yet Gwen looks forward to coming here. Or perhaps it’s the act of getting away from Guardian Farm she savors. Strange, but the Marshes seem real to her; it’s the Farm that seems like a dream.

The phone lines have never been fixed, nor has her mother’s car. No mail has been delivered for ages. Gwen has written to her father three times, and she still hasn’t heard from him. She intends to ask if he’ll send a plane ticket, so she can go home for Christmas vacation. She hasn’t told Hank anything about her plan, and the secret has driven a wedge between them, not because of the vacation-that’s nothing-but because if she gets ownership of Tarot beforehand, she’ll borrow money from Susie Justice to have him trucked to California, and she won’t use her return ticket to come back. She has to get out, that’s what she’s afraid to say out loud in Hank’s presence. She has to do it soon.

Today, when Gwen goes to the Marshes the weather is so bad, with ice everywhere, that she leaves Tarot home. Sister follows her, though, and by the time they get to the Marshes, the terrier’s coat is braided with ice. The Coward, however, is completely wasted. He took his weekly trek to the liquor store last night, then overindulged even more than usual. Gwen covers him up with an old quilt, right there where he lies on the wooden floor. She stays for a while, Sister beside her, though the house is cold and the Coward smells bad. She thinks about the life she used to have and how it doesn’t even seem to belong to her anymore, and it helps her to understand the Coward’s past. That’s the reason he stays out here-everything he was has slipped away, and trying to retrieve it would be like diving into a bottomless pit.

Before she leaves, Gwen takes a piece of bread from the groceries Louise Justice has left, and crumbles it up for the mice. She leaves a note on the table: “I was here. You were plastered. See you tomorrow. Your loving niece, Gwen.”

It is late in the day when Gwen walks back through the Marshes: the sunlight is pale and thin and already fading. Her boots make a path in the muck and ice, which Sister follows. A flock of starlings startles and takes flight when Gwen and the dog come too close. Out here, Gwen feels as though she’s reached the end of the world. Every time she takes a step she can hear something break-hermit crabs, mussel shells, cattails. This spring she will turn sixteen, an age she has been waiting for for what seems forever. Why is it that spring seems impossibly far away, as if it were a goal she can only yearn for and never quite reach?

Gwen and Sister are both quiet when they get to Guardian Farm; they slip through the back door, but they’re not quick enough. Hollis is in the kitchen.

“I thought you’d taken off and weren’t coming back,” he says.

He always makes snide remarks like this to Gwen; he must think he’s amusing. Well, now that she’s face-to-face with him, she might as well ask.

“No such luck,” Gwen shoots back. Since she’s already spoken to him, she decides to take the next step. “Did the papers come through?” Gwen tries to be casual about this, but deep inside she thinks herself a fool: she should have gotten ownership of Tarot before she agreed to move in.

“Papers?” Hollis says. He’s having a cup of hot tea made nearly white with milk.

“Tarot? Remember? He’s mine.”

“Right, you weren’t going to give your mother a hard time about moving over here, and I was going to sign over ownership of the horse.”

“Right.” Gwen breathes a sigh of relief.

“You believed that?” Hollis shakes his head as though she were the sorriest dolt he’d ever seen.

Gwen stands watching as he goes to the sink and rinses out his cup, then lays it neatly on the drain board.

“I want those ownership papers,” she forces herself to say.

“That’s too bad.” He’s speaking to a bothersome fly, a gnat and nothing more. “Because you’re not getting them.”

Gwen can feel her face grow hot; she’s been conned, that’s what happened, and it was easy as pie for him to cheat her. Maybe it’s the way he walks away, as though she were worthless, which makes her grab the teacup and throw it at him. It shatters on the floor to his left; it’s Wedgwood and breaks into a hundred slivers.

Shit, Gwen thinks, when he turns and comes back at her. Instantly, she’s afraid of him, though she hates herself for being so easily scared by the likes of him. He gets her by the arm before she can maneuver away. Sister begins barking, a hoarse frantic yip.

“You little bitch,” Hollis says to Gwen.

“You’d better let go,” Gwen says, as if she had any control here. “I mean it.”

Sister’s barking like crazy now, a growly sort of bark. Hollis is really hurting Gwen; it’s as if he wants to break her arm or something. Gwen can tell he wants her to give up, and maybe, if she were smarter, she would.

“Fuck you,” she says.

“Maybe what you need is a good spanking,” Hollis tells her. “Maybe that would solve the problem.”

When he grabs Gwen around the waist, Sister, who’s been darting closer and closer, goes for Hollis’s leg. The dog’s teeth don’t reach skin, but Hollis loosens his hold on Gwen so he can kick the terrier, who yowls and skitters off. Gwen breaks away and runs out of the house without thinking; luckily, the door flies open behind her and Sister can escape before it slams shut again.

As soon as she’s outside. Gwen is running, and it’s not until she gets far enough away that she allows herself to cry. She sits on a stone wall and cries until she sees that Sister has followed her. Then she crouches to pick up the dog, and starts walking again. She continues on the High Road all the way into the village. She’s walking fast, so she carries Sister under her arm. The dog is still shaking, and it yelps when Gwen touches its side, sore from Hollis’s boot. Darkness has settled by the time they reach the village; it’s dark on Main Street and the streetlights cast a yellow glow. Gwen has less than a dollar in her pocket, and when she tries to use the phone booth outside the Bluebird Coffee Shop, a recorded announcement informs her she cannot make a long-distance call without a calling card number, something she doesn’t have.

She continues down Main Street, past the building where her grandfather Henry Murray used to have his offices, past the library and the Lyon Cafe. In Gwen’s opinion, the street where the Justices live is the prettiest in town; all the houses are white, and each yard is surrounded by a white fence. In the dark, the facades seem illuminated, as if starlight had been mixed in with the house paint. Oh, what she wouldn’t give to be a girl in one of these houses, with real parents and a bedroom up on the second floor. She would have wallpaper then, and a closetful of clothes, and someone who knew what hour she came in at night.

Gwen goes up to the Justices’ front door, gathers her courage, and knocks.

“I really hate to bother you,” she says when the Judge opens the door. She has no idea that her eyes are bloodshot from crying. “Would you mind if I used your phone?” Shock has made her unbelievably polite.

“It’s March’s girl,” the Judge calls to Louise. He signals for Gwen to come inside, and once they’re in the parlor he studies her. Gwen places Sister on the floor, and the dog cowers behind her legs.

“Been out for a walk?” the Judge asks.

Gwen realizes how muddy her boots are. She sits on a couch and eases them off. “Sorry about the mess.” Her voice breaks then, and she has to look away.

Louise has come in from the kitchen and she and the Judge exchange a look.

“She wants to make a phone call,” the Judge tells Louise.

“Help yourself,” Louise says; then she guides the Judge into the kitchen to give Gwen some privacy. “What happened?” Louise asks him.

“Not the slightest idea.”

“It’s something to do with that man,” Louise decides. “You wait and see.”

Unfortunately, Gwen’s father isn’t home and she has to leave a message. She wants a plane ticket, which he can mail to the Justices’, to be sure it arrives safely. She loves him and misses him, and there’s nothing more to say.

“Did your phone call work out?” Louise Justice asks when Gwen comes into the kitchen, carrying her boots so she won’t track mud in, the little dog following close behind.

“Not exactly,” Gwen admits. “I might get some mail from my father delivered here, if that’s okay.”

“Perfectly fine,” Louise says, although she wonders why that would be.

Gwen sits at the table, which is already set for dinner. There is a homemade chicken pot pie, biscuits, and brussels sprouts in need of butter. The sight of a real dinner fills Gwen’s eyes with tears. There’s hardly any food in the refrigerator at Guardian Farm; no one seems to care if they eat. Now that March’s car doesn’t work, Hollis has to drive her if she wants to go to the Red Apple market, or he and Hank go to the bargain warehouse up near Gloucester.

“Would you like to have dinner with us?” Louise asks when she sees the way Gwen is staring at the food.

Actually, she’d like to move in. She’d have first and then second helpings, with apple pie for dessert, then she’d go upstairs and sleep in the guest room, on clean white sheets, with the dog curled up beside her. The problem is her attachments, as if devotion were a downfall.

“I’d better head back,” Gwen says.

Louise Justice can’t help but think of that windy night, all those years ago, when she saw the bruises on Belinda’s arm.

“Well, you’re not walking,” Louise decides.

“Really, it’s not far,” Gwen insists, but the Judge, who’s come in for dinner, has seen the stubborn expression on Louise’s face. He won’t get dinner for another hour, that much is sure.

“I’ll drive you.” The Judge has made up his mind. This way he can stop at the cemetery, as he does two or three times a week.

They go out to the Judge’s old Saab, with Sister leading the way.

“Give the front tire a wallop,” the Judge tells Gwen.

Gwen looks at him, then grins and kicks the Saab’s tire.

“Helps it to start,” the Judge informs her.

The old sedan wheezes when the Judge gives it some gas, but it jolts into action, and they start for Route 22. Usually, the Judge doesn’t like to come this way, but lately, he can’t bring himself to drive on the old road that leads past Fox Hill. He doesn’t want to see that house empty, and all its windows dark. When they make the turn at the devil’s corner, the car skids a bit.

“Terrible spot,” the Judge says. “Best avoided.”

As soon as they pull into the driveway and the Saab sputters to a stop, Gwen grabs the door handle. She intends to say a quick thanks, and get out. She’s ready to hold her tongue and watch her ways, avoiding Hollis at all costs. But the Judge is already getting out of the car.

“I think I’ll come inside,” he says. “Give my regards to your mother.”

Before Gwen can stop him, the Judge is headed to the front door at a pace a younger man would have trouble keeping up with.

The dogs in the driveway are barking and Sister is growling as Gwen carries the terrier and races after the Judge.

“This probably isn’t a good idea,” she says.

“Oh?” The Judge has stopped to study her.

She can’t tell him that she’s afraid his presence will anger Hollis, and then they’ll all have to pay the price. “You don’t need to bother.”

“It’s no bother,” the Judge says, as he goes up and knocks on the door.

Gwen doesn’t want him inside, the Judge knows that. He has seen this over and over again in court. He cannot count the times he has heard that phrase “Don’t bother” come out of the mouths of victims, especially in domestic disputes. When he first came to the bench he didn’t understand the code people use, the ways a fact can be twisted and still manage to be the truth. He didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it, We didn’t mean it, and yet, it’s done. After all the years he’s spent in a courtroom, Bill Justice has acquired a lie detector implanted in his brain. And the funny thing is, after seeing how easily people tore each other apart, he could still come home and lie to his wife and persuade himself it was for her own good.

It’s Hollis who opens the door, and he stops short when he sees the Judge. “To what do we owe this pleasure?” His tone is reasonably agreeable, not that that’s the way he feels. “You’re not selling Girl Scout cookies, I’ll bet.”

“I thought I’d bring Gwen home,” the Judge says.

Gwen slips into the house, trying her best to be invisible. Hollis lets her by, but he doesn’t open the door to invite the Judge in. If it were anyone else but Bill Justice at the door, he’d probably just slam it shut. Because it is the Judge, Hollis smiles gamely.

“Teenagers,” Hollis says, assessing the Judge’s face to see if Gwen has told him about their run-in and coming up with very little. The Judge, after all, is a poker player, a good game to know for someone in his line of work.

“I thought I could say hello to March,” the Judge says.

“I think she’s asleep,” Hollis has the nerve to say, even though it’s not quite seven.

This lie might have passed had March not heard the red dogs barking, then looked out her window and caught sight of the Judge’s car. She’s pulled on a sweater and come downstairs in her bare feet.

“It’s so nice to have you stop by,” she says to the Judge when she gets to the door. They never have company out here, and although March tells herself she doesn’t miss a social life, she’s inordinately pleased to see the Judge. “I’ve been meaning to call Louise. I never did thank her for that wonderful dinner.”

March has her hair pulled back, and the Judge is surprised to see how white it has turned. She’s skinnier than he remembered as well; could it be she’s lost this much weight since Thanksgiving?

“I was just giving Gwen a ride home from town,” the Judge tells March.

“Was Gwen in town?” March asks Hollis. “I didn’t realize that.”

Now the Judge knows what’s wrong. March seems like a sleepwalker. Wake up, he wants to tell her. Open your eyes.

“Looks like it,” Hollis says.

“Well, come in.” March is still beautiful when she smiles. “Have some tea.”

When the door is opened wider, the Judge can see into the kitchen. It is dimly lit and bare, as if no one lived there.

“With a cook like Mrs. Justice for a wife, the Judge certainly doesn’t want our tea,” Hollis says. “Isn’t that a fact?”

Hollis and the Judge look at each other. Unless the Judge is mistaken, and he rarely is about such things, there is an attempt at intimidation beneath the surface. He’s seen it before, at hearings and trials, and he knows precisely what this sort of man is trying to tell him. Don’t fuck with me. Don’t even try.

“Louise would love for you to come to dinner,” the Judge tells March. “How about Friday?”

March looks at Hollis.

“That won’t work out,” Hollis says. “Friday isn’t good.”

March loops her arm around Hollis’s waist. “I guess we have plans. Please tell Louise thank you anyway for the invitation.”

“Well, we’ll be in touch.” The Judge nods. “We’ll figure something out.”

Hollis remains by the back door until the Judge has gotten into his car and pulled down the driveway. When the Saab turns onto Route 22, Hollis heads for the little blue bedroom where Gwen has been listening to every word through the thin plaster walls.

“What’s wrong?” March says, following Hollis, not that he’s listening to her. In his opinion she doesn’t need to understand this; he can take care of the girl, after all.

Hollis stands in the doorway to the little room. Gwen is on her bed, a blanket wrapped around her, though it’s flimsy protection. She feels all clenched up, as if she were expecting to be hit.

“If you ever bring the Judge out here again,” Hollis tells Gwen, “you will seriously regret it.”

“Wait a second,” March says, confused.

“Let me handle this.” Hollis cuts her off. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” he asks Gwen.

Gwen is going along with her plan of no resistance. She nods, agreeing to whatever crap he’s spouting, grateful that the blanket is covering her and he can’t see that she’s shaking. Grateful that her mother is there, for March’s presence seems to offer some immunity from Hollis coming any closer.

“I don’t want him or anyone else on my property,” Hollis informs March. “This girl needs to know that.”

He’s got that look on his face March knows far too well. He’s in a mood, he won’t back down; he’s thinking only of the doors which were closed to him, not of how they’re all open to him now.

“That’s fine,” March says. “The Judge won’t come back here.”

She counts to ten and by the time she reaches that last number, Hollis has gone outside to cool off. The screen door slams behind him, and there’s an echo, cold wood against colder wood. They can hear his footsteps on the frozen ground on this quiet December night. They can hear the clatter of a typewriter as Hank works on his senior paper on the Founder, and a soft whining from Sister, who is hiding under the bed, fur darkened by dust. March goes to the window and sees Hollis out there by himself, looking up at the stars.

“He doesn’t mean any of that,” March says to her daughter. “Not really.”

Gwen looks at her mother. She feels an odd tenderness, the way one might when finished with crying.

“Mother,” she says simply, as if she were teaching sums to a six-year-old, “he certainly does.”

21

Susie Justice gets home in a hurry, after a whirlwind trip to Florida. In six days she has been to Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami, then hop-skipped over to Orlando. She’s writing a four-part series for The Bugle about vacation possibilities and retirement options, which will be chock-full of places to stay and eat and swim. She will not, however, mention in this cheery article how dreadful it is to come back to the cold once your trip is over, although she might suggest it’s best to have the person who retrieves your mail while you’re away take a look at your oil burner as well, as Susie’s seems to have died during her absence, and she comes home to a stone-cold house, with pipes that are close to bursting.

Ken Helm is down in the basement, fixing the burner, and Susie is in her kitchen, still wearing her coat and her gloves, when Ed Milton arrives with a pizza and Susie’s dogs, who have been staying with him for the past few days and who now follow on his heels, staring at him with adoration, since he was the one to most recently measure out their kibble.

“Wow,” Ed says when he sees how red Susie is. Florida, after all, will do that to a blonde.

“I ran out of sunblock,” Susie explains.

“I should have gone with you,” Ed says. “I would have made sure you paid attention to the SPF.”

Maybe his arms around her feel so good because it’s freezing, or maybe she really missed him. “I wouldn’t have listened to you,” Susie murmurs.

“What is going on in here?” Ed asks. “It’s freezing.”

There is a metallic banging rising from the basement.

“Ken Helm,” Susie explains. “Oil burner.”

As much as she hates to admit it, she did miss Ed, and this makes her nervous. This is not the way Susie likes to run her life, mooning over somebody, thinking about making sure they get into bed as soon as Ken Helm leaves, even though she should be attending to the Florida article. She’s going to have to find a getaways-to-Florida book at the library tomorrow, since she paid more attention to trying to track down Hollis’s past than she did to restaurants and theme parks.

“The most interesting thing about Hollis,” she tells Ed, as he opens the pizza box and they begin to eat standing up beside the counter, “is that nobody wanted to talk about him. His lawyer down there refused to see me. I went to this huge condo complex he owns in Orlando, and no one would speak to me. Not even the janitor. When I went to the racetrack he’s part owner of down in Fort Lauderdale, people clammed up so tight they wouldn’t even tell me the temperature. It’s like he doesn’t exist, in spite of everything he owns down there, which let me tell you, is plenty.”

“So, nothing?” Ed asks. He grabs another slice of pizza and begins to eat, eyes trained on Susie.

“I found one guy who let me take him out for a drink.” She laughs when she sees the expression on Ed’s face. “He was ancient, an old horse trainer who was still lugging around water and oats at the track. When I brought up Hollis’s name, he said, ‘Mr. Death.’ ”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He wouldn’t say. But he did tell me that Hollis made his money by staying close to rich people, and by the time he was done, he was rich himself.”

“Rich people with horses?” Ed asks.

“That’s right. Do you think it was illegal gambling?”

“Susie,” Ed says. “Don’t go down this road.”

Susie blinks. Ed thinks she’s got something. The heat has kicked on, and the oil burner in the basement has begun to groan.

“Don’t ever tell me to quit,” Susie says. “I mean it.”

“Okay. Then if you want to know what I think, I’ll tell you. Insurance fraud.”

“There you go,” Ken Helm shouts from the basement. “It’s working now.”

“There was just a case of this over at the Olympia track. You’ve got an expensive horse that’s not performing, the cost-effective measure is an accident or death and then you can collect your insurance payment.”

“This is great,” Susie says. “I got him.”

Ed shakes his head. “You’ll never prove it. Hollis’s involvement in anything like that was all so long ago that by now, records will be tossed, even by the insurance companies, and everyone will have terminal memory loss.”

“You’re telling me to forget it? After all this?”

“Some people get away with things,” Ed Milton says sadly.

“Well, someone should pay him back for everything he’s done,” Ken Helm says. He has come upstairs, dirty from crawling around in the cellar; the wall he’s leaning against will have a film of black dust when he’s gone. “Hey there, Chief,” he says to greet Ed. “That should hold your burner for a little while,” he tells Susie, “but you’re going to need a new one, eventually.”

When Ken leaves, Susanna Justice walks him to the door. “You’re going to keep looking for something on him, aren’t you?” Ken asks as he’s leaving.

“I don’t know,” Susie admits. “I might give it up.”

She doesn’t have the heart to tell Ken that the sort of judgment he’s seeking is not necessarily hers to set forth. Maybe she should have quoted the only passage from Matthew she can remember: What I want is mercy, not sacrifice.

That night, while Susie unpacks her suitcase, she can hear Ed running the water in her shower, and for some reason the sound gives her hope. She may decide to shock everyone in town, including herself, by marrying this guy. Marriage, after all, is a leap of confidence: We will be together, now and in the future. We are one, from this day forth. The Judge is thinking about such matters tonight as well, as he sits in his kitchen with a single light turned on. Marriage is many things to many people: a contract of convenience, a plight of truest love, an agreement made with a friend, or even with an enemy or, oftentimes, with a stranger you’re convinced that you know. Can you love two people? The Judge has mulled over this possibility for more than thirty years, and still has no answer. The answer, of course, is based on one’s interpretation of the nature of love, and the Judge considers himself to be too old and tired to expect any clarification at this point.

Still, he is thinking of Judith Dale tonight, as he often does at this hour, a time when most sensible people are already getting ready for bed. If he loved her would he have let her live the way she did, always waiting for what scraps of time he had, never having the choice to have a child of her own? But he did love her, that’s the thing, and he continues to love her even now. When he feels this way, he often gets in his car and drives, so he can cry alone. Oh, how he wishes he could confide in Louise, who has, for all these years, been his dearest friend. The Judge gets his coat, and as he’s about to go out the back door, Louise comes into the kitchen.

“This came this morning,” she says, handing him a thick envelope addressed to Gwen.

“A plane ticket,” the Judge guesses.

Louise nods. “I hope so. Why don’t you drop it off on your way to the cemetery.”

The Judge stands there, confused. Did she just say that?

Louise smooths the back of his coat, where it’s bunched up. She’s ready for bed, and her face is washed and clean; she looks a good deal like the girl that he married.

“Louise,” the Judge says.

“I’ll wait up for you,” she tells him. She hopes that after all this time, he won’t suddenly take it upon himself to apologize. She simply wants him to understand that she knows. That’s all. “I’ll fix us some tea.”

The Judge drives out to Guardian Farm thinking that after all he’s seen, people continue to amaze him. There’s very little traffic on the road, and no moon tonight. The Judge parks and gets out, carrying the envelope from Richard Cooper. Now there’s a man who’s got a great deal to learn, and who doesn’t seem to yet be aware of the difference between freedom and license. He should have come here with March in the first place. If there’s one thing the Judge has learned after all these years, it’s that only a fool tempts fate.

Gwen answers the door, wearing a heavy sweater; her hair is uncombed and her eyes are sleepy. Hollis and March are upstairs, and Gwen’s been fixing Hank some coffee; he’s finishing his paper on the Founder tonight, probably pulling an all-nighter, since his senior thesis is due in the morning.

“I didn’t ask you to come here,” Gwen says straightaway when she sees the Judge. She steps onto the porch, pulling the door closed behind her. She’s developed a nervous habit of chewing on her lip; when it bleeds she doesn’t seem to notice. “He doesn’t like company.”

“Your father sent a letter,” the Judge says.

“Oh,” Gwen says, relieved. “Oh, good.” She takes the letter and opens it while Sister noses at the door and comes to sniff at the Judge’s shoes. “A plane ticket,” Gwen announces, and then, surprised, she adds, “Actually, two.”

“He’s hoping against hope,” the Judge says.

“I don’t understand any of it,” Gwen says.

“Well, you’re among the majority, if you’re talking about love.”

“That’s not what they’ve got,” Gwen says, looking up at the bedroom window.

When the Judge heads for his car, Gwen slips the plane tickets inside the waist of her jeans, then picks up Sister and goes back inside. Hank is still at the table, papers spread out before him, but he’s stopped working.

“What did he want?” Hank asks. Does he sound like Hollis? Lord, he hopes not. He’s not jealous, but he is desperate. He gets this way whenever he feels he might be losing Gwen.

They can hear the Judge’s Saab; it’s so loud when it starts up all Gwen can do is pray Hollis won’t hear.

“Nothing,” Gwen says. “He just stopped by.”

Hank feels a pain behind his eyes. Maybe he’s lost her already.

“Shit,” Gwen says when she hears something upstairs.

Hollis has slammed the bedroom door and is already coming down the stairs, cursing her. He’s calling her a bitch before he’s reached the first floor; no one’s ever taught her a lesson, but that will all change now.

“What’s wrong?” Hank says when Hollis comes into the kitchen, but even before the words are out of his mouth, Hollis is after Gwen, as if she were a mole he’d found in his garden and he had the right to grab her and shake her by the neck.

“Hey,” Hank says. He gets up from the table so quickly that he upsets his cup of coffee, and liquid spills over his research materials.

“I told you I didn’t want the Judge here,” Hollis is saying to Gwen. “But you think you’re too good to listen to anybody.”

“I don’t have to listen to you,” Gwen says right back to him. She feels as if he could snap her spine if he chose to, but she doesn’t care. How much she hates him is all she can think about at the moment.

March has come down from the bedroom, and she stands in the doorway to the kitchen. Now she knows how people freeze; she understands how that fire burned out of control before Alan could walk through the door. There is her daughter, frightened and shouting. There is the man she loves with his hands on her throat.

“I’m going to make you listen,” Hollis is saying to Gwen.

“I don’t think so,” Gwen says. She can see Hank coming toward them, but that’s not what gives her courage. She truly doesn’t care if Hollis hurts her; she wants him to, because that would only serve to prove her right in her opinion of him.

“You don’t want to do this,” Hank says, getting in between Hollis and Gwen. “Don’t do this.” He’s begging Hollis really; if he had to he would get down on his knees.

Hollis looks at the boy coldly, and then something clicks. “You’re right.” He goes into the parlor, where Mr. Cooper’s gun is still in its case.

“Shit,” Hank says when he sees Hollis go out the front door, the one no one uses anymore. Hank heads out the back, hoping he can cut Hollis off and talk to him. The red dogs come out of the shadows to greet Hank, but he jogs past them. He doesn’t like the way he feels inside, the way his stomach is lurching. It’s too quiet tonight; the air breaks like twigs.

“Now do you see what he’s like?” Gwen is saying to her mother in the cold kitchen of the house. “Now do you believe me?”

March knows that when he gets like this, he always regrets it. Tonight, when she takes him into their bed, he’ll cry. He’ll tell her that he never meant to hurt anyone, and she’ll believe him.

“Gwennie, you don’t understand,” March begins, but then she realizes that she hopes her daughter never will understand, and after that, how can she say more?

Gwen picks up Sister and slams out of the house. She races after Hank, and the closer she gets, the more she smells the bitter scent of hay. Already, the sound of the horses has begun to echo. When Gwen runs inside, Hollis is opening Tarot’s stall, and Tarot is in a panic at his proximity. He kicks the stall behind him, and shakes his head back and forth. Hollis has the gun under his arm as he drags open the wooden door.

“Wait until tomorrow.” Hank is saying. “You’ll feel different then.”

“Oh, really?” Hollis’s tone is amused, even though his mouth is set in a thin line. “And you assume I’m interested in what the fuck you think?”

“It’s late,” Hank says now. It’s not even ten, but Hank is willing to try anything to slow this down. His voice sounds comforting, but he’s well aware that there’s no comfort here. He puts his arm out, to stop Gwen from going closer. She is about to push him away, but then she looks at Hollis, and she knows she’d better stay put.

“Now you’re telling me what time it is?” Hollis says, and his voice is so distant it sounds as if its point of origin was a million miles away. He has spied Gwen, who is shivering as she holds Sister close to her chest. “You need to learn a lesson about what happens when things don’t belong to you. You can beg,” he tells Gwen, “but it won’t do you any good.”

Gwen can feel the cold air in her lungs every time she breathes. She can feel Hank next to her, the way his muscles are coiled, ready to do something, but unsure as to what that action should be.

“Come on,” Hollis says. “Beg.”

Gwen herself feels a weird sort of sensation inside her; it’s as if something were being boiled.

“Please,” she says.

Hollis considers, then shakes his head. “Not good enough.”

Nothing will ever be good enough, that’s the problem, Gwen sees that now. Some things are done rather than decided, and before she plans it out entirely, Gwen rushes for the door to Tarot’s stall and swings it wide open.

“Go,” she screams, but that’s not necessary. Tarot moves so fast that Hollis has to jump aside, and by the time Hollis is thinking straight enough to go for his gun, his target is out in the open, running so fast the wind can’t keep up, leaving a cloud of his breath behind. Hollis goes to the barn door and fires once, but by then Tarot has jumped the first fence in the field, and is bolting over the next. Hank and Gwen can hear him running, riderless and hot, on this freezing, black night.

When the horse arrives in the Marshes, the Coward is dreaming of snow. He opens his eyes when he hears a clatter, and sure enough, snow is falling and beside the apple tree stands Belinda’s horse, pawing at the frozen ground, searching for apples.

The Coward has been sleeping in his coat and his boots; he goes outside and huddles near the horse and watches him eat. After a while, he gets a rope and ties the horse to the tree.

“There you go,” the Coward tells the horse. “That’s your bed.”

The Coward gets himself a nightcap and sits on his porch until Gwen arrives at his rickety, useless gate, her little white dog trailing behind. Gwen’s eyes look strange and feverish and she has a purple bruise across her face. Hollis hit her only once, as she went past him leaving the barn, but he made certain to strike hard. There are broken blood vessels beneath her skin; he’s left his mark for weeks to come.

When the Coward sees the way she looks, he has a funny feeling in his arms and legs, as though someone had set a match to his flesh. “What did he do to you?” he asks.

The girl looks straight ahead. Tears are falling from her eyes, but she’s not making a sound.

“I won’t let him get to this horse, if that’s what you’re worried about,” the Coward says, suddenly much braver than he imagined he could be. He’d kill any man who came looking for this horse, or be killed himself. If he can stay sober long enough. That’s the hitch, but there’s no need to mention it to this lovely girl.

“Really?” Gwen says, because she’s already realized she can’t take Tarot with her and she can’t stay. “You’d do that?”

“I would,” the Coward vows.

A little while later, Hank comes looking for Gwen. He remained at the house until Hollis calmed down; it was, he believes, the least he could do. He might have leapt to protect Gwen when Hollis reached out and slapped her, but it was so sudden Hank was caught completely by surprise, or so he tells himself. Hollis doesn’t mean to do these things; he’s like a bomb, one which, if you don’t defuse it straightaway, will go off when you least expect it. Surely, Gwen will understand this, and the reason for Hank’s delay. Of course Hank hasn’t sided with Hollis-it’s simply a question of loyalty, not unlike a pledge you make to a country about to enter a foolish, wrongheaded war.

Gwen is sitting on the Coward’s floor when Hank arrives; she’s wrapped in a ratty wool blanket Judith Dale brought here years ago, trying her best to ignore how drunk the Coward has become.

“It’s about time,” the Coward says to Hank when the boy pushes open the door. “God, you are slow.”

But fast or slow no longer matters, Hank realizes that as soon as he sees the mark Hollis left on Gwen’s face. Hollis hit her hard, that’s what Hank sees now, and he meant to. Certainly, Hank can try to explain it away, he can sit beside her and loop his arm around her and whisper how awful this is, how sorry he is, how Hollis probably regrets what has happened already, how he’d never actually go ahead and hurt Tarot, but none of this signifies anymore. Sitting there, more beautiful than ever, Gwen has made the decision to go.

God, you are slow, Hank keeps thinking as Gwen laces her fingers through his and rests her head on his shoulder.

“It’s not your fault,” she tells him, after the Coward has nodded off, and they are as good as alone. “It’s just the way things turned out.”

Hank laughs at that, a short harsh laugh that goes nowhere. He leans against the thin plaster wall where colonies of ants have lived for decades, perhaps for as long as a century. He closes his eyes.

Whose fault is it when love is denied? When youth is a curse rather than a blessing? Oh, if only there weren’t other people involved; if only they were the last two people on earth, just them, opening the door to this old house, looking out at the deep, blue night and all those stars they’ll never learn the names of, all those planets they can’t even see.

They let the Coward sleep, and walk down into the Marshes. They hardly speak. What, after all, would they say? Wait for me? Don’t hold this against me? Don’t forget me, not tonight and not ever? Without language they can at least pretend they are the last two people, or perhaps the first, the ones who don’t need speech. They need each other, that’s all, for one last night.

They stay down in the Marshes until their fingers and toes are nearly frozen; then they come back inside, where they fall asleep side by side on the Coward’s floor, close together, their breath even and deep. They are greedy for sleep and forgetfulness; one pure and perfect night of sleep, that’s what they yearn for, but even that is too much to expect. Is it possible for two people to have the same dream? As Hank is sleeping on the hard, wooden floor he dreams of a hedge of evergreens in which there is a door. On one side of the hedge is the future, on the other side, the past. In Gwen’s dream the hedge is made of thorns and the door has a lock and key. Someone is urging her to step through. Go ahead, they tell her, and when she does, the lock falls away. She can’t look back, she knows that much; she doesn’t dare. In his own dream, on the threshold of his gate, Hank can hear her footsteps in the distance, already fading.

In the morning, when the light is yellow and pale, and the Coward has begun to heat a big kettle of ice into drinking water for the horse, Hank steps outside onto the porch. By then, Gwen is gone.

“She went to Susanna Justice’s,” the Coward tells him. “She took the dog with her. She’s going home.”

Hank nods and sits down on the cold wooden steps of his father’s house. He notices that the tide coming in sounds as if a million tears were falling. Perhaps it’s the ice cracking beneath the rush of cold salt water. “I don’t blame her,” he says.

“Blame,” the Coward says, “is a serious thing.”

“Hey, when all else fails, blame yourself, right?” Hank tries to smile, but he feels too tight inside.

“If he comes for the horse, I’ll kill him,” the Coward says.

“Yeah?” This has to be a joke. “How do you plan to do that?”

The Coward watches a heron that is so far off it would look like a branch to other eyes. “My bare hands,” he says.

Hank tries his best not to laugh. “You know what I’d try first?” he suggests. “Camouflage.”

They work all the rest of the day on a dilapidated, filthy little outbuilding behind the house, which can serve as a barn. Hank hammers some boards over the holes in the wall and the Coward sets marsh grass over the roof. Today is the day Hank’s senior thesis is due, but maybe he can get an extension.

“I can write you a note,” the Coward says. “I’ll explain everything to the school authorities.”

“No way. Don’t think anything is different between us,” Hank warns the old man. “I’m helping with Tarot because of Gwen, not you.”

“Of course,” the Coward says. “And this is from Gwen, not from me.”

The Coward slides the silver compass which once belonged to him onto the porch railing. Out in the tall grass, the stick that looks like a heron takes flight, slowly and beautifully in the last of the day’s light.

“May you never be lost,” Alan Murray tells his son.

22

March is no longer working on her jewelry or expecting Hollis to bring back silver or gold. She has taken the gem-stones she’d hoped to set into bracelets, the opals and the tourmalines, and stored them in a canvas bag, kept in a dresser drawer. Instead of working, she stares at the ice on the window. She waits for night to fall. Sometimes she goes out beyond the fields. She walks past the meadows and the split-rail fences; once, she went as far as the cemetery, but she felt frightened there. There were no leaves on the trees, and the ground seemed so unforgiving and hard. Worst of all, she thought she saw Judith Dale in the distance; she thought she saw her crying.

Now, March will not venture any farther than Fox Hill. That, at least, is familiar territory. She goes in the sleet and the snow, and maybe this is why she’s developed a cough. It’s an aggravating hack that won’t go away, in spite of all the hot tea with honey she drinks. Fox Hill makes her sad, but she goes anyway. The mourning doves are gone. Hank’s attempt to move their nest has failed; they’re gone for good. When March peers into the windows of the old house, she cannot help but think of Judith Dale, and sometimes she looks over her shoulder, as if Judith might somehow appear.

Lately, March has been wondering why Mrs. Dale was not buried with the emerald ring. the gift of her true love. March has been thinking about this every day when she walks through the woods, and she believes she finally has the answer. Judith was not wearing the ring when she died; she’d already removed it, and set it aside. She was done with love. At least with the sort of love that has rules you have to abide by, and which, in the end, offers far less than you’d hoped for.

It’s a very good thing that Gwen has gone. She would hate how dark it gets here, pitch-black by as early as four; she would despise how small their lives have become, how poor. On the holidays, there was no exchange of presents; even the gifts March fashioned have remained stored away. Louise Justice left a basket of eggnog and fruitcake from the library committee on their doorstep, similar to the one she left at the Coward’s house. They are in that wretched group people in town feel sorry for, the pathetic creatures who don’t even know enough to celebrate a holiday.

Well, Hollis at least still goes out; he’s often at the Lyon Cafe, but he never takes March along. Other men might look at her. And, of course, the piece he never mentions: Other women might be annoyed by her presence. March is sincerely glad to hear him leave on those nights, as she is relieved when he gets out of bed in the mornings to go and check the boundaries of his property. Oh, he likes his property, yes he does. For weeks after Gwen left, he went out with his gun; he drove down every back road, yet he never did find the horse. March knows where it is, but she’s not telling. She happened to discover its whereabouts one day when she was out walking, late, when dusk was settling and the light was so unreliable that at first she thought she was seeing shadows.

It was her brother, Alan, and the horse she saw, those two old bags of bones. Alan was gathering hay, which he cut with a scythe, then lifted onto the horse’s back where it was tied with a rope. Blackbirds and gulls circled above the marsh, and the sound of the scythe echoed. March could feel her own heart beat in the silence; she held her black scarf over her mouth so her breath wouldn’t freeze. She wished she could be like those blackbirds and fly far from here. She wished she could have cried out, Save us from evil and from ourselves above all.

Anything can fuel an argument between Hollis and March now. She looks at him the wrong way, she interrupts his work, she breathes; she’s somehow not enough his. His ardor hasn’t cooled, but often his flesh won’t comply with his spirit’s demands. When he can’t make love to her he insists it’s her fault. She never does as he says and she’s taken to fighting back, which is foolish. She leaves the room, she slams the door behind her, behavior which only gives him all the more reason to go to one of the women in town who are so willing to pretend he belongs to them, if only for a few hours. When he comes home, he blames March even for this. She sent him into another woman’s arms; she forced him to stray. Why does she do this to him? To them? After he’s done berating her, he turns his fury on himself, and that, of course, is the thread that always ties March to him; that is the moment when she always goes to him and holds him. No one will ever love you the way I do, that’s what he tells her then. No one can have you, if I can’t. Don’t even think about leaving. I mean that. Don’t even try.

On New Year’s Eve March is glad that Hollis leaves early. Let him go out and try to enjoy himself; she’s tired and her cough is worse and she’s grateful for some peace and quiet. Hank is supposed to go to a party, but at the last minute he decides to skip it. He’s already wearing his good white shirt and has combed his hair, but it’s Gwen he wants to be with, not his friends from school. He plans to watch TV and go to bed early, yet when he sees March in the kitchen, all alone, he can’t abandon her. They drink tea and play five-hundred rummy, and then, in spite of himself, Hank gets restless.

“Let’s go for a ride,” he suggests.

March smiles up at her nephew. His sweetness always astounds her. “Go out with your friends,” she says.

“Come on,” Hank insists. “I’ve got my car.”

March laughs at that since Hank’s car, an old Pontiac he bought last week, has no heat and no backseat and is dented all the way around, from the previous driver. The rattletrap, they call it. The icebox.

“We’ll go out and get one beer. Just for New Year’s,” he says. “We can’t just sit here.”

March grabs her coat and her long black scarf and hastily runs a brush through her hair. They get in the car, but they’re freezing by the time they reach the liquor store; March runs in to buy them their bottles of beer so they can toast the New Year.

“Where do you think Gwen is tonight?” Hank asks March as they drive toward town.

“Probably with her dad,” March guesses. “Don’t worry, I’m sure she’s not out with some other boy.”

“That’s all right,” Hank says. “I want her to have a good time. I don’t own her.”

“Right,” March says, opening her beer and taking a sip. “Nobody owns anybody. Or so they say.”

A light snow has begun. Flakes catch on the windshield and stick like glue. Hank switches on the wipers and they turn onto Main Street. They drive through town, counting the houses where parties are being held. When they pass by the Lyon, March has a funny feeling in her stomach. She’s one of those women who no longer want to know the truth.

“Don’t stop,” she tells Hank.

They go on, all through the town. The defroster in the car isn’t much use, and every once in a while Hank wipes off the windshield in front of him with the palm of his hand, or March cleans the glass with the tail end of her scarf. In very little time, everything is covered with a blanket of white. It is a beautiful night, so quiet the sound of their tires echoes as they drive on.

“You ought to see Dr. Henderson about that cough,” Hank says when March starts hacking.

“It’s the cold weather,” March says. “I’m not used to it.”

It feels so odd to be in the village; everything seems brighter and bigger than usual.

“Look at him.” March laughs when they pass Town Hall. The Founder is covered in snow; only his nose is recognizable.

“I did my senior thesis on him, and I never realized he had such a big nose.” Hank grins. “They probably should have named this town Noseville.”

“Nostriltown,” March suggests, as she finishes her beer.

“Schnoz City.” Hank gets a particular hoot out of that one. “The football team at the high school could be the Schnozkickers.”

March lets out a laugh. “They’d have big noses on the back of their jackets.”

“Good old Schnoz City,” Hank says affectionately. “Born and bred there.”

They have turned down a side street, the one where Susanna Justice lives. Susie’s little house is all lit up and music floats into the street.

“She’s having a party,” March says.

They pull over and park, then exchange a look.

“We could go in for a little while,” Hank says.

“Have a drink and leave,” March agrees.

March reaches into her coat pocket for an old lipstick, then peers into the rearview mirror so she can apply some color to her face. They walk through the snow, and go in through Susie’s unlocked front door. It’s hot in this little house, and noisy. There’s the scent of cider and beer and pizza. As soon as Susie spies March, she runs over and hugs her.

“How come you didn’t invite me?” March teases.

Susie is wearing a violet sweater decorated with rhinestones and a short purple skirt. She looks beautiful tonight, flushed and breathless and a little drunk.

“I sent you an invitation,” Susie says. “I went out to see you last week, and Hollis told me you were sleeping, you couldn’t see me. I thought he was lying, but what could I do?”

“Well, I’m here now,” March says.

“Yes, you are.” Susie smiles. “You know Ed,” she adds when a good-looking man comes over to loop his arm around her waist. Susie’s two Labrador retrievers are following him, eyeing the platter of mini-knishes Ed’s been circulating.

“Sure, I remember,” March says. “Thanksgiving.”

“This guy must be starving.” Ed nods at Hank. “He’s started to drool.”

They all laugh when they see how Hank is staring at the platters of food, as rapt as the retrievers.

“Come on.” Ed guides Hank toward a buffet table which spans the width of Susie’s tiny living room.

“Let’s go into the kitchen,” Susie says to March.

March nods and follows. She knows Susie’s been checking her out; her clothes, after all, aren’t nice enough for a party, and she didn’t think to do anything about her hair, not even tie it away from her face. People seem to be staring at her as they head for the kitchen. She lives with the richest man in the county, and look at what she’s wearing-worn corduroy slacks and a red sweater from the old-clothes bin at the Harvest Fair.

“You’ve got to try the pizza,” Susie tells March. “It’s made with pesto and feta cheese.”

It’s broiling in the kitchen-Ed and Susie spent all afternoon cooking pizzas with the oven turned on high-but March is shivering and she can’t get rid of her damned cough.

“Have you seen a doctor?” Susie says as she pours March a glass of wine. “Because you should.”

“You think I’m sick because I’m living out there with him,” March says.

Susie puts down the plate she’s already heaped with pizza and a salad Miranda Henderson brought over. “You told me not to judge,” she says.

March smiles, and suddenly starving, she reaches for the plate of food. As she does, Susie sees a circle of purple bruises on her arm, leftovers of a disagreement they had last Saturday night when Hollis came home after midnight and refused to say where he’d been. I’m not your servant, he’d snapped at March, as though she were some harping wife. I don’t have to account to you.

“Are you going to tell me it’s anemia?” Susie asks.

“It was nothing.”

Susie laughs; she can’t help herself. “March. That’s what they all say.”

“No, it really was nothing,” March insists. “We were arguing and he grabbed me. Believe me, if he ever hit me, I’d be gone.”

“Eat,” Susie suggests, and she stands there and watches March devour the pizza.

Someone in the living room has switched on the radio; there’s already a countdown to midnight. Hank has made himself comfortable on the couch, so he can concentrate on eating. There’s smoked salmon on crackers, bluefish pâté, marinated mushrooms, French Brie. He’s eating so fast and so much that Susie’s dogs have switched their allegiance from Ed and are now stationed by Hank’s feet.

“If you slow down,” Bud Horace, the animal control officer, advises when he sits beside Hank, “you can fit more food in. The salmon is good, but you should try the pizza.”

Hank is directed toward the kitchen, but it’s hard to get through the crowd. He’s doing his best to elbow his way past the bar set up in a comer near the front window when he sees Hollis’s truck pull up.

“Fuck it,” Hank says under his breath. He’s the one who’s going to be held accountable for this and he knows it.

Hollis comes in through the front door, wearing a black overcoat made of soft Italian wool, bringing in cold air and suspicion. He stops to greet two members of the town council, to whom he made sizable contributions, but his eyes flicker over the room. Before he can spy Hank, Hank makes his way into the kitchen.

“Hollis is here,” he tells March.

March looks at him; then, without saying a word, she goes to the back door and wrenches it open. She’s so panicked she doesn’t even think to retrieve her coat. Hollis is probably walking through the living room right now.

“Wait a second,” Susie says, grabbing March’s arm and holding her back. “The man you’re living with is here and you’re running out the back door. Think about it, March.”

“You don’t understand,” March says. She has said this so often it probably sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. “He’ll see my being here as a betrayal. He’ll see me as one of you.”

“Gwen left a plane ticket here. You could use it. You could leave-even for a little while. Take some time and think.”

March has to laugh at that. You do not think about such matters; you fall into them, head over heels, without a safety net, without a rope.

That’s what Hollis sees when he comes into the kitchen-March laughing at the back door-and that doesn’t please him one bit. Earlier tonight, Hollis met Alison Hartwig at the Lyon; then they went over to her place-she had managed to get rid of the kids and her mother-but he let Alison know he had to be home before midnight. And then, after all that, when he got back to Guardian Farm, no one was there. Since that time, it’s taken close to an hour for him to track March down. This doesn’t please him either.

“Hey, Susie,” he says, as though he isn’t annoyed in the least. “Great party.”

“Yeah, too bad you weren’t invited,” Susie says.

Hollis grins at that. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll hurt my feelings?”

“Nope,” Susie says.

Hollis leans closer to March and kisses her. His lips are cold, and there’s snow in the folds of his coat. “You’re the most beautiful woman here,” he says. “As usual.” He notices Hank now, and wonders if perhaps the boy hasn’t taken it too much on himself to think over matters that are none of his business. “I didn’t expect to see you here,” he tells Hank. “You’d better head out.”

Hank looks at March, uncertain as to what he should do.

“Go on,” March insists. You can’t even tell that she’s nervous. She laughs, then has a sip of wine. “Find some folks your own age. Just don’t freeze in that car of yours.”

“Sure,” Hank mumbles.

“Hey.” As Hank is about to pass him by, Hollis puts a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t tell me you’ve been drinking.”

“Just a beer,” Hank says. “One.”

“You don’t want to go in that direction,” Hollis says. “Considering your background and all.”

It is the worst possible thing Hollis could say to Hank and he knows it-the threat that he might take after his father. March can’t quite believe she has actually heard right.

“He had one beer,” March says. “I bought it for him. That doesn’t mean he’s an alcoholic.”

“Maybe I’ll stick to Coke.” Hank grabs a can from the counter. “It’s probably not a bad idea.”

“We’d better head out too,” Hollis tells March after Hank has left.

He says it easily, but he doesn’t mean it that way. Nothing is easy with Hollis. March looks at him closely. The evidence is in his eyes. That’s where the anger is.

“You could spend the night,” Susie says to March. She’s not fooled by Hollis’s pleasant manner, and she never will be.

Hollis laughs. “Aren’t you girls a little too old for pajama parties?”

March hugs Susie. “Thanks,” she says. “Another time.”

“You can come back whenever you want to,” Susie tells her, low so that Hollis has to strain to hear. “You know that.”

By the time March gets to the front door, Hollis is waiting with her coat and scarf. There’s confetti in the air and slow music playing, but Hollis pays no attention. He holds open the door for March, then lets it slam once they’re out of the house.

“Don’t ever do that to me again,” he says as they start down the snowy walkway leading to the sidewalk. They can still hear voices from the party drifting out of Susie’s place. Hollis is so furious that the air around him pops. “You should have been there when I got home, but you weren’t, and that’s the problem.”

He grabs her by the arm, to make his point, to make certain she’s listening and to reel her in, closer.

“I don’t like an empty house,” he says, in a voice so mean it’s barely recognizable.

March hears Susie’s front door slam as another guest leaves the party. Some man has stepped out onto Susie’s porch and March is mortified to think of the tableau which greets this stranger: an angry man, a woman who looks frightened, snow falling, ice on the herringboned brick path.

“What are you looking at?” Hollis is facing the stranger, whom March now recognizes as someone who works at the paper with Susie. The sports editor, she thinks. Bert something-or-other. Whoever he is, he was about to take his gloves from his overcoat pocket-he’s already got his car keys in his hand-but he stopped when he saw Hollis holding on to March.

“Hey, buddy,” he says to Hollis, his voice soft, as though he were talking to some maniac. “Come on. Ease up. It’s New Year’s Eve.”

March blinks back her tears. That’s how they look to him: A couple on the edge. A woman who’s about to be hurt somehow. And maybe he’s right. When it comes down to it, who is she anyway? The woman she thinks she is or the woman she appears to be?

“What did you call me?” Hollis says. He lets go of March and takes a step toward Susie’s front door. He used to talk this way to Alan and his friends when they followed him home, those boys who tossed rocks and curses just above his head. Buddy is just another way to say he’s nothing, and he doesn’t have to listen to that. Not anymore.

March is breathing frigid night air, but she’s burning up inside. What she wants is for Susie’s guest to go back to the party-then she and Hollis can walk away from this without any permanent damage. She wants that so badly she can taste it, but the taste is bitter, a cold soup made of stones.

The door behind the stranger opens again, and light floods the walkway. Two women, leaving Susie’s party, are laughing, but the laughter falls onto the ice and onto the sidewalk, where it cracks open into silence.

“Honey?”. one of the women calls when she sees Hollis and the stranger facing off. It’s the sports editor’s wife or his girlfriend, March realizes this from the measure of concern in her voice. “Honey?” The woman blinks several times, as if what she is seeing right in front of her eyes couldn’t possibly be so.

“Let’s go,” March says. Now she’s the one to grab Hollis, but he jerks away. When he turns to her, she would swear he doesn’t know her.

“Are you telling me what to do?” Hollis asks.

Susie’s three guests are watching in silence; all anyone can hear is snow falling.

“Please.” His favorite word in the world, and March knows it. “Please,” she whispers, so that those people watching don’t see that she’s begging.

When they get to the truck, Hollis steps in front of March, and for an instant March thinks he’s going to open the passenger door for her. Then she sees the look on his face and she lurches away, so that her back is flat against the door. In spite of herself, she cries out. Her eyes are closed when he slams his fists through the window on either side of her head; she hears glass falling as though meteors were raining from the sky. March cries out again, then hunkers down to protect herself, until she realizes what has happened. She’s not the one he aimed to injure. He has purposely crashed through the glass, and when he withdraws his hands from the shattered window they are covered with blood.

“Oh, no,” March says when she sees what he’s done. She rises to her feet. If this is what love can do, they’d best give it another name. There is blood on the concrete, and in the snow, but Hollis doesn’t seem to notice; that’s what’s scaring her most of all. He pulls her to him, with all that blood on his hands.

“I would rather hurt myself than hurt you,” Hollis says. “I never want to hurt you.”

“I know that,” March tells him.

“Hey!” the man on Susie’s porch shouts. “Are you all right?”

They are so far from that, March doesn’t waste her time answering. Her attention is riveted on the way blood spreads. It’s on her boots; it’s pooling beneath her feet.

“I know you didn’t mean it,” March says.

Those guests leaving the party are still watching from the brick walkway, uncertain as to whether or not they should intervene. It is still possible to hear the festivities inside the house. Someone must have told a joke, because several people are laughing, and the laughter circles upward. In spite of the snow, March can see stars in the sky, the way they used to when they dragged the ladder out to the chestnut tree and climbed as high as they could.

March takes her scarf and tries to clean the glass out of the gashes in Hollis’s hands, but there’s too much blood, and Hollis’s blood seems far too hot in the chilly air. March can’t stop shaking; it’s as if she had some rare disease for which there’s no definitive diagnosis. Maybe it’s terror, maybe it’s regret, maybe it’s only the cold night, the last of the year.

“It’s all right,” Hollis tells her, but it’s not. He wraps the scarf around his hands. “See?” he says. “It’s nothing.” But that’s not true either.

March’s mouth is so parched that her lips hurt. Hollis insists on driving, even though the pressure from the steering wheel must cause him pain. They take the back road home, although the snow has made for treacherous driving. The gears of the truck grind; the tires slide over patches of ice. All the way there, March tries to see him in the same way she had before, but she can’t. No matter what she does, no matter how she tries, there’s a man of more than forty with bleeding hands who is driving too fast and who still has no idea of what he’s done to them.

When they get to the house, all the dogs are seeking shelter on the front porch. The snow is coming down harder. Hollis unwraps the scarf from his hands and washes up in the kitchen sink. When he’s done, they go upstairs to their bedroom. They don’t have to speak. Hollis, after all, is tired, and frankly March is too. As Hollis unlaces his boots, March watches him. He looks so old tonight, so completely worn out. Would she even recognize him if she met him on a crowded street? Would she know him at all?

Looking at him now, March sees that the boy she loved, the one who kissed her in the attic and promised to love her forever, is no longer inside him. That boy is separate. He’s taken on a life of his own. There he is, sitting at the foot of the bed, moving aside so Hollis can pull down the quilt and get in between the sheets. March lies down beside Hollis, but she keeps her eyes trained on that boy, the one she loves beyond all time and reason. Just as she suspected, he’s tired too. He rests his beautiful head, then closes his eyes.

March tries her best to be quiet; she doesn’t cough, doesn’t move. She listens for the sound of Hollis’s even breathing, and soon enough there it is, slow and easy. The boy she loves is now curled up on the extra quilt, lonely, the way he’ll always be, with or without her. He told her once he did not trust the human race and he never would. He told her he never meant to hurt her, and that, she knows, is true.

Although it’s not easy to leave that boy on the edge of the bed, March grabs her clothes and her boots and goes downstairs to dress in the dark kitchen. There is the teapot on the rear burner of the Coopers’ stove; there is Hollis’s black coat, where he left it, thrown over a wooden chair. There are his gloves, on the shelf, and the glass he last used to drink water, rinsed out and drying on the drain board. Everything March sees is a shadow in the dark, even herself: her scarf, her hand turning the doorknob, the way she shivers when she feels the cold against her skin.

She slips out the door so quietly that the dogs curled up on the porch don’t hear her pass by. When she gets to the very end of the driveway, she turns to look at the house. If she didn’t know better, she would swear that a girl with dark hair was standing in the place where the roses used to grow. If she didn’t know better, she’d hesitate. Instead, she turns and runs.

At first, she counts her steps the way she used to, but after a while she stops counting. She paces herself so she won’t become exhausted; she avoids the road and goes through the woods. The air is so cold it snaps; the clearing sky is filled with stars. March hurries; she’s going so fast that she might have missed seeing the foxes if her coat hadn’t been snagged by a branch. When she turns she spies them in the meadow, more than a dozen foxes, all in a circle, just as Judith Dale had told her. Here was a meeting of the last specimens on the hill, the descendants of those few who managed to escape in the year when open hunting season was declared.

Judith Dale used to swear that at gatherings such as these, each fox would rise on his hind feet and walk about, just like a man; if you listened carefully, you could hear each one speak, in measured and somber tones. What you overheard might change your life and rearrange all you once believed you knew for certain. A fox’s secret was one worth knowing, worth waiting for, worth its weight in gold, or so March had always been promised. But Judith Dale was wrong, and now March is glad to discover that she was. These creatures are nothing like men; they haven’t a word to say, and no secrets to tell. When March leaves, several of them follow for a while, as though they were dogs-not that she needs their guidance. She knows the way, after all. She’s been here before.

IT’S FREEZING IN HANK’S DREAM ON THE MORNING WHEN it happens, that first bright day of the year. He is dreaming about a tree of ice-leaves, trunk, and branches-when he hears the crash. In his dream, the tree falls to pieces, shards of crystal that can cut like knives. That’s when he gets out of bed; he goes to his window and witnesses the last few instants of what is happening, as Hollis’s truck skids into the devil’s comer.

Hank pulls on his jeans and races downstairs; he slams out the door and runs down the driveway in his bare feet. The snow cuts into his skin, but he runs faster. At the edge of the driveway, the red dogs gather together, afraid to go farther. The crash is so close that Hank can smell gasoline. There is Hollis’s pickup, on its side, and the newspaper delivery truck crossways, blocking Route 22. Before Hank can round the comer, Hollis’s truck bursts into flames. The driver of the other truck is sitting in the road, shaking, as the roar of the fire rises higher and ashes fall down, like thick black snow.

“He just kept going,” the driver of the delivery truck says when Hank pulls him to his feet and guides him farther from the fire. They stand there and watch the flames. The road is so burning hot it’s melting patches of ice. By the time the EMT and fire trucks arrive, whatever snow remains has turned black.

There’s soot all over Hank’s clothes and in his eyes. For days afterwards, he will find ashes, in the strands of his hair, under his fingernails, in his eyelashes. He doesn’t tell March the true date of Hollis’s accident. He waits several days before he sends the telegram. He doesn’t want her to think that Hollis was chasing her, flooring the gas on that icy morning so he could track her down at Logan before her plane took off. Maybe he was after March, or maybe he was simply in a hurry to get to the Lyon Cafe and find somebody to take her place. But there’s another possibility, and it’s one Hank believes: Hollis simply couldn’t bear to wake up and find himself alone. There was a time, once, when Hank was nine or ten and woke in the middle of the night, when he made his way downstairs and he saw Hollis at the kitchen table. Hank stood there in the doorway and watched, and he thought he would never in his life see a lonelier human being, not if he lived to be a hundred.

Perhaps this is the reason Hank stays with Hollis at the funeral parlor. Someone should be there, and in all honesty, Hank can’t imagine being able to sleep even if he were to spend the night in his own bed. There’s a room to the left of the chapel, and this is where Hollis is. Hank picked out his clothes: A pale gray suit. One of the good white shirts Hollis favored, tailored in Italy. Black boots, hand-polished. A dark blue tie, the color of still, deep water. Hank chose the coffin as well, the most expensive one available, fashioned of cherry wood and brass. Though Hank himself prefers plain pine, he knows that Hollis would have elected to show people in this town that he had the best. Regardless of whether or not anyone appears at the service tomorrow, Hank has seen to it that he has received exactly that.

The room beside the chapel is poorly heated and the lights are turned low. Hank tosses down the duffel bag of clothes he’s brought along, then positions himself in an overstuffed chair. It’s not unusual for people to spend the night here. They don’t want to let go; they want one more chance to make it right. For those who believe in paradise, such a night is wrenching. For those who believe in a single worldly existence, it may be the longest night they ever spend. All the same, Hank is there for the duration, he’s not about to leave, although in many ways the man in the coffin doesn’t resemble Hollis. It’s not only his physical aspect which seems so altered, by fire and reconstruction, it’s that Hollis would never lie down like this, so mild and meek.

The later the hour grows, the more chilled Hank feels; at last, he covers himself with his coat, and he falls asleep that way, sitting up, his long legs stretched out, his breathing the only evidence of human life until Alan Murray comes to pay his respects. Alan wears the Judge’s recycled overcoat and a pair of boots Judith Dale left him one winter when the snow was particularly deep. He has tied back his hair with a rubber band and clipped his beard with a pair of nail scissors. Although he has a pint of gin in his pocket, he won’t have a drink until he begins the walk home.

He passes by his son, asleep in the chair, and goes to sit on the wooden bench facing the coffin. It is gratitude which has brought him here and kept him sober, at least for these few hours. Without thinking, Alan bows his head. For the day Hollis came to take his son, he is grateful. For every meal Hollis fed the child, he is more grateful still. For every dollar spent, for every night of sleep, for blue jeans and socks, for shoes and books, for cups of tea, for milk, for pie, for companionship, for curfews, for duty, for love.

Hank wakes from his uneasy sleep and blinks when he sees the old man. The chapel is now so cold that a film of ice has formed on the inside panes of window glass. Outside, the night is as blue as a lake and much deeper than any river. If your soul were free, it would be the sort of night to rise up.

“You’re staying with him?” the old man asks.

“Sure,” Hank says. He runs a hand through his hair; still. some strands stick up like stalks of wheat. His face is pale in the dark, his skin ashy.

“It’s good that you’re staying,” Alan Murray says. He can feel the weight of the bottle of gin in his pocket. His circulation is shot, so he rubs his hands together.

“Oh, yeah?” Hank says dryly. “What do you care?”

“I don’t think anyone should be alone in circumstances such as these.” Alan nods to the coffin. “Even him.”

Alan stands and buttons the Judge’s overcoat, which billows out on his thin frame. His posture is terrible; he smells like hay. His throat closes up when he looks at his son, the way another man’s might when looking at stars. “Get some sleep,” he advises.

It’s advice well taken, and Hank does manage a few hours of restless sleep. In the morning, he changes his clothes in the men’s room. He wears a black suit he took from Hollis’s closet, good wool, quite well made, but much too small for Hank’s build. He is fully prepared to be the only mourner, considering how people in the village felt about Hollis, but as it turns out, he isn’t alone at the funeral. Several women attend the service. Each comes in by herself, and unless Hank is mistaken, several are crying. There are no flowers decorating the chapel; nothing like that. The coffin is now closed, as Hollis would have wished.

When the service is over, Hank stands on the steps of the funeral parlor. From here, he can see most of Main Street: There is the bakery, which is right now baking cinnamon bread. There is the library with its tall, arched windows, and the Lyon Cafe, which is always dark and shuttered at this time of day. Hank loosens his tie and unbuttons the top two buttons of his white shirt, but he keeps on the jacket borrowed from Hollis, even though it doesn’t quite fit. He heads down Main Street, then gets into his car, which is already packed with his belongings. He’s going to stay with the Justices until the end of the school term. After graduation, of course, he’s free to go where he chooses. He will not remain at Guardian Farm. He decided that right away, and it made no difference when the Judge told him he was Hollis’s only heir.

Hank’s friends would think him insane to give it all away, but that’s what he’s done. He’s donated all the land to the town; a trust has already been drawn up. The income from Hollis’s properties in Florida will pay for all the upkeep on the Farm, the gardeners and the caretakers, even the kibble for the red dogs. The trust will underwrite the Library Association and the Snow Shovelers’ and Firemen’s Funds and provide hay and oats for Tarot for as long as he lives, just as it will pay for Alan Murray’s tab at the liquor store on Route 22. After all, who is Hank to sit in judgment of his father? Who is he to measure another man’s sorrow? Hank is indebted to Hollis, and he always will be, but he knows what happens to a man who won’t give up those things it’s impossible to hold on to. He knows what can happen to any man who won’t let go of his pain.

Although Christmas vacation is over and Hank’s friends have all gone back to school, Hank won’t return to classes until tomorrow. Instead, he now drives over to Fox Hill. He flips on the radio and keeps the window open, in spite of the cold, just as Hollis used to. He parks near the quince bushes, then gets out and climbs as far as he can go. From here a man can imagine he’s looking out at the whole, wide world. He’s the king of everything, of sky and cloud. This is where Hollis will be laid to rest, and the gravediggers, who are traveling over the dirt road right now, will have to be paid extra to deal with the brambles and the ice. Hank had to do battle with the town clerk to get permission to bury Hollis here, and thankfully, the Judge came to his aid and eased his petition through the corridors of Town Hall.

In truth, what harm can one grave do up here? Why, it’s almost heaven, it’s so clear and clean. Years from now, children in town will talk about the New Year’s Day when there was black snow. They’ll say the devil reached out and took what belonged to him; they’ll avoid that intersection where the grass still refuses to grow. But Hank knows better, and on the first day of every year he will always make certain to say a prayer for those to whom he wishes peace, both the living and the dead.