Second Nature
by
Alice Hofman

Berkley Pub Group;

ISBN: 0425146812

Copyright 1995

Nature never deceives us, it is always we who deceive ourselves.

--Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

BY APRIL most people had already forgotten about him, except for some of
the nurses on the floor, who crossed themselves when they walked past
his room.  The guard stationed outside his door, who had little to do
but read magazines and drink coffee for more than three months, bragged
to his friends that on nights when there was a full moon he needed a
whip and a chair just to set a dinner tray on the other side of the
door.  But in fact, the guard had never even dared to look around the
room, where the metal bed was made up with clean white sheets every
week, though it had not once been slept in.

The man who occupied the room had no name.  He refused to look anyone in
the eye or, even after months of work with the speech therapists, to
make any sound whatsoever, at least not in the presence of others.

Officially he was listed as patient 3119, but among themselves the staff
called him the Wolf Man, although they were expressly forbidden to do
so.  He was underweight and had a long scar along the inside of one
thigh that had healed years before but still turned purple on cold or
rainy days.  For two months he'd needed to wear a cast on his
reconstructed foot, otherwise he was in surprisingly good health.

Since he had no birthday, the staff at Kelvin Medical Center had
assigned him one.  They'd chipped in to buy him a sweater, blue wool, on
sale at Bloomingdale's, and one of the cooks had baked and frosted an
angel food cake.  But that was back in January, after he learned to use
a fork and dress himself, and they'd still had hope for him.  Now, they
left him alone, and when he sat motionless, and sunlight came through
the bars on his window, some of the nurses swore that his eyes turned
yellow.

The evening before his transfer upstate, the barber was sent to his
room.  There would be no need to sweep the floor after his shave and
haircut, the raven that had been perching on the window ledge was
waiting to dart through the bars and gather up the hair to wind into its
nest.  One lab technician, who had been brave enough to look through the
glass window in the door, had once seen the raven eating right out of
his plate while the Wolf Man calmly continued with his dinner.  Now, the
raven watched as the attendants strapped the Wolf Man into a metal chair
and held his head back.  The barber wanted no chances taken, a human
bite was the most dangerous of all.  In the interest of speed, he used a
razor rather than scissors, and while he worked he quickly recited a
blessing.

The following morning, two attendants helped the Wolf Man into a black
overcoat, which would be taken away once he settled into the State
Hospital, since he'd never need it again and another patient could make
use of it.  The cook who had baked the angel food cake for his birthday
wept.  She insisted he had smiled when she lit the candles on the cake,
but no one believed her, except the guard stationed at his door, who had
been made so anxious by this bit of news that he took to biting his
fingernails, close enough to the skin to draw blood.

The cook had discovered that the Wolf Man would not eat meat unless it
was raw.  He liked his potatoes unbaked as well, and would not touch a
salad or a pudding.  For his last meal, an early breakfast, she had
simply passed a hamburger patty over a flame for a moment.  So what if
uncooked meat was bad for you, and most of the patients liked cereal and
toast, she wanted him to have what he liked.  She had an impulse to hide
a knife or a screwdriver inside the folded napkin, because she knew that
as soon as he'd eaten his breakfast, he would be handcuffed, then
released into the custody of a social worker from the State Hospital for
the ride along the Hudson.  By afternoon he would be signed into a ward
from which no one was ever released.  But she didn't follow her impulse,
and after the Wolf Man had his meal, the attendants dressed him and
helped him into the black overcoat, then clasped the handcuffs on him,
quickly, from behind, before he could fight back.

Outside the door, the guard turned his Walkman up to the highest volume,
and he slipped his sunglasses on, though the April sky threatened to
storm.  His friends liked to hear stories about the Wolf Man--how he
crouched and circled three times before he curled up to sleep with his
back against the wall, that five strong men were needed to hold him down
each time they drew blood or inoculated him against measles and
tetanus--and the guard was always happy to oblige.  But what he never
mentioned, as he drank cold beer with his friends, was that on nights
when there was thunder he often heard a whimpering behind the door, a
sound so pitiful it turned his bones cold and his heart inside out.

That was the sound the trappers had heard on the last day of December,
when the snow was ten feet deep and deer stuck in the drifts and froze
solid.  There, at the edge of northern Michigan, much of the land had
never been charted and trees were so dense they blocked out the sun.

Beneath the ice, streams were filled with green water.  Bears in these
mountains grew to seven feet, and their hides were so thick a whole hive
of bees couldn't sting them.  It was dark as night on winter afternoons,
trappers had to carry flashlights and leave lanterns hung on their
snowmobiles in order to find their way back.  Most of these men never
poached enough to get caught by the rangers, and anyone looking for them
would have had a difficult time.  In the spring, moss appeared overnight
and covered any footprints completely by morning.

In winter, no one but a maniac or an experienced hunter would venture
into the forest.  For those men who didn't fear the woods, there was
little chance of legal action against them.  Trapping was, after all, a
criminal act without a witness.  There was no one to hear a shotgun
fired, or the peculiar cry made by a fox when a piece of cyanide-laced
lamb takes effect.

The men who found him were an uncle and nephew who had worked the forest
for more than ten years and who were not nearly as greedy or cruel as
some of their neighbors.  They worked in silence, not with poisoned meat
but with steel traps, and they were always particularly careful to stay
together, even when it made sense to split up, since they had seen,
several times, huge paw prints, three times as big as a dog's.  In these
mountains all sorts of things were said on winter nights, some to be
believed, some not.

A man they knew, over in Cromley, had a wolf-skin rug on his living room
floor, head and all.  He told everyone he'd shot the wolf, a male of
more than a hundred and ten pounds, head-on, but his wife had let it
slip that he'd simply found it the spring before, dead of natural
causes, preserved all winter long by the cold.  Wolves were rare, even
this far north, you could probably count on your fingers the ones that
had come down from Canada and stayed.

Still, their tenuous presence made for good talk and real fear.

An old trapper who hadn't been caught once in sixty years of making a
living liked to scare some of the boys who were just starting out by
swearing that it was possible for some wolves to become human.  He'd
seen it himself on a night when there was an orange hunter's moon.  A
wolf was crouching down with the pack one minute and standing on two
feet like a man the next.  That happened with old trappers
sometimes--they had killed more animals than they could number and, now
that they were senior citizens who couldn't eat anything but oatmeal,
they suddenly started to have some kind of funny regret that mixed them
up so badly they didn't even notice people were laughing at them.

The uncle and his nephew didn't listen to stories and they didn't take
foolish chances.  As far as they were concerned, they weren't breaking
the law so much as taking care of their families.  They were interested
in deer for the meat, foxes and raccoons for their skins, but they got
much more than that on the last day of December.  This was the season
when the sky turned black at four-thirty and the cold made breathing
painful and sharp.  They were inspecting the traps they had left out the
day before when they heard the howling.  Normally they would have
backtracked, but they had worked all day with nothing to show and still
had one trap left to check.  As they walked forward, it wasn't the cold
that made them shiver, and their brand-new parkas from Sears couldn't
help them one bit.  The nephew's teeth were hitting against each other
so hard he thought he'd chip the enamel right off them.

It was hard to tell from the howling exactly how many wolves there were
until they saw them.  What sounded like a dozen turned out to be three,
up above, on the ridgetop.  All three were silver, brothers by the look
of them.  They seemed to be waiting for the uncle and his nephew,
because as soon as they saw the men, the wolves stopped their racket.

Yet they stayed where they were, unprotected up there on the ridge.

When the uncle saw a pool of blood, he thought the wolves were after a
deer or a fisher caught in the last trap, and he figured it might be
best just to let them have it.  The temperature had begun to drop and
the sun would soon be going down.  The uncle would have turned back then
if his nephew hadn't grabbed his arm.

The last steel trap was a good one, kept oiled and cleaned, it would
last another fifty years.  When they heard the whimpering sound, they
assumed they were simply suffering from the cold.

Hallucinations occurred in severe weather, they sprang up from the
ground fully formed.  Jack Flannagan insisted he'd been visited by his
dead mother one day in the woods, when the temperature was ten below
zero.  A friend of the nephew's would not hunt after dark, convinced
that a deer he had shot one snowy day had cried real tears, just like a
baby.  So the wailing they heard might have been caused by twilight and
ice.  The notion of going home began to feel about right, even
necessary.  Then they saw the thing in the trap, struggling and
bleeding, its foot partially crushed, and they might have shot it then,
to put it out of its misery, if they hadn't realized, all at once, that
the struggling thing had the shape of a man.

The wolves took up their howling again, while the uncle labored to open
the trap.  The nephew fired his gun in the air, even though he knew it
was bad luck to shoot at wolves, and they took off, across the ridge and
through the pine trees.  It took almost two hours to get the poor
creature out of the trap and carry him back to the snowmobiles.  A trail
of red blood burned through the snow.  The drifts were now much higher,
so that a mile seemed to go on endlessly.  The nephew wondered aloud
whether they'd be charged with murder if their unintended victim should
die.  He was already unconscious and his skin had turned blue.

How had it been possible, the nephew asked his uncle, for him to have
survived through the winter, wearing only skins on his body and wrapped
around his feet?  Why had they never seen him before, when they knew
every man for a hundred miles around?

The uncle didn't bother to answer, he was too busy tying the limp body
into the snowmobile with thick brown rope.  Clouds were moving in fast,
threatening more snow.  They had to get to the rangers' station, where a
helicopter ran an airlift to St. Joseph's Hospital in Cromley.  The
uncle's breathing was ragged.

He knew for a fact that the trap had shattered the left foot, bone
jutted through the skin.  As the uncle was positioning the head onto a
blanket he realized how young their victim was, younger than his nephew.
Once he looked at the pale face, with its high cheekbones and knots of
dark hair, he couldn't look away, even though he had removed his gloves
to lash the rope to the snowmobile and his fingers were freezing.  If
he'd seen anything like this face before, it was in the chapel at St.
Joseph's, where he'd waited while his wife was being operated on for
something wrong inside her stomach a few years back.

To the right of the pews, in a dark alcove, there had been a statue made
of white wood with a countenance so calm it had made him weep.

He pulled his gloves back on and started his snowmobile.  In less than
three hours, work would begin in the only operating room in St. Joseph's
as an orthopedic surgeon repaired the bones the steel trap had
shattered.  Two weeks later, the patient would be flown to Kelvin
Medical Center on East Eighty-sixth Street in New York, a hospital that
dealt exclusively with victims of traumatic stress.  There he would
stay, in a locked room, for the next few months, while some of the best
doctors in the city tried to ascertain what they were dealing with.

But the uncle knew what they had right then and there.  It didn't matter
what people said on winter nights this year or the year after or the one
after that.  It didn't matter what people believed.  The uncle knew
exactly what it was they were dealing with, on this night and forever
after.  They had caught themselves a wolf.

Robin Moore was stopped for speeding every time she drove through town.

It made no difference whether she was going thirty-three miles an hour
in a thirty-mile-an-hour zone, or if teenagers in Trans Ams were revving
their engines and passing her by.  She could tell when it was going to
happen, she'd get a funny taste in her mouth, as if she'd eaten a lemon
or a spoonful of salt, and then she'd hear the siren.

Robin always pulled over to the side of the road calmly, then rolled
down her window and waited.

"Is there a problem, Officer?"  she'd say in a voice so sweet you'd
never guess at the depth of her bitterness or imagine that she knew
every local policeman by name.  She'd had coffee with their wives, and
invited everyone over to the house for barbecues, she'd fixed onion dip
and guacamole on nights when the men had sat in her kitchen playing
poker.

The problem was that she was divorcing Roy, and either he thought it was
amusing to have his buddies stop her for minor infractions--an
inspection sticker overdue, a broken left taillight, the alleged
speeding--or he believed this harassment would make her realize she
needed him.  Either way, Robin's glove compartment was now chock-full of
tickets, none of which she'd paid.  She had fallen for Roy when she was
sixteen, the same age their son, Connor, was now: a dangerous and stupid
year when boys jumped into fast cars without thinking twice and girls
drank themselves silly down at the beach near Poorman's Point and
sometimes did enough damage to last a lifetime.

She couldn't keep away from Roy back then.  The more trouble he got
into, the more her family despaired, the more she had to have him.  His
father, Neil, had worked for Robin's grandfather and drawn up the
sketches for the arboretum when the land was nothing more than cattails
and scrub pine.  In Nassau County, Roy's father was known as the Doctor,
since he could cure almost any tree, whether it was a dying elm or a
willow hit by lightning.  Roy had started coming around with the Doctor
during the summer Robin turned sixteen, although it was clear he didn't
give a damn for willows and elms.  He started throwing rocks at the
patio whenever she was out reading in the hammock.  He began to wait for
her outside the kitchen door, near the rosemary and the Russian sage.

He kissed her for the first time beneath the arbor where the wisteria
bloomed.  Not long after this kiss, and hundreds more like it, Robin's
grandfather made his declaration that under no circumstances could she
marry Roy, which pretty much sealed her fate.

And now, although they had a legal separation, Roy was somehow convinced
they were still together, even after their final fight, a nasty display
of distrust on the corner of Delaney.  That night Robin went home and
dragged all of Roy's clothes out to the driveway, and when he got home
and saw his clothes flung across the concrete, he must have known where
they were heading.  Yet almost a year later he continued to appear at
the house unexpectedly.  He was there, he said, to check Connor's
homework--something he'd never done when he lived with them--or to make
certain the hot water heater wasn't on the fritz.

Once, he had arrived on a Saturday night and had done everything
possible to try to get her into bed.  He came up behind her and
whispered, the way he used to: Just this one time, one littlefuck, come
on, baby.  She thought he was kidding until he shoved his hand into her
pants, and she had to push him away.  The next day he'd come back,
sheepish and polite, with a peace offering: a truckful of manure, which
he said the Doctor had asked him to deliver, highly unlikely, since
Robin had just seen her father-in-law that morning and he hadn't
mentioned a word about cow shit.

When Robin was starting out, the Doctor never viewed her as competition,
surely there were enough gardens on the island for them both.  He sent
her customers and called nurseries out on the East End to get her a
discount.  He taught her to hang jars of beer from fruit trees so that
wasps could drink themselves to death, and to circle herb gardens with a
ring of salt, which slugs wouldn't dare to cross.

It was true that Robin spent too long with each client, poring over
books, plotting out designs for perennial beds in watercolor and ink,
but that wasn't the reason her business was ailing.

Lately, everything she touched seemed to die.  Robin attributed this to
the anger she had carried around all winter, ever since her breakup with
Roy.  If she pruned a rosebush in the morning, by midafternoon the canes
would begin to wither, by evening they would turn black.  Just last
night, she'd discovered that every bulb in the pot of forced tulips on
her dining room table had decayed only minutes after she'd torn off some
of the yellowing leaves.  All week there had been good weather for
gardens, with a light rain turning the cold earth squishy and
warm--perfect conditions to begin spring cleanup for her regular
clients-- but Robin didn't bother to return any of their calls.

Whatever bad luck she was having might seep through the old leather
gloves she wore when she cut back brambles and raked mulch off the
season's first lilies-of-the-valley.

This stretch of sour fortune wasn't the reason she was driving in to see
her brother, although it now seemed as if just getting out of town would
take all day.  Already she had been pulled over twice, once near the
King Kullen supermarket by that moron Woody Preston, who grinned as he
wrote out a speeding ticket--four miles over the limit-- and the second
time only a mile from the bridge, where George Tenney at least had the
decency to look embarrassed as he wrote out the ticket for failing to
signal when she changed lanes.  Robin had tossed the ticket into the
overflowing glove compartment right in front of him.

"You're going to have to start paying those," George said of her growing
collection.

"I don't think so," Robin said.  She hadn't bothered to dress up and was
wearing her rain slicker, a pair of jeans, a khaki-colored sweater, old
green boots.  She had small callused hands and beneath each fingernail
was a line of dirt that seemed never to wash away, not even if she sat
in the bath for hours and used her good soap from Italy.

"You could give Roy another chance," George suggested.  He was a large,
soft man who loved poker and almost went nuts when his own wife left
him.  For months afterward, Roy brought him home for dinner on Tuesday
nights, and George ate steadily and slowly, asking for the peas or the
rolls in a wounded voice.

"Are you a marriage counselor?"  Robin asked him.

"Well, no," George said.  "I can't say that I am."

"Okay, George, just tell me this.  Was Roy fucking around the whole time
we were married, or just at the end?"

"Robin," George said in that wounded voice.  "That's not nice."

"No, it's not," Robin agreed.  A fine rain had begun, and Robin turned
on the windshield wipers, then gunned the engine of the pickup so it
wouldn't die on her as it often did in damp weather.

"Do you want to come over for dinner on Friday?  Vegetarian lasagna, but
you won't be able to tell there's no meat."

"You know I can't," George said.  He'd known Robin forever and he hadn't
had a home-cooked meal for months, but it wasn't a good idea to
socialize with a beautiful woman who happened to be Roy's not-quite
ex-wife.

"It's not like I'm asking you for a date, George," Robin said.

"But hey, I guess it's good to find out who your real friends are."

She said this just to ride him, since she knew that anyone connected
with the police department had to side with Roy.  People simply couldn't
stand it when your marriage broke up, they took it personally.

Even Robin's oldest friend, Michelle Altero, who had never liked Roy,
and had cried at their wedding, real sobs, not just polite tears, had
suggested she give him another chance.

"Can I go now?"  Robin asked George.

"Sure," George said.  He wasn't too happy about standing on the side of
the service road in the rain, getting involved in someone's private
affairs.  "Where is it you're going, anyway?"  he asked.  He truly
believed he was being casual.

"Who wants to know?"  Robin said.

She could be real fresh when she wanted to be, which George figured came
from growing up with the notion she'd be rich someday.  As it was, he
knew for a fact she'd been hours away from having her electricity cut
off the month before.  Roy had thought that might bring her back to him,
but it hadn't worked out that way.  The electric company had given her a
five-day extension, and before Roy could persuade them otherwise, Robin
had paid offher bill.

"Come on, Robin," George said.

"Tell Roy, where I go is none of his business."

"How do you think Old Dick would have liked what's happened between you
and Roy?"  George asked.  "Did you ever consider that?"

Robin hated to hear her grandfather referred to as Old Dick, but she
kept her mouth shut.  This is what happened when you grew up on an
island, people assumed they had a perfect right to pull you over on a
service road and give you marital advice.  Maybe Robin's brother had
been right, when he and Kay broke up, Stuart moved into Manhattan.  He
couldn't pass a single street corner in town without being reminded of a
dozen things he'd done or said.  It was like living with ghosts: he
couldn't have a cup of coffee at Fred's Diner in peace without having
some phantom settle down on the stool beside him.

"My grandfather always despised Roy," Robin announced.  In fact, there
wasn't a man in town her grandfather hadn't loathed.  "He refused to
come to our wedding."

"Old Dick would never have favored a divorce," George insisted, but he
let her go and watched mournfully as she pulled her truck onto the
service road, then headed toward the bridge where the willow trees grew.
Once she crossed over, no one on the local police force could stop her,
she'd be out of their jurisdiction, driving as fast as she pleased.

Beside the wooden bridge, the thick twisted roots of the old willows
coiled through the muddy earth.  Anyone who approached the island for
the first time at dusk could easily believe that these willows had once
been men, they seemed to cry out loud and their thin branches tapped
against the hoods of passing cars.  No one knew when the trees had been
planted, but they were already old when Richard Aaron first came to the
island in 1923.  They'd frightened off everyone but the bravest
fishermen and the cats that someone had once brought across to drown in
a burlap bag but that had escaped to breed in the marshes, living wild
on bluefish and sparrows.

There was no bridge back then, and Aaron had to put on black hip boots
and wade through the water to the other side, stepping over hermit crabs
and moon snails.  He'd paid thirteen thousand dollars cash for the
island--a good deal even then, one he'd managed because the previous
owner believed that warm air rising from marshes caused malaria and
scarlet fever.  On the north side the first big Queen Annes were built,
with stone fireplaces and fish-head shingles, on the south side were
workers' cottages for the stonemasons and carpenters, some of whom
stayed on after their work was through.  Off to the west, Aaron built
his own house, with bricks carted over the bridge, and panels of stained
glass that were tied to the masons' backs with thick rope, then covered
with white muslin to protect them from cracking.  He kept five acres of
black pine and beach grass and Rosa rugosa for himself, most of which
was to become

Poorman's Point after his only son squandered everything on a real
estate venture in Florida that went wrong because of hurricanes or bad
economic times or simple carelessness.

Old Dick was not dead, as many people on the island assumed, although he
was always talked about in the past tense.  He was ninety-one years old
and had outlived his son and his sisters and brothers and just about
everybody else he considered to be worth two cents.  The main house had
been closed down for more than twenty years, and Old Dick lived above
the garage with his housekeeper, Ginny, who was eighty-four.  He
couldn't get out of his bed unless he was lifted, and he hadn't seen
sunlight for years, but when Robin went to visit him he was still able
to muster the strength to scream at her.  She went only once a month, on
the last Sunday, making certain always to bring an apple pie.

A good apple pie was the one thing Old Dick wouldn't scream about, and
Robin sneaked slices to him, on paper plates, since Ginny didn't allow
him any sugar or salt.

And that's what Robin was going to see Stuart about.  Trying to get
Stuart on the phone was always so frustrating, and this was too
important, she couldn't wait.  Ginny's health was failing and her
daughters wanted to send her to a nursing home in NewJersey, and then
what the hell would they do with Old Dick?  Stuart had been all but
supporting him, since Social Security was barely enough to pay Ginny's
weekly salary, and there were food and heating bills and medicine to
consider.  The truth of it was, Stuart had been helping Robin out, too,
since she didn't want to ask Roy for any more than the pittance she was
legally allowed.

Thank goodness for Stuart, who was so practical, he liked to joke, that
he applied to medical school when he realized he needed a
twenty-four-hour-a-day psychiatrist and decided it was cheaper to become
one than to engage one at the going rates.  When he and Kay divorced,
Stuart had insisted she buy a Volvo, after checking every import's
safety record, he heartily disapproved of Robin's old pickup, which, as
she now approached the Midtown Tunnel, skidded as it always did when she
was in a hurry and the asphalt was wet.

There were no meters free, so Robin had to park in one of the expensive
lots, on Eighty-fifth, then run through the rain over to Kelvin Medical
Center, but at least she was wearing her boots.

By the time she reached the building, her hair had unwound from its
elastic band and her rain slicker was dripping wet.  The storm had now
begun in earnest, the kind of downpour that flooded gutters and whipped
umbrellas into the air.  When Robin got out of the elevator on the
fourteenth floor, her ears ached with the drop in air pressure.  She was
on her way to Stuart's office, thinking about Medicare and lasagna and a
new mildewresistant variety of aster, when the Wolf Man was led into the
hallway.

Because he was handcuffed, the attendants assumed he was harmless, they
left him in the corridor while they went to sign for his transfer.  The
air was so murky and still that the mice grew confused, and believing it
was midnight, they dashed out of the heating vents.  A few nurses and
attendants who had the day off had come in just to get a glimpse of the
Wolf Man, and they were disappointed when he kept his eyes downcast.
Patients on crutches struggled to their doorways in their hospital gowns
so that someday they could tell their grandchildren they'd been there,
right in the same hospital, breathing the very same air, but most of
them mistook the Wolf Man for a maintenance worker and looked right past
him.

"Is that him?"  Robin asked one of the nurses.  "The Wolf Man?"

"We're not supposed to call him that," the nurse told her, but of course
Stuart called him that all the time, at least in private.

Stuart had talked about this patient constantly when he'd first been
flown in from Michigan.  All the cases of children raised by animals had
been dubious, records had been tampered with, fears reported as fact,
medical histories obscured, so that one never knew whether ill children
simply had been abandoned out in the woods, where no one was likely to
find them, by families too poor or overwhelmed to cope.  Not one of
these children had ever gained enough language to tell his own story,
and Stuart's hope was that this patient would change all that.

If they were lucky, he had been able to speak before he was lost, and
with help he might remember all he once knew.  But by the beginning of
March, Stuart no longer discussed the Wolf Man with Robin, and by the
end of the month the arguments he offered to his colleagues about
keeping the patient at the medical center sounded weak, even to him.

Through all the hours of therapy, the patient had not spoken one word.

"Well, he doesn't look very fierce," Robin said to the nurse.

"Oh, really?"  the nurse said archly, as she started down the hall.

"He'd bite your head offin a minute.  He'd slit your throat and never
think twice."

The Wolf Man was hunched over on a wooden bench in his black overcoat,
which was two sizes too big.  His hair had been clipped so short Robin
could see his scalp.  There was a gash in the back of his neck, left
when the barber's hand had begun to tremble.

Robin took off her yellow slicker and shook out the rain, she would have
continued on to Stuart's office at the end of the hall if she hadn't
seen a mouse scurry along the bench.  Behind his back, the Wolf Man
closed his fist over the mouse before it had the chance to dart away.
Then he looked at Robin, suddenly, as if he knew he was being watched.

Robin stayed exactly where she was, dripping rain onto the linoleum,
even after the Wolf Man turned his back to her.  Slowly he opened his
hand, and the mouse ran in circles, as though dazed by the scent of
human flesh, before scurrying off to hide in a heating vent.  For weeks
the WolfMan had been thinking how easy it would be to tear out one of
his doctors' throats during their sessions together.  The doctor would
reach for a pen, or turn to look out the window, and he wouldn't even
know what was happening until his shirt was drenched with blood and
clouds filled his vision.  It was the same with a deer.  Even if it was
still struggling, you knew it had given up the fight when its eyes
turned white, when it saw something so far away it wasn't even in this
world.

The thunderstorm had moved in quickly, across the river, from NewJersey.
The windows were rattling.  Alone on the bench, the Wolf Man began to
shiver.  If he hadn't, Robin would never have gone over to him.  When
she reached out and touched his arm, the heat from her fingers went
right through his black coat and into his skin.  She was the first
person to touch him who didn't have to.  He still had blood blisters all
over his hands and feet, and on rainy days like this the scar that ran
along the inside of his thigh ached horribly.  Lately, he had been
remembering things that seemed to belong to someone else: forks and
spoons set out on a kitchen table, slices of an orange on a blue china
plate.

"It's just thunder," Robin said.

It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring.  He knew that by
heart.  They thought he understood nothing, but he had heard them
talking, right in front of him.  The attendant who had kicked his shins
while the handcuffs were clasped on was coming down the hall, tossing a
set of keys in the air and catching them in the palm of his hand.  The
Wolf Man looked at the woman next to him, the heat from her touch moved
upward, into his throat, until at last the words came out on their own,
like birds rising.

"Don't let them take me someplace," he said.

When you spoke after so many years, the words actually hurt, each one a
crooked bone, a fishhook, a burning star.

Robin dropped her hand from his arm, her rain slicker fell at her feet.

Something made her skin feel hot, and although it might have been pity,
it might just as easily have been something else.

The Wolf Man had known enough to keep what was inside him secret, and
now he cursed himself.  He should never have said a word.  He looked
down at the linoleum tiles on the floor, he tried not to breathe.  The
edge of the handcuffs cut through the skin above his wrists.  In only a
few hours, they'd transfer him and he'd be gone forever.  Already, he
was starting to disappear.  Soon he would forget that the upturned
leaves on the trees predicted whether or not it would rain, and that a
rabbit dared not move if you covered its eyes.  That was how they
decided what to take down, at least he remembered that.  They went after
whatever was frightened and gave up easily.  Anything that had the
courage to stare you down, you let pass by.

And so, in spite of the thunder, he raised his eyes.  As soon as he saw
her looking at him that way, he knew he hadn't made a mistake.  By then,
Robin was telling the attendants that she'd been sent to pick up their
patient.  Later, in the hallway near the elevator, she would inform the
social worker from the State Hospital that the transfer had been
canceled.  No one had reason to doubt her, not even when she insisted
that handcuffs were no longer necessary.  And although there was now
lightning streaking the sky and the clouds were the size of black
mountains, the Wolf Man smiled, exactly as the cook who baked his
birthday cake vowed he could, when the attendant handed over the key.

THE EVENING had turned sweet and blue.  Mockingbirds appeared in the
gardens to pull worms from the rich, damp earth, and all through the
island you could hear their stolen songs.  It was the hour when deer
ventured out of the pine woods to feast on ivy and potted geraniums,
when raccoons in the marshes scooped up mouthfuls of mullet and snails,
and the blue air made people dizzy and thankful for all that they had.

Commuters returning from the city were so anxious to get home they
bolted from their trains and ran for the wooden bridge, their umbrellas
unfurling behind them like black wings.  How lucky to live here, far
from the soot and the savage business of the city, where dogs needn't be
leashed and children could ride their bikes for miles, stopping to
collect driftwood and smooth beach stones.  Cemetery Road wound along
the marsh and into town, past the hardware store, which sold hurricane
lamps and wicker furniture, as well as pipe and paint, past Fred's
Diner, where the omelets were always served with home fries dotted with
paprika, past the post office and the five-and-dime and the town green,
where three ginkgo trees had been planted for summer shade.

It was told that the owners of the original houses had all sunk to their
knees when they first crossed the bridge, they kissed the earth until
their lips were sandy and cracked.  Even now, most people felt the same
way.  Gardens were tended carefully, stone fences repaired, children
taken by the hand and walked to school, though it was safe enough for
even the young ones to be out on their own in cheerful groups on warm
evenings, turning flashlights onto the old pine trees to scare the owls.
Croissants and brioches and Blue Mountain coffee beans could be had at
the bakery, but Richard Aaron had made certain to leave acres of open
land.  Half a mile from the driveways and front porches seemed like
untamed territory, wilderness really, compared with the rest of Nassau
County.  This past February, a fox had wandered into Miriam
andJeffCarson's window-well, and after they'd tied up their basset hound
in the backyard, everyone on Mansfield Terrace came to see it, bringing
tidbits of meat and bread, until the Animal Rescue League arrived.
People had banded together when a developer from Roslyn proposed a mall,
just east of Cemetery Road.  Miriam Carson, who was so kindhearted she
fed her dog cereal and cream for breakfast, and Patty Dixon, who had
plenty of time on her hands now that her son Matthew was off to college,
organized a core group of demonstrators who made the developer so wary
he walked away from the project, leaving Cemetery Road as overgrown and
neglected as it was meant to be.

Good deeds were not uncommon on the island.  Every Christmas, baskets of
apples and pears were delivered to senior citizens, with the exception
of Richard Aaron, who had once dragged himself to his bedroom window in
order to throw the holiday fruit into the snow.  The school library was
crowded with volunteers on Wednesday afternoons.

Alcoholics Anonymous meetings were held in the basement of the Episcopal
church on Thursday nights, with Frenchroast coffee and blueberry bread
free for everyone, and a big potluck supper was held each spring.  When
Roy moved out in October, Robin's neighbors began to keep an eye on her
house, and also, it seemed, on her.  Did she need sugar or salt, or
maybe just a shoulder to cry on?  Robin might occasionally confide in
her friend Michelle, who was a guidance counselor at the high school and
had a way of getting people to confess things they might later regret
mentioning, but she certainly wasn't about to say much more than good
morning to her neighbors.  Still, they insisted on offering help.  Patty
Dixon, whose yard backed onto Robin's, suggested that Connor might want
to borrow the weights Matthew had left behind, just to make sure Connor
stayed out of trouble now that there was no man in the house, Jeff
Carson advised new rain gutters, and he phoned when he spotted some
loose shingles after a storm.

On this evening when the sky was clear and the roads washed clean by
cool rainwater, Robin wished she lived in a place where people minded
their own business.  There was Jeff Carson, taking his dog for a walk
before supper as he always did, fair weather or foul.

"Damn it," Robin said when she saw him.

She waited at the corner of Mansfield Terrace, giving the pickup some
gas when it idled roughly, until Jeff had turned onto Cemetery Road,
pulling the basset hound behind him.  By now, Robin had the distinct
impression that everything she did--rounding the corner, parking in her
own driveway, getting out quickly so she could usher the Wolf Man
through the side yard--was a criminal act.  She was a grown woman with a
teenaged son and mortgage payments, yet her hands were shaking as she
opened her own back door.  She refused to consider the possibility that
what she was doing was crazy, that she was offher rocker, as Roy had
often suggested when they were breaking up.  She was stubborn, that she
admitted, and she didn't like unfair advantages.  This was particularly
true when she was younger.  The children at school used to harass Stuart
in the playground, they thought he was highfalutin and snotty although
their grandfather was already bankrupt, and they tied his feet together
with twine and threw mudballs at his clean white shirts.

When Robin was in first grade, she would run over to those big boys and
kick them in the shins, hard enough to leave purple bruises before they
could shove her away.

"Don't do that," Stuart always said when she defended him, but on the
way home he held her hand.

An unfair advantage, those handcuffs, that terrible haircut.  And now
the Wolf Man was following her into her kitchen, obedient and silent,
his overcoat smelling like wool and rain.  Well, she'd feed him and let
him have a good night's sleep, then get rid of him before Connor ever
knew he'd been there.

"Why don't you sit down," Robin said.  "Please."

The Wolf Man was standing in the corner, almost as if he were stuck
there, his hands deep in the pockets of his overcoat.  When he went to
the table, Robin heated the pot of vegetable soup she'd made the night
before and poured some into a bowl for him.

For herself, she fixed a lukewarm cup of that morning's coffee, though
she was jittery enough without it.  Her face was burning, she would have
liked to dash cold water on her cheeks.  There was the faint possibility
that Roy was right, that she'd become so intent on having things her way
she'd stopped thinking altogether, driven by something as untrustworthy
as pure emotion.

She now had, after all, a man in her kitchen who could easily murder her
and sneak out the back door without leaving any footprints behind.

If need be, she supposed, she could scream, and one of her neighbors
would come running, wielding a shovel or a rake.

The Wolf Man hadn't said another word since his plea in the hospital
corridor, he carefully kept his eyes averted.  When he heard footsteps
on the stairs, the muscles in his arms and legs grew tight.  A white
thing with a long tail came into the kitchen.

It crossed in front of him and mewed.

"Homer, you silly cat," Robin scolded the thing.  "He thinks he owns the
place," she said as she scooped the cat up, opened the back door, and
set him outside.

The Wolf Man remembered how to spell it, but not what it looked like.

Cats drank milk, he knew, and they teased mice, even when they weren't
the least bit hungry.

"I thought you might be starving," Robin said when she came back to the
table.

He had not touched his soup, but because she expected him to eat, he
took the spoon and slowly began.  The food burned his mouth, still he
continued to eat.  He knew to take what was offered.  If you were hungry
enough, you would turn over a rock and eat beetles, snapping their
shells with your back teeth.

"Would you like something to drink?"  Robin said.  She was ridiculously
nervous, she was having trouble holding on to her coffee cup.  "Apple
juice?  Milk?"

"No, thank you," the Wolf Man said.

Someone, a long time ago, had taught him well.  Not


only please and thank you, but excuse me whenever he pushed.  He
finished all his soup, quickly, so that heat blisters rose on his
tongue, then followed Robin when she signaled to him.  As she led him up
to the guest room, Robin explained that he must stay in his room when
her son came home.

"We'll figure out what to do with you in the morning," she said.

She fumbled with the lock, which was there to keep the cat from making
the guest room his own.  The room was small, with a sloping ceiling, and
had not been occupied in more than a year, since Stuart camped out after
his divorce, complaining about cat hair and mildew and dust.  The
house's previous owner had been one of the original workmen brought in
by Robin's grandfather.  In his old age, the wood-carver had sat in this
room every morning, drinking the coffee his wife brought him, watching
purple finches and starlings on the lawn.  The scent of wood shavings
and espresso clung to the wallpaper, violets on thin green shoots all
along a cream-colored border.

While Robin made up the bed with clean sheets, the Wolf Man went to the
window.  There was a redwood fence around the backyard that he could
take easily, with one leap.  But where, exactly, would that get him?

All along he'd had a single plan, one he had thought about every morning
and every night.  Get free and get back home.  If anything, getting free
seemed the hardest part, since all the doors at the hospital were locked
with metal keys and it was impossible to dig out or under the walls.  He
had tried the first few days, scraping at the concrete until his fingers
bled.

It was not until he'd actually been freed, and led onto the street, that
he realized how horribly flawed his plan was.

Terrified by the buses and the crowds, he'd followed behind Robin so
closely he'd stepped on the backs of her boots.  At home, he could
travel as much as thirty miles in a day and find his way back in the
dark.  He could cover two hundred miles in a single season and still
distinguish one pine tree from another.  But here, his sense of
direction failed him completely.  He stumbled on the sidewalk and shied
away from the hordes of people with their raincoats and black umbrellas.
And even later, while they were driving, he didn't make his move.  It
would have been so easy.  He could have grabbed the woman by the throat
and forced her to pull over.  He could have thrown the door open and
leapt out onto the road when they passed a stretch of woods.

The black coat wouldn't have slowed him down, nor would the heavy shoes
they made him wear, not even the thunder could have stopped him.

If only he had known the way back home.  He wasn't even sure that the
same constellations rose in the sky here.

"Extra blankets," Robin said to him.

Two woolen blankets had been placed at the foot of the bed.

Before he could stop himself, the Wolf Man looked at Robin.  He had an
odd feeling, almost as if he were hungry.  He sat on the edge of the
bed, not that he planned to sleep on it, or in it, or whatever it was
that men did.  He forced himself to look away from Robin.  Instead, he
stared at his own hands, with their calluses and broken fingernails and
ropes of blue veins, they could not have looked uglier.

When, at last, Robin left him and closed the door behind her, the Wolf
Man got off the bed.  After he'd heard her go down the stairs, he opened
the window.  The sweet air made him restless, and he paced the length of
the room three times.  Even a room as small as this might be dangerous.
He looked in the closet, to make certain nothing was there, then went to
the corner.  He carefully crouched down next to the bureau the
wood-carver had fashioned out of cherry.  Since they'd found him, he'd
taken to sleeping this way, with his back to the wall, protected from
any surprise attack.  Outside in the yard, the birds were calling, the
white cat sharpened his claws on the bark of a magnolia tree.

Lately the Wolf Man fought sleep, he'd become afraid of it.  But all the
night before, he'd stayed awake, waiting for the attendants to come for
him, and now his eyes began to close.  He dozed off to the sound of the
birds, and once he'd begun, he couldn't stop himself from falling deeper
and deeper asleep.

He could sleep safely for hours, but then, when the moon was in the
center of the sky, the dream would surface.  There was no way to stop
it.  He was back on the ridgetop, shivering.  All the trees were black,
but not as black as what was within him.  He was beside a pool of dark
water, but he would not look at his reflection.  Still, he knew
something deep inside, and the knowledge broke him apart and filled him
with terror.  His brothers were calling to him, but he had lost the
power to answer.  He wanted to run with them, to sleep beside them and
dream the same dreams: mice and owls, blood and bones, acres of tall,
sweet grass.  He threw his head back and opened his mouth, but nothing
came out.  In his dream he stayed this way for a long time, terrified
and mute, until his voice finally tore out from him and he could answer
his brothers.

On Mansfield Terrace, at a little before midnight, many of the neighbors
thought what they heard was the Carsons' basset hound, Marco Polo, who
always howled at the moon and scratched at the screen door, begging to
be let out.  But Connor Moore, on his way home, late for his curfew and
woozy from six bottles of beer, knew this was no dog, for there was
Marco Polo, out in his driveway, silent and puzzled, as he, too,
listened to the howling.

The hair on the back of Connor's neck rose up and he walked faster.

The clouds moved quickly, sweeping past the moon, and anyone who had the
least bit of sense was already in bed asleep.

At sixteen, Connor was a big, beautiful boy who could have really
enjoyed himself if he hadn't been cursed with a conscience, and for this
he blamed his mother.  He had grown six inches taller than Robin, quite
suddenly, and now he felt condemned to protect her.  When offered a
dare, Connor still accepted.  He jumped off the bridge at low tide fully
clothed, he drank six-packs of beer at a sitting, he knew which girls
would accompany him to one of the old fishermen's shacks on the north
beach, late at night, when not another soul was around.  But somehow,
the easygoing boy Connor had once been had disappeared, he had become a
worrier, and he was uneasy now, as he walked along the wet pavement,
headed for home.

Maybe what he was hearing was a night heron, whose sudden screams could
sound like a baby's frantic cries, or a man who'd discovered his lover
had been unfaithful.  Nothing worth worrying about.  Connor could see
the light go on in his mother's bedroom and her shadow against the
window shade.  Odd, since she was the one who insisted they use candles
after nine at night ever since their run-in with the electric company,
when they'd been hours away from having their power cut off.  Connor
felt bad for his mother, but it seemed his father couldn't help himself.
When Roy talked to women he came on to them, even older women he had no
interest in whatsoever, it was a bad habit, like smoking, and he'd been
doing it his whole life.  But all that sweet talk had led to something
more: a series of girlfriends Connor had known about before his mother
found out and dragged his father's clothes into the driveway for all the
neighbors to see.  It wasn't as if he had caught his father with another
woman, the way his mother finally had, in a parked car over on Delaney,
but he'd sensed something was wrong, and he'd worried.

When, at last, he'd been called into the living room and told about
their separation, he could hardly pretend to be surprised.

He just couldn't shake this feeling of dread, he was like an old woman,
waiting for disaster to strike.  Watching Adam Lubell goofing around
after school, foolishly perched on the handlebars of his bike, Connor
grew so disturbed he actually experienced some sort of relief when Adam
finally fell and broke his two front teeth.  Connor, who could ace all
his classes with a minimum of work, now fretted on the days exams were
to be handed back.  He supposed that if you figured out the
probabilities for catastrophe the results would be double any
possibility for good fortune.  In the fall, when his parents were still
in the middle of breaking up, and he became accustomed to hearing them
argue, sometimes he couldn't sleep without the rhythm of their quarrels.

His worrying got so out of control he started to read the obituaries in
the Island Tribune, just to make certain no one he knew had died in the
night.

And then, in early November, when the trees were leafless and black and
the twilight turned purple, he had a strange taste of grief.  He'd gone
over to the police station to ask his father for an advance on his
allowance, for beer of course, though he didn't plan to mention that,
and found he'd taken a wrong turn in the hallway.  Only days before, a
five-year-old had disappeared while trick-or-treating.  Because the
little girl still hadn't been found, several of the detectives had
agreed to meet with a psychic from New Jersey, an ordinary-looking woman
who wore a navy-blue wool coat and a silk scarf patterned with lilies.

Connor happened to look through the glass partition to find the psychic
staring right at him, or through him, and he felt himself get all cold,
as if he'd stepped inside a freezer.  He slipped into the office, it was
possible that the detectives were used to his hanging around, and that's
why they didn't notice him, or perhaps, like Connor, they were
completely focused on the psychic.  She described the sewer pipe that
brought rainwater into the Sound and the usually shy hermit crabs, which
had gathered around, drawn to the scent of candy.  Connor listened until
he couldn't bear to hear more, and when he left he ran all the way home.
The following day, Connor couldn't bring himself to read the Island
Tribune.  He didn't want to know that the little girl had been wearing a
witch's hat or that Milky Ways and candy corn had been scattered through
the eelgrass.

Everything was dangerous, that much was clear to him.  Strangely, no one
else seemed to realize this, so he kept his worries secret, especially
from his parents.  When he saw his father they usually went to
McDonald's or to Harper's, the bar Roy liked, which served great
cheeseburgers and tacos.

"It's not like this is permanent or anything," Roy had told him after
he'd moved out.  He was living in an apartment in a big old house on
Third, and he hadn't yet gotten any furniture, except for a mattress,
which he left on the floor.

"Right," Connor had said, and he kept his mouth shut.  But sitting
there, eating Big Macs out of the bag, Connor held no hope for his
parents' reunion.  He could already imagine the furniture his father
would soon have: a grayand-white-striped couch, a brass pole lamp, a
black-and white rug.

And now, tonight, on his own street, with enough beer inside him to make
for a wicked hangover in the morning, Connor had that feeling all over
again.  Something wasn't right.  He ran past Marco Polo, and cut through
the hedge of lilacs that separated their front yard from the Carsons'.
Everything still looked the same: the slate path around to the side
door, the perennial beds filled with tender new shoots, the bike he had
left propped against the pear tree.  But what he saw could be deceiving,
if he blinked, just once, it could all disappear.

Inside, at the end of the hallway, Robin was already at the Wolf Man's
door.  When he cried out, she'd been washing her face.  The warm tap
water had immediately turned cold.  She had been rehearsing exactly what
she would say when she phoned Stuart in the morning.  There was no other
choice.  She would simply admit to her brother that she'd acted on
impulse.  Now, having realized she'd made a mistake, she'd be more than
willing to drive the Wolf Man back to Kelvin if Stuart would promise to
review his case.  But when Robin heard the cry from the guest room, she
forgot Stuart completely.  She went into the hallway, grateful that
Connor had broken his curfew, because even after there was nothing but
silence, she was afraid to open the guest room door.

When she went into the room and found the bed empty, Robin felt as if
she had imagined him completely.  Such a thing was possible, after all,
the roses in the garden would not bloom for another month, yet their
fragrance had somehow been left behind from other seasons.  The air
through the open window was chilly and damp, in only a few weeks the
crickets would begin to call, and their song would wake people in the
neighborhood and make them toss and turn in their own beds.  In the
corner, the Wolf Man rose to his feet.  Then Robin knew she was not
about to call her brother in the morning.  It was much too late for
rational acts, plain logic had been surrendered hours before.

"You're not asleep," Robin said when she saw him.  For some reason she
was whispering.

He was still wearing the black overcoat, and although he wanted to go
closer, he forced himself to stay where he was.  He didn't know what he
might be capable of, he didn't want to find out.

When she took a step toward him, he realized that he was having trouble
breathing.  He held his hands up, the way he had when the doctors first
came at him.

"Go out, now," he said.  "Lock the door."

In the garden, beside the rose trellis, the white cat came out of the
bushes and rubbed against Connor's legs, then streaked inside as soon as
the side door was opened.  The refrigerator hummed softly and a grid of
moonlight came in through the window above the counter.  The cat mewed
and jumped up to lap water out of a blue bowl left in the sink.

Connor took offhis sneakers before he went upstairs, a pulse at the base
of his throat was driving him crazy.  If he were smart, he'd concentrate
on hightailing it into his room to make certain his mother wouldn't find
him in the hall and interrogate him on where he'd been on a school
night.  He'd throw himself on his bed, and sleep late, and mind his own
business.

Instead, he went on down the hall.  That damn pulse was still there, as
if he had swallowed a clock and it had lodged in his throat.  He knew
every corner of this house, every creak the floorboards made, but
tonight there were shadows he'd never seen before, and for some reason
he felt like a thief, in his very own home.  When he saw that the guest
room had been bolted shut he stopped and leaned against the wall.  On
any other night he would have been merely curious, he would have slid
the lock open to see what was inside.  It was his house, after all,
there was nothing to be afraid of.  But on this night Connor took a step
backward.  For the first time in his life he considered that his mother
might have a few secrets of her own.

When Robin unlocked the door and brought him his breakfast, she warned
him not to be seen.  He was not to go outside or stand by the windows
while she was out, and most important of all, he was to make certain to
be back in the guest room before her son came home from school.  She was
nervous about leaving him while she went to pick up groceries for dinner
and flats of ivy, and she might not have gone if she hadn't already
committed to an appointment with a new client, about a job she needed if
she was to pay this month's bills.  Still, she asked three times if he'd
be all right alone and didn't seem to believe him when he promised that
he would be.

He planned not to leave his room for any reason, but after Robin had
gone, he opened the guest room door and studied the hallway.

In spite of himself, he was curious about the way men lived.  He used
the toilet, the way he'd been taught in the hospital, then went
downstairs, trailed by the white cat.  While he investigated the living
room, he remembered that some chairs went back and forth when rocked.

Someone had once told him never to put his feet up on the couch.  He
studied the photographs on the mantel and the framed posters on the
wall, but he avoided mirrors and was afraid of the blue light the TV
sent out when he turned the set on.

He had already eaten soup at the table, but he found the kitchen even
more disturbing.  Everything made noise, even the water seemed to
explode when he turned on the tap.  There was food everywhere, but he
didn't dare eat, although the white cat jumped up on the counter, where
a bowl of fishy paste had been set out.

He thought about leaving and went so far as to open the side door, but
the dog in the next yard barked at him, and he didn't chance stepping
outside.  Later, he crept up to the attic, where he found a trunk full
of tiny clothes and an oak box of chisels and knives the wood-carver had
left behind.  He took the sharpest of the knives, a small fierce piece
with a handle that fit his palm.  You never knew what you might need
when you were dealing with men, that was the way he saw it, and later he
hid the knife up in the guest room closet, deep in the pocket of the
black coat.

The house was not as uncomfortable as he would have imagined.

Still, he did not feel right in an easy chair, beneath a bright light,
and he found himself drawn to the cellar, where the walls were damp and
cool and jars of raspberry jam sat on a metal shelf.  He was there,
exploring the cellar, when Connor came home unexpectedly, having decided
that no one would notice if he cut his last class.

It was a wet, windy afternoon, on the clothesline in the backyard, the
white shirts Robin had hung out early that morning flapped and scared
away the starlings.  Before he went into the house, Connor stopped and
looked up into the guest room window.

Nothing.  Of course.  He'd let himself get spooked for no reason at all
last night.  He had to stop letting things get to him, inventing the
possibility of trouble when there was none.  He should be concentrating
on enjoying himself, and that's what he planned to do now, just grab his
skateboard and meet his friends in the parking lot behind the market.
But as soon as he went down the rickety basement stairs, Connor was no
longer interested in finding his skateboard.  The WolfMan didn't hear
Connor until it was too late.

Now he averted his face and stared at the floor, his back was flat
against the wall.

"What are you doing here?"  Connor said.

There was a baseball bat under the stairs, and if Connor was quick
enough, he might be able to grab it and defend himself.  But instead of
attacking, the Wolf Man crouched down in the corner and hid his face in
his hands.

"Jesus Christ," Connor said.  "Who are you?"

They both heard the door upstairs open.  The Wolf Man flinched, and as
soon as he did, Connor grabbed the bat and held it out.  He felt as if
his head was going to explode.

"Mom?"  Connor called up the stairs.  "Don't come down here."

Robin ran to the cellar door, potatoes and pears fell out of the grocery
bag she carried.  Connor swung the baseball bat just to let the intruder
know he wasn't dealing with a kid.  He expected his mother to scream,
but instead she slowly came down the stairs.  She was looking at the man
against the wall in some strange way, as if Connor weren't even there.

"Mom?"  Connor said.

Later, he realized she would never have told him.  She would have left
him in the dark, a child sent to bed after supper.  He was already a
man, but his mother refused to accept that.  If he hadn't stumbled into
the basement, she would have kept this stranger a secret from him.

Connor was furious.  Why did she feel she always had to protect him?

He slammed out of the house, then walked into town and talked Sal Penny
into buying him a fifth of Irish Mist, which he drank at the arboretum
beneath one of the last remaining elm trees.

When he came home it was already growing dark.  Homer mewed, greeting
him, then wound around his legs while Connor vomited into the kitchen
sink.  It was a little after seven but felt much later, one of those
damp April nights that made it seem as though summer might be years
away.  When the front doorbell rang, Connor went into the living room,
still weaving from whiskey and anger, his face pale, his shirt messed
and halfunbuttoned.  He stopped when he saw that his mother was sitting
on the couch, in the dark, just listening to the doorbell.  She looked
up at him, then looked back at the door.

Connor sat down beside her on the couch, and together they waited for
the bell to stop ringing.  At last it did, and Connor went to the
window.  He lifted the curtain and saw it had only been Mrs. Dixon,
armed with one of her petitions for a moratorium on building on the
island.  He watched Mrs. Dixon cross the lawn to the Carsons' house next
door, scooting as best she could around Marco Polo, who lay belly down
in the damp grass, letting forth his great rolling bark without
bothering to move.  It wasn't until Connor let the curtain drop that he
suddenly understood why his mother had not told him about the locked
guest room.  If Connor was a man, as he presumed himself to be, this
moment had to come, when his mother looked to him not knowing what to do
next, and he would be forced to become completely and instantly sober,
whether he liked it or not.

Each day, after Connor left for school, Robin came up to the guest room
with armfuls of old children's books.

Later, she brought a tape recorder and a few books that had their own
story tapes, so he could try to read along when she wasn't there.  She
truly believed that once he could read and write he could decide his own
fate, no one could come after him with handcuffs.

"They wouldn't dare," she told him.  "Over my dead body," she whispered
as she shifted the pile of storybooks on her lap.

He knew when he made progress, because each time he did, Robin clapped
her hands and smiled.  He wanted to please her, maybe too much, he
couldn't get enough of that look she had whenever he did something
right.  But more important, he felt certain that if he learned to read
he could figure out his way back home, and this made him an excellent
student.  Sometimes whole words jumped out from the page.  Cat and dog,
my and no, eggs and ham.

Robin was proud of him, and that was good, but often he frightened
himself by how much he knew.  When he was given a pad of paper and a
pencil one afternoon he realized that he'd already been taught to
imagine he was drawing a snake when he wrote the first letter of his
name.

"What are you doing?"  Robin asked when he began to write.  "What is
that?"

He hadn't known himself until he had spelled it out completely.

Stephen.  That's what he'd been called.

Robin had been delighted.  She'd tossed a book high into the air and
called him brilliant and suggested he practice writing every day.  He
did as she asked, he knew it was in his best interest.

But the funny thing was, each time he printed out a word on a piece of
lined paper, he felt as though he were losing something, as though the
lines on the paper had somehow shifted, dividing him in two.

With every word he wrote, with each book he read, he remembered more, as
if he had to be reminded of the story of his own life.  They had been up
in the sky, that much he knew, when the flight from San Francisco to New
York veered so far from its route that the plane wasn't sighted until
three months after its disappearance.  Another month had passed before
the search party reached what was left.  By then, the remains of the
passengers that hadn't been carried off by foxes and hawks were so
decayed even the tracking dogs refused to go close.  The search party
assumed there were no survivors, but in fact there was one.  He was
three and a half years old and had just learned how to whistle and spell
his name, he could recite all of The Cat in the Hat by heart.

Stephen planned to be a fireman when he grew up and own a
white-and-black spotted dog.  He was cheerful and good-natured and
tended to see the sunny side of things, but he knew something wasn't
right when the clouds all around him began to move too quickly.  As he
looked out the window, he found himself believing that the sky was a
dish without a lid.  It was possible to rise forever, but once the fall
began, the bottom was only inches away.  It took a long time before he
managed to get out from beneath the crush of bodies on top of him.  The
metal all around hissed and grew hot.  Stephen recognized his father's
brown shoe and the pink baby blanket the little girl in the next row had
used to play peek-a-boo.  "I see you," she had called to him.  When he
found his mother, he sat hunched over right beside her, waiting for her
eyes to open, almost believing his cries could bring her back to life.

He was an only child, well loved and well cared for.  Every morning, his
mother had served him oatmeal with honey.  Every night, he'd been tucked
into bed at seven.  They lived in an apartment where pigeons roosted on
the window ledges, he liked the cooing noises they made, he liked to
hear them flap their wings.  When he climbed out of what was left of the
plane and looked up, he was amazed to see that the sky he had fallen
from was filled with light.  There was nothing like this in the city,
where a grid of metal meshing covered the windows.  What was above him
was so beautiful and surprising he couldn't look away.  It was as if
he'd never before seen stars.

When the big dog came up behind him she was so quiet he hadn't known she
was there until he turned and saw her face, near his own.  She was gray
with a silver muzzle and yellow eyes.  Stephen's mother had always
warned him to stay away from strange dogs, but without thinking he
reached out and touched the dog's nose.  She pulled her head back,
startled, then pushed against his chest with her nose.  She didn't have
a collar or a leash like the dogs that were walked around his block, but
she made a little barking noise.  Stephen's face was still hot and red
from crying.  It was late September, but cold as a December day in New
York, when he breathed out, there were puffs of smoke.  Behind him, in
the dark, the twisted remains of the plane made a sizzling sound.

The big dog stared at the wreckage, she tilted her head, listening.

"My mommy's in there," Stephen told her.

The dog quickly looked back at him when he spoke.

"We fell down," he said, and his face felt even hotter.

It was dark out in the woods, and the trees looked as if they might come
alive and swoop him up in their arms.  Stephen had been glad that the
big dog had come up to him.  He had seen Lassie on TV, he knew dogs
could always find the way back home.  But he must have blinked, because
the big dog had suddenly disappeared into the darkness.  He looked and
looked, but she wasn't there.  Then he heard a whimpering, and she was
back.  She walked away again, stopping after a few paces to look back at
him.  He followed her then, and each time she disappeared, Stephen found
that if he just kept going she'd be waiting for him.

After a while he could no longer hear the fiery sound of the plane.

The woods were still, except for the wind, which called out numbers and
names in a hollow blue voice.  The moss was so thick Stephen stumbled,
and his shoes slipped into badger holes.

He was getting tired, but each time he stopped, the dog came out of the
darkness and pushed against his back, and they kept on this way until
they came to the base of a ridge.  His feet hurt by then, and he was
hungry.  He wanted oatmeal with raisins, or chocolate chip cookies, or a
big, red apple, peeled and cut into quarters by his mother.  The sky was
still filled with lights, but he couldn't see them anymore because the
pine trees grew so close together, and they were so tall, taller than
the brick buildings on his block.  That was where he had thought they
were heading, but now he had the funny feeling that the buildings and
shops and sidewalks that he knew were so far he'd never be able to walk
all the way there.  His throat became dry just thinking about the
distance, and his thirst was so bad he started to make little choking
sounds that were almost like crying.

When the two other dogs came out of the shadows, Stephen had leaned
against the big dog's side for comfort.  One dog was even bigger, and
black, so that all Stephen could see of him were his eyes and his teeth.
The other was gray and white and he looked over at the black one,
waiting for some sort of sign: flattened ears, hair standing on end, a
rumbling sound deep in the throat.

The black one was crouched down as he came toward Stephen, but he
stopped when the big dog came between them.  Her tail was straight up
and she showed her teeth, and the black dog looked at her bewildered,
then moved aside.

Stephen held on to the big dog's fur as she led him toward the base of
the ridge, where a cave had been dug.  It was even darker here than it
had been outside, but Stephen just kept following, though he'd had to
crawl part of the way.  The cave was surprisingly warm, so warm his eyes
were closing as he followed her.  The big dog stopped, and when
Stephen's eyes adjusted to the dark, he had seen that two puppies were
waiting.  As soon as the big dog flopped down, they scrambled over to
her, and Stephen had heard them drinking.  He was just as thirsty as
they were, and when he went to join them, and found they were drinking
right from the big dog, he did, too, and his eyes continued to close.

As he drank he was saying good-bye, to feather pillows and ABC books, to
cool lemonade on June days and potted hyacinths along the windowsill. On
all other nights, he had worn blue pajamas and slept with a stuffed
panda his father had brought home from a business trip, he had stretched
out beneath his quilt and listened to the sound of traffic out on the
street, like a river winding along the avenue.  But on this night, all
he heard was the big dog's heart beating as he curled up beside her, and
all night long he dreamed he was home.

She told the butcher that they were no longer vegetarians, in order to
explain why she was now one of his better customers, stopping in twice a
week.  She told her best friend, Michelle, whom she had never once lied
to, that she couldn't afford their nights out on Tuesdays, not even a
movie or a Greek salad at the diner.  She was not a particularly good
liar, she stuttered and coughed when she amended the truth, but nobody
seemed to notice.

One night, as she brushed her hair a hundred strokes, Robin realized she
was no longer even considering that she might take him back.

She had begun to call him by his given name, and that alone had changed
something.  He was taking up more and more of her time, so much that she
had begun to forget simple things: dishes in the sink, Connor's lunch,
the cat's needing to be fed or set out at night, the name of the variety
of hollyhock that grew beside her own garden gate.  The last Sunday of
the month she forgot to take an apple pie to her grandfather, and Old
Dick refused to be consoled.

"I didn't have time to fix the crust," Robin told him.  "The market was
all out of Mrs.  Smith's."

"Bullshit," he spat back.  He still looked formidable, even in bed,
beneath a tartan blanket.  "I want my pie," he insisted.

"Ssh," Robin whispered.  "Do you want Ginny to hear?"

"I hear everything," Ginny called from the dusty living room, where she
was watching her program.

"I'll bring you two pies next time," Robin offered.

"Not a good deal for me," her grandfather said.  "I could be dead.

You don't look well," he added.  He reached for his bifocals, which hung
on a string tied around his neck.  "Let me see your face."

Robin was sitting in the big chair by the window, she lifted her chin to
him.  Her hair was piled on top of her head, caught up in a silver clip,
and she was wearing old clothes, a gray thermal undershirt, jeans, worn
riding boots splattered with mud.  As a child, she'd been stubborn and
willful, she considered her grandfather's land to be the whole universe,
and anyone who stepped inside the iron gates had to play by her rules.
Even Michelle was always a foot soldier or a lady-in-waiting, always
second in command.  When Poorman's Point had belonged to her
grandfather, she believed she could do exactly as she pleased, and her
grandfather had encouraged it, he didn't mind if there were burrs in her
hair or if she slogged through the marsh grass in her socks.  Ginny
would throw up her hands and shriek, but she couldn't stop Robin from
inviting squirrels to the tea parties she held on the porch.

Robin was never satisfied until those squirrels ate their salted peanuts
off the china plates and sipped lemonade right out of the cups.

"You're lying about something," Robin's grandfather said.  He was still
sharp, and he drove a hard bargain, it was impossible to get away with
much in his presence, whether or not he was wearing his glasses.

"Don't be silly," Robin said, but she stumbled over the word "silly" and
her face grew as pink as a cabbage rose.  As soon as she could she put
away the groceries she'd brought him, vacuumed the living room under
Ginny's direction, and got out of there, taking the stairs two at a
time, running down the gravel driveway to her parked truck.

Of course, that was the thing about lying, once you began, you had to do
it again and again.  After fifteen years of decreeing the difference
between right and wrong, Robin had turned Connor into a liar as well,
and had even advised him on what lies to tell.  When Stuart called,
Connor insisted that Robin had a bad case of laryngitis, which made it
impossible for her to speak on the phone.  He asked his father not to
come to the house but to meet him instead at Harper's, for dinner or
lunch, they needed time alone, man to man.  Roy fell for this line and
was pleased, and he didn't seem to notice that, when they did meet,
Connor didn't say a word.  At the hardware store, Connor toldJack
Merrill they were having problems with the electric company again, he
even managed to act embarrassed as he paid for the box of white utility
candles.  But of course, it wasn't the electric bill that was the
problem.  Lamps cast shadows and drew the attention of anyone who might
be walking a dog or riding a bicycle along the street after supper.  At
twilight, they closed the curtains and double-locked the front door.

If an unexpected guest should arrive--a school friend of Connor's, or
Michelle's younger daughter, Jenny, selling mint cookies to raise funds
for a class trip--they wouldn't answer the doorbell.  Instead, they sat
in the dark.  They listened to the wind and the echo of footsteps on
their front porch, and if they counted slowly to one hundred, whoever it
was who had come to visit would be gone.

Every evening, before daylight was gone completely, Connor played
checkers with Stephen.  Stephen definitely liked to win, and he showed
no mercy.  One day, after only a few games, he was doublejumping so much
that Connor decided they should leave checkers behind and move on to
chess.  Robin wasn't home yet, so after he set out the pieces on the
board, Connor went to the kitchen and got beers for both of them.  That
evening, he heard Stephen laugh for the first time.  As it turned out,
Stephen was a natural at chess, a bit better at offense than defense.

" Your little horse, " Stephen said, triumphant, as he took Connor's
knight.

Connor grinned right along with him.  When his mother had told him the
little she'd heard of Stephen's history from her brother, he'd thought
living in the woods sounded exciting.  Now he reconsidered, and he
wasn't so sure.

"Were you actually with the wolves, or just kind of in the same
vicinity?"

Stephen stopped smiling, he turned his gaze back to their game.

"The same vicinity," he answered.

"What did you do to get food?"  Connor said.  "Did you have to kill the
things you ate?"

Stephen took Connor's bishop and placed it on the coffee table.

"Deer and things like that?"  Connor said.

"Things like that," Stephen said.  He nodded to the chessboard.

"Your move."

Connor carelessly moved a pawn.  "Did you cook them, or just eat them?

Like raw or something?"

One more move and he could put the boy in check.  He knew the right
maneuver instinctively, just as he knew the moves to make before a kill.
This board of black and white squares was nothing compared with a dark
night and tall grass.  There was a strategy always, a place for each of
them, to the left and the right, in a fan shape, deep in the sweet
grass.  It took forever, and no time at all, once you were running, you
could taste what you were after.

"Holy shit," Connor said when Stephen captured his queen.  "I sure
screwed up."

Stephen held the white queen in his hand.  He should not be in this
house and he knew it.  The nights had become more difficult for him.

He paced the guest room, wearing out the carpet.  It had been so long
since he'd been able to run that he could actually feel his muscles
growing weaker.  The calluses on his hands and feet were no longer as
thick, if he pricked himself with a thorn, he would probably feel it
now.  On some nights, the scar on the inside of his thigh caused him
great pain, as if to remind him of who he'd once been.  But the truth of
it was, he'd been locked away for so long that when a butterfly came in
through the open window one evening, he'd been startled.

They should have finished him off after he'd been caught, they should
have left him where he'd fallen.  Yellow ,: , leaves would have covered
him, and frost, and the long, brown feathers of the hawks above him in
the sky would have fallen across his back like a blanket.  He put aside
his beer and shook Connor's hand when congratulated on his win.  After
the chessboard had been put away, he said good night and went upstairs.
If he was downstairs when Robin came home, she would look at him and ask
what was wrong, and he wouldn't know if she really wanted an answer.
He'd already realized he could not begin to understand the things men
did, now he saw women were even harder to figure out.  Sometimes it
almost seemed as if they were thinking one thing and talking about
something else completely, and you didn't know what to believe: the
thing they said or the thing they didn't say.

A long time ago he had given up speech because it had ceased to matter.

Year after year, he had named his brothers and sisters with words that
had less and less meaning, until he had stopped naming things
altogether.  Things were, with or without names.  The snow always fell
and then melted.  There was no point in questioning why, just as there
was no reason to ask why the moon turned orange after the first frost or
why white flowers appeared each time the earth grew muddy and warm.

Ask one question, and a thousand would follow.  Doubt, and who were you?
Nothing but a creature who paced all night long, who watched the night
from behind a screen window.  Do what you must, he'd learned that at
least.  Hang clothes in the closet, unlace sneakers, don't look in
mirrors, try not to think.

Up in his room, Stephen rewound one of the story tapes Robin had given
him and read along with a flashlight.  It was a silly children's tale in
which rabbits and bears were not flesh and blood but partly human things
who wore suits and could talk.  As Stephen followed along, the sound of
his own voice disturbed him, but he kept at it.  He heard the truck in
the driveway when Robin came home, he heard her footsteps on the stairs
and, later, the sound of the shower running.  Once, he had had the
ability to hear a single drop of rain on a single green leaf.

Now the sounds all ran together, and he had to force himself to
concentrate in order to read.

And when, finally, his eyes grew weary, and the words on the page ran
together in a jumble, he put his book away.  He tried his best to ignore
the moonlight.  Instead, he concentrated on all the things he must
learn, inconsequential things he could forget as soon as they allowed
him to go home.  How i came before e, except after c, how orange juice
was poured into a cup, and bread must always be sliced with a knife. How
a book began at the beginning, and ended at the last page, how to sit,
motionless, in a chair by the window, while out in the driveway a deer
that has wandered down the road chews the new shoots of hollyhocks.  How
to spend the night in a locked room, when what he wanted was right down
the hall.

EVERY MEMORIAL DAY the Dixons had their big party.

They hung red, white, and blue streamers from the branches of their
maple trees and started barbecuing chicken and ribs at noon.  Their
little poodle, Casper, was locked in the utility closet early in the day
to make certain he wouldn't bother the guests or steal chicken bones off
the paper plates.  Various neighbors were enlisted to prepare huge tubs
of potato salad and cole slaw, and the first of the season's lemonade
was always served, made with real lemons and cold spring water.

This year the Dixons really had something to celebrate.  Matthew, whom
they'd always worried about--his lack of friends for one thing, his
weight for another--was home from his first year at Cornell.  Matthew
was a sweet-faced, hulking boy who had spent his entire high school
career locked in his bedroom with a computer.

But now it seemed to have paid off.  He'd made dean's list at Cornell
and had been allowed to register for graduate seminars, next fall he'd
be teaching a section on computer languages to freshmen.  As guests
arrived, they fished beers out of a trash barrel filled with ice, then
stopped by the barbecue, where Matthew was turning peppery ribs with
metal tongs, and they patted him on the back, congratulating him and
welcoming him home.

The young people congregated in the rear of the yard, sitting
cross-legged on Indian bedspreads, drinking lemonade and beer.

The sunlight was honey-colored and thick.  Summer was close enough to
make everything seem charged, the blades of grass, bare knees, the lazy
sound of ice in a paper cup.  Lydia Altero, who was seventeen and had
brown hair to her waist, sat with her girlfriends and watched Connor
duck under the branches of a maple on his way to get himself a drink.

He was so tall and so uncomfortable with the neighbors who greeted him
that all his movements looked tender and silly.  Lydia felt herself grow
angry when Josh Torenson bumped into Connor as he approached the rear of
the yard and lemonade spilled onto Connor's white shirt.

Without bothering to think what her girlfriends would say, Lydia went
over and handed him a paper napkin.

"Josh is an idiot," she said.  She judged people smartly and quickly,
and often found herself in a huff.  "Lemonade doesn't stain," she told
Connor.

Connor stared at the napkin as if it were something delivered directly
from the moon.  Lydia Altero hated him, didn't she?  At least that was
what he'd always been led to believe.  Because their mothers had been
best friends for so long, he and Lydia had always been thrown together,
with unpleasant results.  Lydia was only a few months older than Connor,
but she had specialized in pinching when they were


babies, and graduated to snubbing him completely by the time they'd
entered junior high.

"Well?"  she said to him now.  She held one hand over her eyes to block
out the sun.  "Aren't you going to clean your shirt?"

It seemed impossible that Connor had known her his whole life and had
never once noticed how beautiful she was.

"What?"  Lydia said when she saw the look on his face.

"You," Connor said, before he could stop himself, and then he got all
flustered, and pretended to dab at his shirt, which had already dried in
the sun.

Lydia chewed a piece of ice and acted as if she didn't know what he
meant, but there were goose bumps up and down her arms.  She'd fallen in
love with him so slowly she didn't even know it herself, until it had
all but smacked her in the face last week when she'd seen him talking to
a redhaired girl before gym class.

She'd actually taken sick with jealousy and had to be sent home by the
school nurse.

"Who's that with your mom?"  she asked.

Connor whipped his head around as though he'd been shot.  Over by the
long picnic table, set out with pies and cakes, his mother was
introducing Stephen to the Carsons and the Simons.  Robin was wearing a
blue dress and a strand of old pearls that had belonged to her
grandmother.  It was amazing to see how calm she looked, how young,
really, as though she weren't even Connor's mother.

Robin arched her neck when she laughed at one of Jeff Carson's jokes,
then poured two glasses of lemonade.  When she saw Connor staring, she
waved, then turned back to Miriam Carson.  This was the date they'd been
aiming for.  They'd anxiously planned for Stephen's introduction to
their neighbors back when it seemed they had all the time in the world,
and now it was here, and Connor wondered if he was the only one who was
worried.

Stephen's bad haircut had grown out, and he was wearing the clothes
they'd picked out for him at Macy's.  Standing beneath a mimosa tree on
a beautiful hot day he looked like any handsome young man you might meet
at a party.  There was an official story they were supposed to tell,
with facts Connor had helped them invent, but looking at Lydia he became
undone.  Could it be that he'd never noticed that her eyes were blue?
Lydia turned for a moment, to wave away her little sister, Jenny, so she
couldn't eavesdrop, and when she turned back to Connor, he could feel
his pulse quicken.

"He's just some guy who's living with us, " Connor told her.  His face
was burning hot, and he held his glass of lemonade up to his forehead.

"He's gorgeous," Lydia said, and when she saw Connor's face fall, she
almost laughed out loud.  He felt the same way that she did, whether he
knew it or not.  "For someone his age," she added tactfully.

Miriam Carson was pretty much saying the same thing to Robin as she
sliced a pecan pie.

"His cheekbones," Miriam whispered.  "Those eyes."  She turned to
Stephen and handed him a fork and a plateful of pie.  "Slavic blood?"

she guessed.  "Ukrainian?"

Stephen balanced the plate in one hand and looked to Robin for help.

"The Midwest," Robin said.  "Napkin?"  she asked Stephen, because the
pie was still warm and the filling dripped over the edge of the plate.

Stephen had already begun to eat the pie, since it seemed that Miriam
wanted him to.  It was disgusting, pure sugar, but he had to chew what
was already in his mouth and swallow it.

"I baked that," Miriam told him.

"Ah," Stephen said.

Robin forced herself to keep a straight face.  As soon as Miriam went to
look for more paper plates, she pulled Stephen aside, behind the mimosa.

"If you don't like something you don't have to eat it," she said.

"No, thank you," Stephen said, hesitant.

"Exactly," Robin agreed.

Most of the neighbors were already there, including Stuart and Kay, who
always surprised everyone with how good-natured they were toward each
other since their divorce.  George Tenney and Al Flynn were organizing a
softball game, as they did every year, insisting the young people move
their picnic blankets to give the ballplayers most of the yard, shouting
at Matthew to fan the smoke from the grill in another direction.

Robin smoothed down the hem of her dress, she was actually a nervous
wreck.  In the past week, she and Connor had taken Stephen on several
dry runs, to the bakery and the market and finally all the way to
Westbury, where the fluorescent lights and the jostling crowds in Macy's
had driven Stephen into the try-on room in the men's department.

It had taken Connor twenty minutes to talk Stephen into coming out from
behind the curtain to continue the search for a sports jacket.

They all realized that it was Stuart who really mattered.  If he didn't
recognize Stephen, if he accepted him as just another guest, then they
had done their work well.  Someday, long after Stephen disappeared,
Robin planned to tell her brother the truth.  The young man he'd met at
the Dixons' and the patient who'd been handcuffed and forgotten were one
and the same.  He had stood beside him in the sunlight, and Stuart
hadn't suspected a thing.

And now, just when it all seemed to be going so well they could almost
relax, Robin saw her soon-to-be ex-husband's shadow fall across the
lawn.  One thing she had never figured on was that Patty Dixon would
invite Roy, but there he was, headed straight for the barrel of ice and
beer, until he spotted Robin.

"Bad luck," she said to Stephen.  "Roy."

He looked great, even Robin had to admit that.  His dark hair was combed
back, he had the same blue-green eyes as Connor and, to anyone who'd
never been married to him, just about the best smile in the world.  He
joined them behind the mimosa tree and looked Stephen over carefully.

"Terrific party," he said to Robin, and then, almost as an afterthought,
"Who's this?"

"Stephen."  The first introduction and it had to be with Roy.

"He's an exchange student."

"Oh, yeah?"  Roy said.  "A little old for that, aren't you?"  Roy
reached out to shake hands, and Stephen had to shift his plate of sticky
pie.  "Roy Moore," he said.

His voice sounded friendly, but Stephen had the urge to back away from
him.  Stephen lowered his eyes, but that didn't mean he wasn't ready if
he had to be.

"He's studying horticulture with me," Robin said.

"With you?"  Roy laughed.  "That's a good one.  My father will get a
kick out of that."

"Why don't you get yourself one of those hamburgers?"  Robin suggested
to Stephen, but he didn't move.  "Why don't you get one for Roy, too,"
she urged him, wanting to keep him as far away from Roy as possible.

"You're sure?"  Stephen asked her.  "That's what you want?"

Of course it wasn't, but Robin nodded, and then she smiled when Stephen
looked confused.

"With ketchup," Roy called with a big grin as he watched Stephen walk
away.  "Lots."  He turned to Robin.  "You wanted to talk to me alone,"
he said.  "Should I be flattered?"

"I need money," Robin said.  "You know I hate to ask you."  Roy took out
his wallet and made a show of giving her all the cash he had.

"Life would be a lot simpler and cheaper if I moved back," he said.

Stephen was waiting his turn at the barbecue, there was a mourning dove
in the tree above him, a spoiled, foolish bird, used to eating bread
crumbs and crusts.  If Stephen slowly moved one hand in front of the
dove, he could snatch it up in a second, before it could hop to another
branch or spread its wings.

"Chicken or burger?"  Matthew Dixon said.  He was wearing a white apron
which didn't quite fit across his wide body and there were smudgy
charcoal streaks on his arms.

Stephen held his plate out, but he was staring past the barbecue.

Robin was leaning up against the trunk of the tree now, she tied the
strand of pearls she wore in a knot.  Fat dripped into the flames, and
when the smoke turned black Stephen couldn't tell whether or not she was
smiling.

Robin had turned to wave to Michelle, who was on her way over with Paul
and their twelve-year-old, Jenny.  Robin had been avoiding Michelle for
weeks, and now Michelle raised her eyebrows and pointed at Roy, as if
there was a chance in hell they'd gotten back together.

"No way," Robin told her, and they both laughed while Paul and Roy
exchanged a look.

"How do they know what they mean without talking?"  Paul said.

"Well, you know women have ESP," Roy said.

"Extra spending power?"  Paul joked.

Roy laughed and took the bottle of beer Paul offered him.

"Whatever they've got, it's definitely extra."

"Is that cute guy the one who's living with you?"  Jenny asked Robin.

Roy turned to Robin, his face had gone so white he looked as if he
didn't have a drop of blood inside.

"Excuse me?"  Robin said.  She would have liked to give Jenny a good
shake, instead she smiled and reknotted her pearls.

"The guy at the table," Jenny went on.  "He's living at your house."

They all turned to look.  There was Stephen pouring ketchup on a
hamburger bun.  When he glanced up and saw them all staring, he
immediately put the ketchup down.  Maybe he wasn't supposed to pour it
straight from the bottle, maybe it was like mayonnaise, which Connor
scooped out with a knife or a spoon.

"That's what Connor told Lydia," Jenny said.  She took a step backward
when Robin glared at her.  "Is it supposed to be a secret?"

Robin quickly scanned the yard.  Connor and Lydia were beside the
forsythia.  They hadn't even noticed the bees swarming around them.

"Robin?"  Michelle said.

"He's a horticulture student," Robin explained.

No one seemed convinced that this was an answer.

Roy nodded to a secluded corner of the yard.  "I want to talk to you."

"Well, I don't want to talk to you," Robin told him.

"Well, too fucking bad," Roy said.

Michelle put her hands over Jenny's ears.  "Do you two mind?"

"Let me guess," Robin said coldly to Roy.  "You're trying to charm me."

"Don't do this in public," Michelle whispered to Robin.

"He's living with you?"  Roy said.  "Am I hearing this correctly?"

"Are you speaking to me?"  Robin said.  "Or are you interrogating a
witness?"

This was not at all the way she had planned it, everything she said
sounded suspect and weak.  Michelle seemed insulted, as if Robin had
somehow intended to cloud their friendship by keeping Stephen from her.

And Roy simply wouldn't let it go.  People were starting to stare at
them.  Stuart and Kay were being drawn over by their raised voices.

George Tenney had stopped in midswing, and was holding up the ball game
so he could see what was going on.  Stephen had already begun to walk
toward them, carrying the hamburgers, even from this distance Robin
could see how cautious he was.

"What I do is none of your business," Robin informed Roy.

"Go get ice cream," Michelle told her daughter.  "Now."

"See, that's where I think you're wrong," Roy told Robin.

Stuart came up behind Robin, and when he touched her arm she was
startled, even after she'd turned to him.  He seemed so rumpled and
middle-aged it took Robin an instant to realize this was indeed her
brother, the boy she used to protect in the schoolyard.

"You two sound like you're married," Stuart said cheerfully.  "We could
hear you over by the dessert table."

"We are married," Roy said darkly.

"Well, there you go," Stuart said, less cheerful now.  "There you have
it."

"You don't need to be rude to Stuart," Kay said to Roy.  She had just
come back from a vacation in Mexico, and Robin noticed that she looked
ten years younger than she had when she and Stuart were still married.

Stuart beamed, genuinely happy to be defended by his ex-wife.

"Oh, don't pay any attention to Roy," he told her.  "Nobody else does."

"Let's get ice cream," Paul whispered to Michelle.

"And here he is," Roy said.  He was truly smooth when he wanted to be.

There was that smile, for one thing.  "The man who's living with my
wife."

For a brief moment, Robin had the sense that something horrible could
happen.  Stephen's eyes were hooded and cold, along his neck a line of
veins rose up.  He was face to face with Roy, and although his mouth was
curled, he didn't appear to be smiling.

"Hamburger," Robin said.  She took one of the plates from Stephen and
shoved it at Roy.  "This is Stephen," she told Stuart.  "He's studying
landscape design."

Robin had drawn Stephen over to her brother, but he was still looking at
Roy.

"Will you be working with the Doctor?"  Stuart asked.  "Roy's father
plotted out the arboretum for our grandfather."

"I'm working with Robin," Stephen said.

"You should come see the moon garden Robin did for me," Kay suggested.

Hers was an all-white garden: white hybrid tea roses, masses of white
lilies and bearded iris, Miss Lingard's icy phlox, clematis that opened
to look like a handful of snow.

"Thank you," Stephen said.  Robin nodded at him, so he knew he was doing
well, but his heart was pounding.  "I will," he told Kay.  He could
still feel the bad thing between him and Roy, if they were honest about
it, they'd be circling each other right now.  But men weren't honest,
they sipped beer and smiled and didn't show their teeth.

"When did you plan to tell me about him?"  Michelle whispered as Paul
tried to guide her toward the dessert table.

"There's nothing to tell," Robin insisted.  "Really," she swore, but by
that time no one was listening to her.

"Is the cat driving you crazy?"  Stuart asked Stephen.  "When I stayed
at Robin's the damned thing used to jump on me in the middle of the
night.  I'm convinced the sole purpose of its existence is to shed."

"The cat doesn't bother me," Stephen said carefully.  This was it, this
small encounter was what they had practiced for.  The true test, Robin
had said, the real McCoy.

"You're a tolerant man," Stuart said.  "Lemonade?"

And that was when Stephen knew they had actually accomplished it.

Stuart had no idea that he'd talked to Stephen dozens of times in that
room with bars on the windows.  Just blink yo1lr eyes if you want to
answer yes.  Shake your head for no.  All Stuart saw now was the sports
jacket from Macy's and the Nike sneakers and the sunlight, and what he
saw he believed.  Tell me anything at all, say one word, Stuart had
pleaded, while Stephen sat across from him, in a hard-backed chair,
considering how easy it would be to break his neck, then steal the ring
of keys from his belt.

Bees buzzed around the pitchers on the table, and out in the rear of the
yard a bat cracked against a ball and sent it flying.  Robin glanced
over at Stephen, pleased, as if their accomplishment had turned him, all
at once, into the person he appeared to be on this one fine day in May.
People all around them were talking, they sounded like birds, or water
in a stream, unintelligible and constant.  There were women in cotton
dresses, and boys running through the new grass, and here he was,
dressed like a man, accepting a tall glass of lemonade beneath a clear
blue sky, more than a thousand miles from home.

In that first week of June, when the tide was so low that children went
far out across the mud flats, collecting baskets of mussels, the roses
bloomed all at once.  People stopped at their own gates, openmouthed,
surprised by the profusion in their own gardens.  Everywhere on the
island, roses spilled over lawns and climbed over rooftops, a glorious
infestation.  Thorns and brambles choked lawn mowers, allergy sufferers
went crazy with sneezing, little girls complained they couldn't sleep
because the bees began buzzing long before dawn.

"It was the rainy winter," the Doctor told Robin when he stopped by for
a cup of coffee.  The bed of his parked truck was filled with branches
and canes, wasps hovered above the pickup.  "The ground never froze," he
went on.  But still he seemed puzzled, there was no real explanation.
Usually, roses demanded more care than other plants, they were tricky
and cantankerous and had to be coaxed into growing with bonemeal and
lime.  "So, how's business?"  he asked.

"I'm sort of behind," Robin said.

In fact, she'd hardly worked all spring, and if she wasn't careful she'd
have to borrow money from Stuart or, far worse, ask Roy for help again.
Stephen was out in the yard now, practicing what she'd taught him about
pruning back roses.  She was afraid to do the job she knew so well,
gardening was a gift, after all, and what was given might be taken away.
She didn't believe in bad luck or curses, but just in case, each time
she found a toad in someone's garden she made certain to set it free.

"It seems that I have a black thumb these days.  I don't know what to do
about it."

"It's the divorce," the Doctor said as he spooned sugar into his coffee.
"Planning a divorce can kill a garden."

"That's a dreadful thing to say," Robin chided him, although she
secretly believed he might be right.

She made a face at him, the way she used to when he was working for her
grandfather and she would annoy him until he shooed her away.  It was,
indeed, a dreadful thing to say, but the Doctor didn't give a damn.  He
had recently celebrated his sixty-third birthday, and although he could
still lift a magnolia out of the bed of his truck with no help at all,
he figured he was now old enough to say whatever he pleased, whether or
not it was true.  As far as he was concerned, Roy had made a lot of
mistakes in his life, and now he had screwed up the one thing he'd done
right.

"Have pity on him," the Doctor suggested.

"I don't think that's what you're supposed to feel for your husband,"
Robin said.

The Doctor laughed and went to the sink to wash out his coffee cup.  He
would never have let a girl like Robin get away from him.

The problem with Roy was that he was too good-looking.  His mother, the
Doctor's wife, had been that way, too, and in the years before she died,
she grew colder and more distant, shocked that the world hadn't offered
her everything she'd wanted just because she was beautiful.

"The boy's doing a good job," the Doctor said as he watched Stephen
through the window.

Robin came over and lifted the edge of the curtain, then made herself
look away.

"He's not a boy."  She laughed.

The Doctor put his cup on the drainboard.  His point exactly.

"How's my grandson?"  he asked on his way to the door.

"Sixteen," Robin said.  A word synonymous with moody, and getting
moodier all the time.  Connor had taken to going out by himself at
night.  He needed to think, he said.  He needed to be alone, and there
was no point in her waiting up for him.  There was no need to worry
about him drinking, he'd stopped completely, she could trust him on
that.  Occasionally Robin would catch him grinning, and when she'd ask
what was so funny, he'd clam up.  Whatever it was, it was a serious
business, but one that delighted him all the same.

" Your punishment for having once been a teenager yourself," the Doctor
told her.  "Everything we do comes back to haunt us."

Later that day, when the Doctor was working over at the Morrisons', he
saw Robin's truck go by.  He felt bad about throwing the breakup with
Roy at her.  He should have told her there was no such thing as a black
thumb, if you believed something would grow it would, plain and simple.

Anyone who knew gardens knew that.  The Doctor let Angelo andJim finish
up the yard work so he could go to the curb and watch where his
daughter-in-law was headed.  The Feldmans' place, one of the first of
the old shingled houses.  This was a job the Doctor had turned down,
since Cheryl Feldman took no one's advice but her own, and that was
hardly worth heeding.  Robin somehow managed to tolerate even the most
obnoxious clients, but then, she'd had plenty of practice with her
grandfather.  If a client insisted on pansies or gladioli, Robin would
nod, then go ahead and plant one or two in among the masses of lilies
and cornflowers she'd suggested in the first place.  The Doctor had
taught Robin well, and he was proud of her.  As his helpers raked up the
cut grass, he decided that he'd better have a long talk with his son.
He'd better do it soon, maybe as soon as tonight, because even from this
distance, the Doctor could see that fellow who was staying with her
didn't mind the thorns on the Feldmans' roses.  He wouldn't notice the
blood on his hands.

"Floribunda," Robin said, pleased to discover the rose Stephen handed
her didn't wilt as soon as she touched it.  She'd been foolish to think
she'd been cursed.  Some plants died and others lived, and human touch
had nothing to do with it.  "The old name for it," she explained to
Stephen.  "From the Latin."  She pulled her hair back into an elastic
band.  "We have to cut this all back.  Pronto."

It was good to work with Stephen, he worked hard and he didn't say much,
and at noon he walked down to the bakery to get them both lunch.

They had agreed he needed as much practice as possible going to stores,
making small talk, waiting for the light to turn red before he crossed
the street.  But sitting on the Feldmans' lawn, waiting for him to
return, Robin realized that she was almost sorry he was such a good
student.  He had learned to read more quickly than she'd ever imagined
possible, he was already on chapter books.  A few days ago he had asked
for an atlas, and it wasn't until she had brought one home from the
library that she understood why he'd wanted it.  She'd had the urge to
take the atlas right back, but then he'd been so grateful when she gave
it to him she'd felt silly and selfish.  She opened the book and showed
him the blue curves of Michigan and watched as he ran a finger over the
lines that signified rivers and roads.

He brought back two tuna salad sandwiches and two bottles of spring
water, and handed her the change, which he had tried his best to count.

They unwrapped their lunches and didn't speak as they ate.  They moved
only to wave away the bees.  Robin tilted her face toward the sun and
closed her eyes.  Of course he wanted to go back, at night he was
memorizing all the routes leading west, he was sounding out the numbers
and the names.  The mission had always been to let him decide his own
fate, but that didn't mean Robin had to think about it.  She didn't have
to think about the atlas, left open on the oak dresser in his room.  She
would not think about how close they were sitting, or even allow herself
to wonder if, by this time in her life, she shouldn't have a little more
sense.

Michelle Altero rarely got angry, and when she did, those who knew her
could tell something was wrong after one look.  Her face puckered and
grew flushed, her mouth formed a hard, straight line.  The students she
counseled at the high school thought she was a pushover, they liked her
generous spirit and knew she wasn't in the least bit dangerous, unless
someone was bullied or mistreated and that angry look of hers took over,
which meant there'd be a price to pay.

Working in a high school meant never hearing anything straight-out,
information just sort of filtered down.  Who was dating, who was
flunking out, whose father had missed his AA meetings, whose mother had
hit the roof over a MasterCard bill or a dented fender.  Snatches of
conversations drifted through the hallways, whispers arose in the study
hall, messages were scrawled in lipstick on the bathroom walls.  And so
it happened that Michelle was hearing the latest gossip with half an
ear, not paying much attention until she realized that the girl everyone
was talking about was her daughter Lydia.  Lydia was madly in love,
that's what they were saying.  She was sneaking out at night, when her
parents were already in bed asleep, down to one of the shacks on the
beach.  One rainy morning, she had walked over the bridge and taken the
bus to Great Neck and gotten herself a prescription for the pill, then
hitchhiked back home before anyone knew she'd been gone.  Michelle
locked herself in her office and canceled all her appointments.  Lydia
was just seventeen.  She never had to be reminded to wash the breakfast
dishes, her grades were straight A's.  Was this the sort of girl who
would lie to her parents, hitchhike, pull off her underpants in a cold
shack the fishermen had abandoned when Richard Aaron bought the island,
start off so early in ruining her life?  Of course she was not, and that
was why Michelle did exactly what she always cautioned parents about.
She assumed she knew where to place the blame.

That evening at dinner, everyone knew to avoid Michelle.  She didn't
take a single bite of the Boston cream pie she'd bought at the bakery.

She slammed the clean dishes into the cabinets after supper, chipping
the edges of the plates.

"Uh-oh," Jenny whispered to her sister.  "Watch out for Mom.  Red
alert."

But the explosion never came, and as darkness fell, they all thought
they were safe.  Paul went into the den and turned on the TV, Jenny
trooped upstairs, flopped on her bed, and finished her homework.  While
Lydia carefully chose her clothes for the next day, Michelle put on a
sweater and walked down Mansfield Terrace to Robin's house.

"Oh, boy," Robin said as soon as she opened the door.  "Who are you mad
at?  Paul?"

Michelle went into the kitchen, but she was too fired up to sit at the
table or have a cup of tea.

"Lydia's sleeping with someone," Michelle said.

Connor and the student they had living with them were playing chess in
the living room, so Michelle kept her voice down, but her face was
getting more and more puckered.

"Lydia?"  Robin said.  "No.  She's much too young."

"Really?"  Michelle said.  "How old were you when you started with Roy?"

"That was different," Robin said.  "I was stupid.  And look where it got
me."

"Precisely," Michelle said.  "Lydia has been talked into it.

That's what's happened.  She's been tricked."

In the living room, Connor was looking at his watch, missing the
opportunity to put Stephen in check.  Clearly he wasn't paying
attention, but Stephen had already learned this was a game without
mercy, so he made his best move.  They were playing by candlelight, and
one moth hovered above the flame.  Michelle watched them through the
doorway, she had her back to Robin, she didn't want her to see there
were tears in her eyes.

"I have to find out who it is," Michelle said.  "Then Paul will talk to
the boy.  God, will he talk to him."

"You want my advice?"  Robin said.  "Stay out of it."

Michelle turned to her then.  "Easy for you to say.  Isn't it?  Your
son's in there playing chess.  Why should you worry?"

"You're right," Robin said.  "Don't listen to me.  I'm an idiot about
these things."

Robin smiled, but she was looking past Michelle.  In the living room,
where he'd just put Connor in check, Stephen was looking right back at
her.  When Robin finally turned away, she laughed, for no reason at all.
Michelle buttoned her sweater, there were chills up and down her arms.
She was in her best friend's kitchen, and yet she had the sense that she
was unwelcome.  What is happening here?  she thought.  As she walked
home in the dark, it suddenly seemed as if Mansfield Terrace was the
very end of the earth.  One step, and there was the edge.  What did we
know about those closest to us, really?  No one ever dared to speak
plainly about desire, no one said the word out loud.

By the time Michelle got home, Lydia was up in the bathroom.  She smiled
at herself in the mirror and began to brush her hair.  Her whole life
had changed, and you couldn't even tell by looking at her.  She could
barely remember who she was before, or what on earth had been important
to her.  When there was a knock on the door, Lydia's stomach flipped
over.  Could it be that she really had a mother and a father and a
little sister, who was right now rifling through her jewelry box,
searching for dangling earrings and bangle bracelets?

"I'm in here," Lydia called.  "Stay out."

Michelle came in anyway and closed the door behind her.  Not a week went
by that she didn't counsel a junior or senior about birth control, she
believed she never once made a moral judgment.

But this was different.  This was her daughter.

"Mom!"  Lydia said.  "Can't you wait?"

"I want to know who he is," Michelle said.

Lydia eyed her mother coolly.  "I don't know what you're talking about,"
she said.

"The boy," Michelle said.  "Don't lie to me."

Lydia bit her lip.  Just thinking about Connor, imagining the goofy look
he had on his face the first time she took off her blouse, made her
smile.  They hadn't planned to keep their love secret, it had just
turned out that way.  They didn't want to be bothered with nosy families
and friends.  The last person on earth Lydia would consider sharing her
news with was her mother.

"Get that smirk off your face," Michelle said.

Before Michelle could stop herself, she smacked Lydia.  Lydia's head
reeled back, her blue eyes were wide and they stung.  She looked at
herself in the mirror and saw the red hand mark on her face.

"Oh, my God," Michelle said.  "Lydia.  I didn't mean that."  They were
staring at each other in the mirror.  For an instant, Michelle looked so
crumpled, so very far away from being young, she hardly recognized
herself.  Hadn't she just been the one who was seventeen?

"Oh, yes you did," Lydia said.  She felt something burst inside her, as
if she'd just been granted her freedom.  She raised her chin, and her
eyes were perfectly clear.  "You meant it," she said.

That night Lydia didn't bother climbing out her window.  She put on her
boots and a heavy sweater and left by the front door.  It was after
eleven, and Paul had already fallen asleep, but beside him in their bed,
Michelle was wide awake, and she heard the door open, then close.

She could have jumped out of bed and chased Lydia down the front path,
she could have phoned Roy down at the station and had him pick up the
boy Lydia was off to meet and give him a good scare.  Instead, she kept
her head on her pillow and listened to her husband shift in his sleep.

She knew then why parents often came to her office distraught, torn
apart by what was really only a minor transgression.  She knew why she'd
been beside herself with worry.  There came a moment when quite suddenly
a mother realized that a child was no longer hers, and for Michelle that
moment had already come and gone.  Without bothering to ask, or even
give notice, her daughter had just grown up.

OLD DICK had lived for almost a century, but even that wasn't nearly
long enough.  Common knowledge would certainly lead anyone to believe
that more than thirty thousand mornings and afternoons spent lugging
flesh and bones around would tire a man out and leave him begging for
eternal rest.  This was not true.  It was absolute bullshit.  At the age
of ninety-one, Richard Aaron had never found the earth more beautiful or
more distant.  Some nights he dreamed he was flying, and in his dreams
he reached out his arms.  There was so much he wanted.

But he was moving far too quickly to walk on the grass or touch the
newly spaded dirt or kiss the girl who was waving to him from below, and
when he woke up, and discovered his body was old, he swore at his
housekeeper, and had the curtains drawn against the sun, and threw his
pathetic breakfast of cooked cereal and weak tea on the floor, all of
which led everyone to assume he was tired of life, as if that could ever
be the case.

He'd been remarkably smart as a boy, surprising even himself.  Not with
lessons learned in school, he hadn't bothered with that.

Human nature was what he understood, and he'd made a good deal of money
in ways he wasn't particularly proud of, all because he knew what men
wanted or, maybe more important, what they wanted to believe.  It was
the possibility of paradise, here on earth.

With guidance, such a thing could be found on city streets in Manhattan,
in the dredged swamps of Florida, over in New Jersey, where all a man
had to do was take a deep breath and he'd know he was there.

Old Dick's mistake wasn't that he convinced others what they dreamed
could he had, for very little cash down, it was that he'd believed it
himself.  He'd heard about the island during a poker game, played for
high stakes with several of the building inspectors he regularly bribed.
The land was mud and straw, he was told, and the air wicked and muggy, a
man who walked through the marshes would take ill by morning.  Since he
never listened to anyone, Aaron went out to see for himself.  He was
already past thirty, with a wife and new baby, a straightforward man who
never acted on impulse.  He didn't even know he was looking for
something until he walked across to the island and realized he'd found
it.

Another man might have been bitter when his fortune disappeared, when
his wife and son died much too young, when his grandchildren were
shuttled into his care in what was already his old age, but not Richard
Aaron.  He'd gotten what he wanted, he had it still, even though he no
longer owned it on paper, his only regret was that he now had to look at
the island from his dusty bedroom window.  What he wouldn't give for
more time and strong legs.  So there it was, a joke really: Once you had
paradise, what good did it do you?  The mattress he slept on was filled
with hundred-dollar bills, all worthless to him now.  So he yelled at
Ginny, who'd helped raise his grandchildren and never listened to him
anyway, and he waited for the last Sunday of the month, when his
granddaughter brought him his contraband pie, laced with brown sugar and
cinnamon, and he found some interest in living long enough to see who
his great-grandson would turn out to be.

Old Dick was in his bed next to the window, scanning the Island
Tribune--he could read only the large print of the headlines, even with
his glasses--when he heard Robin's truck pull up.  It was the end of
June, and everything was perfectly green, the way it was before the heat
of summer came and turned the edges of the leaves paper-thin and brown.
Old Dick had jimmied his window open a crack in spite of Ginny's vow
that he'd catch pneumonia, he liked to hear the birds calling and the
crunch of the gravel in his driveway when his granddaughter came to
visit.  Robin and Connor got out of the truck, she was wearing shorts
and sneakers and a pale blue shirt, and yes, she had the pie.  Old Dick
could feel his mouth water, disgusted with himself, he wiped his lips.

He hadn't seen his great-grandson for long enough to be surprised by how
tall he'd grown, Connor had inherited his height from Old Dick, who'd
passed six feet when he was fourteen, then grown a bit more, as if he'd
needed the extra height to accomplish all his plans.  Someone else was
in the truck, behind the wheel, but as far as Old Dick could tell, he
wasn't much of a driver.  When the truck was pulled over by the garden,
where hundreds of yellow tulips had once grown, it bucked, then stalled
out.  Old Dick rapped on the window and Robin looked up, then waved.

"Who's there?"  Old Dick called.  His voice was shaky, the truth was, he
wasn't talking much these days, and it took all his strength just to
scream at Ginny.  Afterward he'd have to take a good two-hour nap.

"Us," Robin called back.

"Maybe he doesn't remember us," Connor said.  "Hey, Gramps," he shouted.

"In the truck."  Old Dick signaled.  "Bring him up."

"I told you this was a bad idea," Robin said to Connor.

"He needed the practice," Connor insisted.

Connor wouldn't let go of his plan for Stephen to schedule a road test
with him in the winter.  For the past two weeks they'd been teaching him
how to drive, and as far as Stephen was concerned, reading was simple
compared with parallel parking.

"My grandfather wants you to visit," Robin told him through the open
window of the parked truck.

Stephen got out, but he hung back, worried.

"He'll do all the talking," Robin said.  "If he yells, just ignore him."

They passed beneath the arbor where the wisteria grew, then followed the
path to the door of the garage apartment.  Across the lawn was the big
house where Robin and Stuart had grown up.  They had tried to donate it
to the county or the state, but nobody wanted it, the house was too
expensive to keep up, or even to heat, and now a whole section of the
roof had blown away.  Egrets were roosting in the chimney.

"Hide the pie," Robin whispered when they heard Ginny's heavy footsteps
approaching.

Connor slipped the pie box between some magazines they had brought
along.  Robin actually felt giddy, like the naughty child she used to
be.  On the drive here, George Tenney had pulled them over, and this
time he'd had a good reason: Stephen had driven right through an
intersection, ignoring the stop sign on the corner.

"You didn't stop!"  Robin said, as George got out of his patrol car and
walked toward them.  She and Connor and Stephen were wedged into the
pickup, and Robin wished there were room for her to change places with
Stephen so that George wouldn't find him at the wheel.

"I could see no one was coming," Stephen said.  "The road's clear."

"Doesn't matter," Robin had told him.  "The rule is, you have to stop."

"It doesn't make sense," Stephen said.  "And you still do it?"  Why did
he need a sign?  He had good eyesight, he could see in the dark on a
moonless night, if a rabbit had darted into the road, he would have
spotted it in time and stepped on the brakes.

"Now you're getting it," Connor told Stephen.  "There's a rule for
everything."

"Problem, Officer?"  Robin said when George came up to the driver's
window.

"I thought this was your vehicle, Robin," George said.  "Maybe your
friend would like to show me his license."

"He'd love to, George, but he's learning to drive.  Don't give us a hard
time."  She held up the apple pie she'd bought at the store, then warmed
in the oven, so her grandfather would think it was homemade.

"Old Dick's waiting for us.

Stephen noticed the gun George wore near his waist, but he forced
himself to stare straight ahead and keep his hands on the steering
wheel.  He knew what guns did, they blew into you so that whatever you
had been once seeped into the ground.  He'd had brothers taken that way:
men always appeared suddenly, and they called out some sort of curses
before they fired the first shots.  When that happened, Stephen knew,
you had to run, and even then you might not get away.  The muscles along
Stephen's jaw tightened.  He wished he were wearing the black coat.
Then, if this man reached for his gun, Stephen could pull out his knife.
He could do it so quickly that the gun would never be fired.

"I hope your friend's got his learner's permit," George said.  He was
usually the last one to hear gossip, but even he knew that Roy had
reason to be bitter.  This guy didn't even have anything to offer her,
that's what got to Roy most.

"Come on, George," Connor said.  "Give him a break."

George wrote up a warning, which Robin tossed in the glove compartment.

"We can go now," she told Stephen.  George had already driven off, but
Stephen hadn't pulled back onto the road.  "Stephen?"  Robin said.

He slammed his foot on the gas pedal and the pickup skidded onto the
road.

"All right!"  Connor said as they careened toward Poorman's Point.

"Slow down," Robin told him.  "There's a speed limit."

Stephen had broken into a sweat.  He was thinking about that gun, and
the way blood froze when it fell onto the snow.  He was thinking about
the maps in his room, and the cool, clear taste of water up high on the
ridge, and the way Robin always stood outside his door to say good night
before she went to bed.  Now she was sitting so close he could feel her
leg against his.  She smelled like apples and soap.

Thirty-five miles an hour," she told him.

Stephen had believed he was making progress, but as he made the turn
into the long gravel driveway, he wasn't so sure.  Was it progress to
learn to pretend to be something he wasn't, because that's what he'd
have to do to be a man.  Even the way they killed, from a distance, with
a piece of cold metal, belied who they were in their hearts.

Thinking about this, he could feel himself closing up.  He kept his head
bowed as Ginny opened the door and threw her arms around Robin and
Connor, then tilted her head to study him.  Ginny's white hair was
pinned up on her head and she used a cane to help her navigate the
stairs and the cluttered hallways.

"Your grandfather had a hard night," Ginny warned Robin.  "His heart is
murmuring.  I'm not certain he's up to three visitors."

"You're not my watchdog," Old Dick called from his bedroom.  "Send them
in."

"He probably won't even notice you," Robin whispered to Stephen.

"If he says anything rude, just smile.  He'll think you're stupid and
he'll leave you alone."

They filed into the bedroom and blinked until their eyes adjusted to the
murky light.  Old Dick was propped up, his head resting on three feather
pillows.  He'd had difficulty sleeping and now he was more ill-tempered
than usual.

"I didn't mean you," he said to Ginny.  "I can see you anytime.  I see
you too much as it is."

"There you go," Ginny announced, before she went to the kitchen to fix
tea.  "He must be feeling better."

"You're so nasty," Robin said to her grandfather.

"My pie," he said.

Robin put the pie on the bureau and sliced it into pieces.  "This is
Stephen.  A friend of ours," Robin told her grandfather as she handed
Connor a plate of pie.

"What are you staring at?"  Old Dick demanded.

Stephen was in the doorway, and just seeing him, Old Dick was reminded
of a thousand things he'd been trying to forget.  His hunger for his own
youth left a terrible taste in his mouth.  Old Dick didn't need facts to
know that this man in the doorway had everything he wanted.

He could run for miles, he could fuck a woman all night, he could
probably see the smallest newspaper print with no trouble at all.

"That's right!"  Old Dick said.  "I'm old.  Take a good look at me."

"Grandpa!"  Robin said.  "That's enough."

Old Dick sat up as best he could, he was shaking from the exertion.

The newspaper he'd struggled to read fell into a pile on the floor.

"Come over here," Old Dick shouted at Stephen.  "Look at me!"

"What's wrong with him?"  Connor whispered to his mother.

Robin put her arm around Connor and drew him to her.

"Look at what I've become," Old Dick believed he was saying.  But in
fact, no words had been spoken.  Old Dick had simply lost the ability to
do what most people did every day of their lives.  He couldn't pretend
there was enough time.  He was crying in front of them all, and it
didn't seem to matter.

Stephen glanced at Robin, then approached the old man.  He should have
been hesitant, but he wasn't.  As Old Dick wept, Stephen was remembering
the most terrible winter he had known, with nights so cold he thought
his blood would freeze.  Day and night were both white, thick with
falling snow, to get one drink he'd had to lap at the ice covering the
green stream below the ridge.  Deer were nothing more than hide and
bone, owls were silent.  And then, just when it seemed winter was over,
and the bears had already emerged from their dens, there was a sudden
earlyspring storm.

The black wolf, nearly crippled by arthritis in his legs and spine,
froze to death half a mile from home.

When they found him, the big dog pulled at her own fur until she bled.

She paced back and forth in front of the black wolf's body until the ice
cut the pads of her feet.  She took off, by herself, and didn't come
back till morning, though her new pups, now fatherless, whimpered in
their den and went hungry.  When the big dog returned, she seemed
confused.  Every evening at dusk she went off, they could hear her
singing, but the song was so lonely no one dared to answer.  For days
she didn't eat or drink, but she continued to nurse the new pups, three
silver males whose hunger was never satisfied.  The big dog was old,
though she was the same age as Stephen, her teeth were worn down to nubs
and she limped.

After only a few months, when the air had turned blue and summer was at
its height, she lay down in a patch of sunlight and stopped moving
altogether.

That evening Stephen went off by himself.  He climbed high on the
ridgetop, and when his brothers down below called to him mournfully,
begging him to return, he just climbed higher.  He had never once cried,
not when he was cut or hungry or sick, but he cried now and he could not
stop.  It did not seem possible for the world to exist without the big
dog, and yet it did.  He waited for the world to end, nearly starving,
tearing out his hair, and in the morning he went back to his brothers.
Suffering did not stop the clouds from appearing in the east, it didn't
change the sound of the wind in the trees, or the hunger you felt, or
the thirst you would always have.

When Stephen reached the side of the bed, Old Dick covered his face with
his hands.  Stephen sat down anyway, in the chair beside the window. The
glass was smudged, making it impossible to tell the true color of the
leaves on the trees.

Stephen raised the window higher.  At first the green leaves seemed
tinted yellow, but it was only the bees, they could hear them now, a low
constant hum.  Ginny had rushed back to the bedroom.  When she saw Old
Dick crying, she threw her hands up.

"Look what you've done!"  she said, but Robin motioned her to be quiet.

A sparrow had come to the window ledge.  Its song was so common that
Robin had never listened before.  She had never even heard it.  Old Dick
peeked out from behind his hands.  Every breath he took was a shudder,
every breath hurt.  Stephen put his palm down flat on the ledge.  The
sparrow had flown the length of the island just that morning, its nest
was in a cherry tree, in the tallest branches.  If the sparrow knew that
nothing lasted forever, would it still sing?

Would it still build its nest with the same exact pieces of twine and
straw?  Qld Dick, who could not read past the newspaper headlines,
suddenly saw that there was salt on the bird's wings.  Its beak was
stained red from the cherries it had eaten only minutes before.  The
sparrow hopped onto the back of Stephen's hand, and then it flew away so
quickly it was back in its nest, way on the north side of the island,
before Robin had served her grandfather his first piece of pie.

People in town got used to the sight of him running.  Every evening, as
she walked home from the recreation center where she was a counselor in
training, Jenny Altero waved to him as she turned the corner onto
Cemetery Road, and he always waved back.

Dogs out in the backyards began to bark all at once, and their fierce
echo could be heard across the island.  How fast Stephen ran was a
matter of debate.  Boys on bicycles couldn't keep up with him.  Cars
stopped at red lights had no chance of overtaking him once he'd hit his
stride.  Roy often followed in his patrol car, close enough to keep an
eye on him but not so close that Stephen would notice.  But of course
Stephen knew anyway, and he paced himself accordingly whenever Roy
tailed him, never revealing his true speed.  When Roy told his buddies
Stephen wasn't nearly as good as everyone was saying, and practically
limped after a quarter-mile, he thought he was telling the truth, and
got white with anger when no one believed him.

Stephen had given up any hope of ever learning to drive.  The last time
he'd tried he'd plowed right into a parked car, denting the front end of
Robin's truck.  There were too many rules and regulations, but with
running he could just let go.  At first, the foot that had been
shattered in the trap seemed to have trouble keeping up with the rest of
him.  The sneakers on his feet were uncomfortable and the asphalt was
harder than dirt, but after a while these things didn't matter so much.
He concentrated on the road to Poorman's Point, where the trees were
twisted by the wind.  He listened to the sound of the gravel driveway as
he passed by the place where the tulips once grew.

Ginny left the door open for him, that way she didn't have to go up and
down all those stairs.  She often set out a snack on the dusty
cherry-wood table that filled up the whole dining room, though she never
would have admitted that the cookies or shelled pecans were for Stephen.
Usually, Ginny was fast asleep in front of one of her programs at this
hour, a pot of cold tea on the table beside her.

Stephen took off his shoes at the front door, so he wouldn't wake her or
track mud inside.  Sometimes the old man was asleep, too, and Stephen
would sit in the chair by the window and read the newspaper until he
woke up.

"What are you?  A cat?"  Old Dick would say when he opened his eyes to
see Stephen's bowed head as he read editorials and comics.

"Don't you announce yourself?  Don't you ask before you steal a man's
newspaper?"

Stephen would fold the newspaper then, and pretend to put it away, until
Old Dick suggested that since he was fiddling with the Tribune anyway,
he might as well read it aloud.  Old Dick, who could grumble about
almost anyone and anything, never once criticized the halting way
Stephen read.  Birds often came to the window, as if to eavesdrop, but
perhaps they were there only because Old Dick had taken to leaving
crumbs along the sill.  Old Dick had lived longer than anyone else on
the island, he was the first to choose a place for himself in the
cemetery, on the highest knoll, with a view of the north beach and the
marshes.

More and more headstones were raised each year, and still Old Dick's
piece of ground continued to wait for him, the grass there grew taller,
wild asters bloomed.  To Stephen, it didn't matter that Richard Aaron
could no longer move from his bed or that he needed his food softened by
boiling.  Old Dick knew things someone younger couldn't begin to
imagine.  Every day, as the light began to fade and the shadows across
the lawn grew longer, Stephen tried to ask him what it meant to be a
man, and every day his tongue wrapped around itself so that he could not
ask.

"What?"  Old Dick sometimes said for no reason at all, when he drowsed
off, then woke suddenly.  "What is it?"  he asked.

And still Stephen could not ask what he needed to know.  Instead, he
readjusted the old man's pillows and closed the window, to make certain
the night air wouldn't chill him.  "Don't think you have to come back
here," Old Dick often called out when Ginny brought his dinner in on a
tray and it was time for Stephen to leave.

"Pay no attention to him," Ginny whispered, even though it was clear
that Stephen paid more attention to the old man than anyone had for
years.

Stephen always took the same route back, but it was more difficult for
him to pace himself on the way home, and he often ran flat-out.  His
plan was the same as it had always been, even now that he knew how great
the distance was.  With the use of a magnifying glass, he had found
Cromley on a map, but Cromley was a town, with a hospital and a post
office, and where exactly he'd come from he had no idea.  His sense of
direction was based not on miles or lines drawn on paper, but on the
land itself: the rock in the shape of an eagle, the meadow bordered by
streams, the place where the rabbits hid in late summer, where the
brambles grew taller than a man.

He couldn't rush it, he knew that now.  He had only just learned to look
both ways before crossing a street, especially at night.

Last week, he'd narrowly missed being hit when he was running down the
road and a set of blinding headlights had appeared before him.  After
that, he stayed close to the curb.  He was so fast now that nothing
could have stopped him if he had known the way back home.  Or maybe he
still would have taken the same old route to Robin's.

It was always dark by the time he reached Mansfield Terrace.

Marco Polo sat in his driveway and barked as Stephen ran past, and in
spite of Stephen's natural dislike for dogs, he paid no attention.  He
pretended not to notice when Roy's car was parked on the corner, just
waiting for him to make a mistake.  He had no choice but to ignore every
thing except the fact that he was almost there, running right into the
moment he had been thinking about all day, when he walked through the
door and saw her, and each time he did he could not believe that men
could feel this way and act as though they felt nothing at all.

The birds began to avoid the Dixons' yard, they would light on the
redwood fence or along the telephone wires, but they wouldn't go any
farther.  The bird feeder spilled over with millet and seeds that went
untouched.  The blueberries on the bushes at the rear of the house were
never disturbed.  Patty Dixon wondered if it was the weedkiller they'd
used in the spring, strong stuff that Robin had advised against, because
earlier in June, Patty had found five sparrows dead on the grass, and
now the birds simply wouldn't come back, and the birdhouses her husband,
Lou, had made in his workshop were all empty.

Patty was known for her cheerful attitude, she was determined to look on
the bright side.  She conferred with Robin, then ordered bushes the
birds wouldn't be able to resist: honeysuckle and winterberry, sweet
raspberries and holly.  One hot morning, when the birds in other
people's yards had already set up a racket, Stephen dragged over the new
bushes, their roots still wrapped in burlap.  He dug holes all along the
fence, adding lime and manure, pausing only to drink some of Patty
Dixon's homemade lemonade.

Sitting out on her patio with Michelle, Robin could hear him working in
the Dixons' backyard.

"Stephen's all wrong for you," Michelle said.  Robin made a face
pretending she didn't understand, but Michelle waved her hand, as if
clearing the air between them.  "You're RE not going to tell me, so I
might as well say it straight-out.

You're on the rebound--that's what's going on here."

"Nothing's going on here," Robin insisted.

"Remember who you're talking to.  I know you."

"And you're acting as my guidance counselor?"  Robin said.

"Look, I was never one of Roy's fans, but I think he's changed. "
"Please," Robin said.

"I mean it.  He phoned me," Michelle admitted.  "It just didn't sound
like the same old Roy.  He's asked me to keep an eye on you."

"See," Robin told her.  "He hasn't changed one bit.  All he knows is how
to sneak around."

"I think you'd be making a mistake.  You'd get hurt."

"Stephen is living here," Robin said.  "That's all."

"In other words, shut up."

"Shut up," Robin agreed.

She offered Michelle more coffee, and Michelle raised her cup.

"I can't give my advice away," Michelle said.  "Lydia barely speaks to
me.  Last Friday, she didn't come home till after two in the morning.

There was sand on her shoes."

"You sound like a detective," Robin said.  "Now there's something Roy
would do, check the soles of her shoes."

"I've thought about following her," Michelle admitted.

"Well, don't.  She would never forgive you."

"Excuse me?"  Michelle said.  "Whose side are you on?"

Robin took Michelle's hand in hers.  "Yours," she said.  "Always. "
Michelle laughed and drew her hand away.  "Right.  You never let me win
at anything."

And it was true: since kindergarten, Robin had stubbornly made most of
the rules.  It was only recently, when she'd first found out Roy had
been cheating on her, that she'd realized their friendship was not as
one-sided as they pretended and that, if anything, she was the one who
needed Michelle.

"You can win now," Robin told her.

"I think it's a little late," Michelle said.  Still, she was cheered.

She threw back her head and actually laughed.  The first time in weeks.

Robin held her coffee cup tightly, her fingers had begun to turn white.

She looked down at the patio that she had designed and built, with the
Doctor's advice, when she and Roy first bought the house.  Lately she
hadn't allowed herself to think about what she was doing, let alone
understand the reasons why.  The first time, she told herself she forgot
to lock his door.  The second time it wasn't so easy to pretend.

She'd stood there in the hallway for several minutes, her heart racing,
then turned and walked to her room.

"Just don't do anything stupid," Michelle was saying to her now.

"Don't do anything you'll live to regret."

As he planted the first of the honeysuckle, Stephen could hear the
women's voices, and the sound was soothing, a rhythm to which he worked.
When Matthew Dixon came out of the house, Stephen felt vaguely annoyed.
He didn't want to be interrupted, he was covered with dirt and sweat,
but he knew enough to stop and nod a hello.

"Looks like you're doing a good job," Matthew said.  He had spent the
past month in his room, his complexion was pasty and he blinked in the
sunlight.

"Yeah," Stephen grunted, as he shoveled dirt over the roots .

"I've been working on my programs.  For my computer," Matthew added when
Stephen looked blank.

"Don't know anything about it."

"Really?"  Matthew said.  In his shirt pocket he had two Mars bars that
he was saving for later.  "Computers can do anything you want them to
do.  If you're smart enough to handle them.  I could find out anything
you wanted me to, given the time and the access.  I can do things people
wouldn't believe."

In spite of his huge size, Matthew seemed less a college student than a
little boy, one blown up with an air pump.  He hadn't had much practice
conversing with people, and maybe that was why he didn't take the hint
when Stephen didn't answer and just kept on working, as though he were
alone.

"People think they have privacy, but really, if you know how to tap into
the right networks, you can pretty much get any file you want."

Stephen figured he was stuck with Matthew, he nodded to the next bush.

"Oh," Matthew said, pleased.  "Sure."

He brought the honeysuckle over, and together they fitted it into the
hole, then Matthew stood back as Stephen filled the dirt back in.  It
was an easy enough job, but on the last shovelful of earth, Stephen felt
the metal hit against something.  Puzzled, he stopped and crouched down.

"What is it?"  Matthew said.

Stephen put his hands into the dirt.  Above them the sky was perfectly
blue.

"Oh, brother."  Matthew came closer.

A red-and-white cat had been buried in the dirt, its coat was matted,
its jaws locked.

"That's the Simons' cat," Matthew said.  "Reggie."

Stephen stood up and shoveled the corpse into the earth beside the
honeysuckle.  "It's as good a place as any."

"Right," Matthew said, backing away.

Stephen realized that he could no longer hear the women talking.

They had gone inside, and his rhythm was broken.

"I guess you don't need me bothering you," Matthew said.

"No bother," Stephen said, because that was the sort of thing men said
when they didn't mean it.  He turned to finish his work, so intent that
he didn't hear Matthew go back inside, he didn't notice that there were
fresh blisters on his hands, or that he was hearing the women's voices
anyway, somewhere inside his head.

He knew Robin had stopped locking his door at night.  Sleep was
impossible, every sound jarred him.  He heard everything.  Not just the
wind and the rain and the house settling, but Connor sneaking out, long
past midnight.  Connor always went out the side door and closed it
carefully behind him.  He carried his sneakers under his arm and shoved
them on when he got into the yard.  From his window, Stephen could see
the radiant look on the boy's face as he bent down to tie his laces.

He knew what Connor was doing, because once he had seen the girl
waiting, under the streetlight, at the end of Mansfield Terrace.

She had that same luminous look, weightless and ignited.  Even when they
disappeared together, down the dark street, they left a pool of light
behind them.  And so it seemed to Stephen that everyone knew the secret
he'd wanted to ask the old man about, even Connor, who was only a boy.
What was this, this light that burned inside you, this thing that made
you feel as though you couldn't get enough air?  He knew what loyalty
was, it was what made you stay together and protect each other and share
when there wasn't enough for yourself.

But this was different, this seemed as if it could kill you if you
weren't careful.  Stephen had to be careful, and he was careful all the
time.  He judged himself harshly.  She'd forgotten the lock, that was
all, anything more was simply in his own mind.

There were nights when he moved the oak dresser in front of his door.

He took the old black coat out of the closet and wrapped himself up, but
he was much too hot to wear it.  He began to burn on the coolest
evenings, and the heat went up, into his head, until he thought he might
explode.  He believed he must be crazy or under the influence of some
terrible ailment that boiled his blood, and there was no one to tell him
that falling in love would make any sensible man feel exactly the same.

EACH AUGUST Stuart placed his alarm clock in a dresser drawer and slept
until the white-hot sunlight woke him.  He wore the same clothes for as
long as he liked, and didn't bother to shave.  This, the most beautiful
month of the year, stretched out before him endlessly, with days that
lasted achingly long, and nights that were purple and rich.  For the
whole month he didn't work, he didn't set foot in the hospital.  It
wasn't that he didn't care about his patients, but he needed to think
about simple things: Bluefish and watering cans.  Fresh peaches, sliced
thin.  Egrets, feasting on minnows and crabs.

This year, however, Stuart's thoughts were not simple, and August
brought no comfort.  He had meant it when he told Kay he didn't want the
house.  He'd had enough of the island to last him a lifetime, he was
forty-two years old and the shopkeepers still treated him like a little
boy, discreetly suggesting bargain goods the way they had after Old Dick
went broke.  But now, facing a summer in Manhattan, he felt waves of
panic.  If he'd been his own patient, he would have recommended a strong
antidepressant and intensive therapy.  As it was, he watched TV around
the clock and found himself growing addicted to game shows and news
programs.  He'd planned to rent a house out in Sag Harbor, but somehow
he'd never gotten around to it.  And then one night, early in August, he
woke up suddenly from a deep sleep and he knew that he wanted to go
home.  He packed an overnight bag, which was really all he needed, and
took the Long Island Rail Road to the familiar stop.  He walked briskly
past the willows and over the bridge, then went to Kay and begged her to
take him back.

Kay wasn't about to agree to a reconciliation, but she did agree to let
him stay on the third floor, which had once been his office and had its
own entrance and a small kitchen and bathroom.

He felt like getting down on his knees right there on the front porch
and begging for forgiveness.  What had happened between them, he still
wasn't sure.  At first, he thought it was because they hadn't had
children, but the truth was, he'd grown dull and taken her for granted
and now it was too late.  As he carried his overnight bag around to the
side of the house, Kay took his arm.

"One thing you should know," she said.  "I'm dating."

He had never loved anyone but Kay, he saw that now.  How had he managed
to lose her?

"Well, that's good," Stuart said.

He would like to see some aging beau try to cross his path.  My God, the
way he was feeling, he might just be there waiting for her date with a
pitchfork or an axe.  Kay had taken a step back to study him.

"Really, " Stuart insisted."  You've made a healthy adjustment."  Like
the desperate man he was he went to her, intending to loop his arms
around her.  There must be hope for them, otherwise she wouldn't have
agreed to maintain a friendship.  But Kay held up her hand, as if
directing traffic, to keep him away.

"Stuart," she said.  "It's over."

"I know that," Stuart told her.  "Of course it is."

He went upstairs to what had once been his office and was now a musty
storage area, then stretched out full on the floor and wept.  Kay went
into her kitchen, which she had just had painted pale pink--she was, in
fact, currently dating the painter, a large-boned Russian who loved to
dance and who fixed potato-and-onion soup--and immediately phoned Robin.

"Your brother's here having a nervous breakdown," Kay announced.

"Or maybe it's midlife crisis.  I'm not really sure what the difference
is."

"You let him move back in?"  Robin asked.  She herself had been avoiding
talking to Stuart, since it wasn't quite as easy to lie to him as she'd
imagined.

"He's up on the third floor.  Let's face it.  He has nothing.  He's been
at the hospital for fifteen years, and not one patient has ever
improved.  He has no social life.  I don't think he even knows how to
talk to a woman.  He certainly never talked to me.  So I'm letting him
stay, but just for August," Kay said.  "And I'm not taking full
responsibility."

Which meant, of course, that Robin had to.  She went over that
afternoon, with a bag of groceries and the prescription for Prozac that
Kay had ordered refilled at the pharmacy.  She found the door to the
third floor unlocked, bats had been nesting in the rafters and bits of
plaster were sprinkled about.

"Get off the floor," Robin told her brother.  "I brought Entenmann's
chocolate doughnuts."

"This is clearly a generational pattern," Stuart said thoughtfully when
he joined her at the dusty table.  "Inability to maintain intimacy.

It's no accident that both of our marriages broke up."

"Oh, really?"  Robin said.  She had her hair tied up with a shoelace and
she wore old shorts and a white T-shirt that was smudged with dirt, and
just for a second she wondered if she should have paid more attention to
her appearance.  Roy was the sort of man who liked women to wear short
black dresses and high heels, he didn't see any good reason for a woman
to wear underwear, unless it was something tiny and made out of lace.

"Gee whiz."  Robin grabbed a doughnut.  "And I thought my problem was
Roy's ability to be intimate with dozens of people."

"You don't know that," Stuart said.  "I'll grant you the one affair, but
the rest was probably all for show.  Narcissists prefer bragging about
who they're fucking to actually doing it.

They might have to relate to somebody once they're in bed."

"The trouble with you is, you're giving Kay too much power," Robin said,
veering away from any explanation of her own failed marriage.

"Your happiness depends on you."

"Self-help," Stuart said tiredly.  "Spare me."  He opened the bottle of
Prozac and gulped one down.  "See?"  he said.  "I'll bet Kay had this
filled for me."  When Robin shrugged, Stuart grinned broadly.  "She
still cares."

"You've got bats in the attic," Robin said.

"That I do," Stuart said.  He tapped his head.  "Right in here."

"Go to a bar," Robin suggested.  "Go fishing."

"Nothing interests me," Stuart said.  "It's the first sign of
depression."

Robin went to the refrigerator and began putting the groceries away.

She found an ancient bunch of broccoli forgotten from Stuart's last
visit and, holding her nose, tossed it in the trash.  Between Stuart and
her grandfather, she could easily wind up as a full-time caretaker if
she didn't watch out.  Already she was thinking of what she needed to
bring to Stuart next time: sponges and paper towels, coffee and a new
mop.  She might have been angry, if only Stuart didn't look so pathetic.

He was, and always had been, the best keeper of secrets Robin had ever
known, far better than Michelle, whose expression always betrayed her,
leading her straight into honesty, whether she wanted to go there or
not.  All through their childhood, Stuart had kept his mouth shut, a
hundred times their grandfather had questioned him about Robin's bad
behavior and a hundred times he had stared right back at the old man
with his hazy expression while he knew full well who had tied the sheets
together to sneak out the window and who had shattered the stained-glass
panels by slamming the door too hard.  She had never once repaid him
with anything more than a grin, and now, perhaps, it was time.

"I've got something that would interest you," Robin said.

"Oh, I doubt that," Stuart muttered.

"I've been wanting to tell you for weeks, but I couldn't.  I shouldn't
even tell you now."

"You're making me anxious," Stuart said.  He reached for another
doughnut, but Robin stopped him.

"Remember when you killed my parakeet?"  she asked.

"Not that again."  Stuart moaned.

"You insisted you knew the best way to catch him, and you broke his
neck."

"Are you still holding me responsible for the death of that damned bird?
I was ten years old.  The door to his cage was faulty.  Is this memory
supposed to cheer me up?"

"I'm just reminding you.  You don't always know the best way to do
everything."

"All right, I killed your parakeet.  Now can I have my doughnut?"

Robin grabbed her brother's arm.  "I'm serious," she said.

"You certainly are," Stuart agreed.

"Come to dinner tonight," Robin said.  "But you have to promise you'll
keep it secret once you know."

"What are we?  Six years old?"  Stuart laughed.  But when he looked at
his sister's solemn face something happened.  Although it seemed
impossible, he felt a tiny sting of interest.

"Well, all right," Stuart said, doubtful as he was.  "You have my word."

He arrived at the back door at seven-thirty, carrying a six-pack of dark
German beer.  Robin was waiting for him, and she quickly drew him
inside.  She had changed into white slacks and a clean T-shirt, and her
hair was still wet from the shower.

"I think Kay may be sneaking out on a date tonight," Stuart said
worriedly.  "So this better be good."

"Oh, shut up and come in," Robin said.

"The perfect hostess," Stuart said.

There was marinara sauce heating on the back burner, and the pasta,
already poured into the colander, had grown stringy and cold.  Robin
hadn't been able to concentrate on the meal because she and Connor had
argued.  What was the point in telling Stuart?

That's what Connor wanted to know.  Why tell anyone at all?  Because
he's my brother, Robin had shouted, because we can trust him.  She had
stopped at that, just shy of the real truth: Because he needs this.

"I probably should have gone over to see the old man," Stuart said,
uncapping a bottle of beer.  "But I didn't have the heart to listen to
him rant and rave.  And Ginny, with her cane, clomping about, dusting.

I need quite a bit more Prozac before I'm ready for that."

"Actually, Grandpa's been having a visitor every day," Robin said.

"It's cheered him up."

"How much are you paying this visitor?"  Stuart asked.

"Nothing," Robin said.

"Oh, come on.  No one in his right mind would spend time with Old Dick."

"Not that you're projecting your own feelings," Robin said.

"All right," Stuart allowed, as he put the rest of the beer in the
refrigerator.  "A masochist might enjoy it."

"Stephen likes going over to the carriage house.  He reads to Old Dick."

"God bless him," Stuart said.  "He must be an idiot."

At the counter, where Robin was cutting up cucumbers, the knife slipped
and she sliced a patch of skin offher thumb.

"Jesus," Stuart said when he saw the blood in the sink.

"It's nothing."  Robin held her hand under a stream of cold water when
Stuart insisted.  When she looked up from the sink she saw Stephen in
the doorway.  He was wearing the sports jacket they'd bought at Macy's.

Homer had followed him downstairs and was rubbing against his legs.

Blood didn't bother Stephen, but when he saw that Robin had cut her hand
he winced, as though he'd been the one to feel the knife.  He began to
approach her.

"It's all right," Robin told him as he came near.  "I'm .. fine.  You
remember Stephen from the picnic?"  she asked her brother.

"The man who reads to the old monster."  Stuart nodded.  "You have my
sympathies."

"No, Stuart," Robin said.  "This is what I was talking about.  The
secret that would interest you?"

Stuart looked at her blankly.  "Yes?"

"I took him from the hospital.  He was never transferred upstate."

Stuart hadn't even blinked.  "The Wolf Man," Robin said finally.

"Don't you see?"

"Very amusing," Stuart said.  "In a sick kind of way."

"I didn't plan to take him," Robin said.  "It just happened."

"No," Stuart told her.  "Not possible."

Stephen's throat had become so dry that it hurt.  He went to the
refrigerator and got the orange juice, then took a long swallow right
from the carton, the way Connor always did.  Robin had asked for
Stephen's permission before telling Stuart, and of course he'd agreed.

What else could he do?  Even if he risked being taken back to the
hospital, he couldn't have said no to her.  Not now.

"You expect me to believe this is the Wolf Man?"  Stuart asked.

Stephen placed the carton of orange juice on the counter.  "Maybe I
shouldn't be here," he said.

"Yes, you should be," Robin said.  She turned to Stuart.  "Don't you
see?  He's not who you thought he was."

"You took a mentally deficient patient suffering from prolonged
traumatic stress out of my ward and into your home?  Is that it?

Because if that's the case, I should congratulate you on not being
murdered in your sleep," Stuart said."  Yet."

"Will you shut up!"

Robin said.  "Don't you see what this is?

Don't you appreciate it?  He could talk all along.  He chose not to.

Well, now he will.  He'll talk to you, and all you have to do is agree
not to discuss the case or publish before he's gone.  You can't tell
anyone."

Stuart sat down on a kitchen chair.  The cat he had always despised
rubbed against his legs, but he didn't bother to push him away.

Stephen leaned up against the counter, staring at Stuart.  Stuart shook
his head.  Still there it was, right in front of him.  The face that
might easily have been set among painted gold stars on a blue ceiling
was the one he could have seen months ago if only he had looked at what
was beneath the hair and the beard.  Homer had leapt into Stuart's lap,
but Stuart paid no attention.  He no longer cared about the ruined
dinner, or the beer he had planned to get drunk on.  That wasn't what he
was interested in.  On this glorious August evening on this glorious
island he had hated for so long, he had just received a gift even he
wasn't foolish enough to turn down.

Lydia Altero grew more generous by the day.  The small feral cats, which
avoided people at all costs, now came to the side door of the bakery
where she was working for the summer to beg for bits of butter and
saucers of cream.  When customers ordered a pound of cookies, Lydia
tossed in extras, free of charge: buttery moons dipped in dark
chocolate, raspberry hearts, sweet macaroons.  Each day business was
better, and the owner of the bakery, the Russian housepainter's sister,
raised Lydia's salary and kissed her on the cheeks.  Women on diets
threw caution to the wind and ordered anything Lydia recommended.  The
Simons' little boys begged to be taken to the bakery after camp, and
they swore that Lydia smelled like sugar frosting.  Matthew Dixon, who
had always loved sweets, was too tongue-tied to speak to her, instead of
going into the bakery for danish and brownies, he stood on the pavement
near the window hoping for the chance to watch her slice bread or brew
coffee.

Even at home, Lydia's generosity seemed limitless.  When she discovered
that her little sister had borrowed her favorite white sweater, Lydia
did nothing more than laugh, and when Jenny admitted she'd also taken
several pairs of earrings, the dangling ones she wasn't yet allowed to
wear, Lydia declared that the earrings should now be considered a gift.

She fixed cafe all lait for her startled father one Sunday morning and
espresso on weekdays, and although she no longer spoke to her mother and
could not imagine ever speaking to her again, she was gracious enough to
keep her luminous eyes downcast each time her mother was in the room,
even though she could have easily announced, with a single glance, that
she had possession of the whole world and her mother had nothing at all.

She and Connor couldn't hide what was between them much longer, even
Lydia knew that.  They tried to avoid each other in public places, where
they might not be able to stop themselves from throwing their arms
around each other, and when Connor did come into the bakery, as he did
almost every day, to pick up sandwiches for himself and his mother and
Stephen, he always got something wrong.  Today, he tripped over his own
feet and ordered three curried chicken sandwiches instead of one
vegetable melt and two roast beefs, and Lydia just tossed her head,
delighted by his confusion.  Later, when Robin and Stephen and Connor
had stopped working to have lunch, and were sweaty and hot and streaked
with dirt, Robin unwrapped her sandwich and asked Connor why he couldn't
keep their lunch orders straight.  As she picked pieces of chicken off
the sandwich and ate the bread plain, Stephen looked over at Connor and
grinned broadly.

"What's so funny?"  Connor said, embarrassed.  "Cut it out," he
demanded, and when Stephen did not, he gave him a shove.

Stephen laughed and shoved Connor right back.

"Oh yeah?"  Connor said.

"Yeah," Stephen teased him.

Connor went to tackle Stephen, but somehow Stephen moved out of his way
and Connor was the one who flopped on the grass and was pinned.

Together, they rolled on the newly turned section of the Feldmans' lawn,
knocking over Robin's iced tea and a burlap bag of grass seed.

When Robin finally insisted they stop, they both lay in the dirt on
their backs and laughed for so long Robin thought they might choke.

"You know what?"  she said.  "I'm bringing our lunches from now on."

Connor sat up, instantly gloomy.  He thought of Lydia waiting for him
behind the counter at noontime, the little bag of heart-shaped cookies
she always added for free already packed up.

"Don't do that," Stephen said, slowly raising himself on his elbows.

He still had that grin.  "Connor doesn't mind going to the bakery."

As soon as Robin turned to wrap the remains of her sandwich, Connor gave
Stephen one last shove, but he was smiling now, too.

The truth was, he was actually relieved.  It didn't really matter if
Stephen knew about Lydia.  That just made it even, since Lydia knew all
about Stephen.  Just a few nights before, when it was nearly morning and
they still didn't want to leave each other, Connor had blurted out the
truth.  He had argued with his mother when she told his Uncle Stuart,
but this was different: Connor simply could not keep anything from
Lydia.  When he told her about the Wolf Man she had listened with
shining eyes, her face pale in the moonlight.

Another girl might have said, That's not true, that can't be possible,
but not Lydia.

"The people who put him in handcuffs should be locked up," she had said,
which, as far as Connor was concerned, was the perfect response.

"I'll never tell," she vowed.

Her solemn face was perfect as well.  Why wasn't everybody in the world
in love with her?

"People are such morons, they would never understand him," Lydia
decreed.  Indignant, she shook her head.

At this, Connor had threaded his hands through her long hair and kissed
her, and then he backed away, self-conscious about his own passion, and
thrilled by it as well.  Now, as he and Stephen worked side by side on
the Feldmans' lawn, Connor wondered whether perhaps he had made a
mistake in telling Lydia their secret.  It would have been better if
Stephen had remained a shadow that men talked about on winter nights, he
should be drinking from a clear, green stream, not from a thermos of
iced tea.  Lydia was right.  They could not begin to understand him.

They couldn't even hope to try.  Goodwill was the most they could offer
him, and still something awful would probably come of it.

Stephen was concentrating on turning the earth, his white T-shirt was
flecked with mud.  When he came to one of the holes dug by the moles
whose tunnels had wrecked the Feldmans' lawn in the first place, Stephen
was supposed to dig into it, then insert a packet of poison.

Instead, he crouched down.  After making certain that Robin and Mrs.
Feldman, who were up on the front porch settling the bill, could not
see, he reached in and took the sleeping mole from its burrow.  Connor
shielded his eyes from the sunlight.  In only a few hours, he would be
running to meet the girl he loved.  The day was so hot and clear it
seemed as if summer would last forever.  But in fact, August was nearly
half over.  The edges of the leaves on the maples and the elms would
soon begin to curl, in a month, they would start to turn crimson.  Why
this should make him feel like crying, Connor had no idea, but he turned
his back, allowing Stephen to deposit the mole in the ivy beyond the new
lawn they were putting in, even though it would surely find its way back
by nightfall to ruin their day's work.

He'd promised to talk to Stuart, but now he wasn't so ,. sure he could
go through with it.  He tried his best to avoid  him--he'd take long
showers when Stuart came to the , house, he'd pretend to be
sleeping--but Stuart wouldn't give up.  He seemed always to be at the
house, a small tape recorder ready.  He was there at breakfast and again
at dinner, he was out on the porch when Stephen came back from running.
He sat on the couch whenever Connor and Stephen played chess.

When Stephen washed the supper dishes, Stuart was right there beside
him, ready to dry.

"He's driving you crazy, isn't he?"  Robin asked Stephen as they sat on
the steps of the front porch drinking iced tea.

It was dusk, and Stuart was stretched out in the hammock, watching them.
He lifted his own glass of iced tea in a toast.

His depression had lifted completely, for all the good it did anyone
else.

"Not exactly," Stephen said.  He took a piece of ice between his teeth
and cracked it in two.  "A little."

"Right," Robin said.  "Go home," she called to Stuart.

"It's Kay's home, not mine," Stuart called back.  "She's A T U R E got
that housepainter there tonight.  He's fixing dinner for her.


"He won't leave," Robin sighed.  Homer was curled up beside her, and she
rubbed his head in the space that he liked, between his ears.

"It's all my fault that we're stuck with him."

"Kay had me run out to King Kullen and pick up the sour cream and
cabbage he needed for his recipe, and I actually did it," Stuart called.
"If I left here now, she'd probably ask me to wash their dishes and tidy
up, and I'd have to split the housepainter's head open.

You can't ask me to go."

"The funny thing is, I would do things for Stuart that I wouldn't do for
anyone else."  Robin was sitting close to Stephen, their legs were
almost touching.  "Just because he's my brother."

Alongside the house, the roses drooped and turned dusty from the heat.

Stephen had never bothered to name his last three brothers.

By then, words didn't mean as much, he didn't need them.  He could
distinguish his brothers' voices from miles away, he knew each one's
scent and could identify their paw prints in fresh snow.

Stephen finished his iced tea, placed the glass on the porch, then stood
up.

"You don't have to talk to him," Robin said.

But she was smiling, and as far as Stephen could tell, this meant she
was pleased.  And she was, really, at least until Stephen and Stuart
went into the house, and she was left out on the porch, with Homer as
her only company.  Sitting out there, watching the first faint stars
appear, she realized that she was actually jealous.  She wanted to be
the one in that room upstairs with Stephen.  Through the open bedroom
window she could hear Stuart testing his tape recorder.

"One, two, three," he said, and then his words replayed back to him.

All summer long Robin had not once allowed herself to wonder what would
happen next.  Some people believed this was a condition to strive for:
to be in the here and now.  But Robin saw this could easily be just
another way to lie to herself, the way she had lied to herself about
Roy.  The women who had asked for him on the telephone, then quickly
hung up when told he wasn't home, were all delusional.  That's what Roy
always said.  Maybe they were attracted to him, but if they were that
was their tough luck.  He wasn't leading anyone on.  Marriage meant
commitment.  The words were interchangeable, weren't they?  At least up
until the end.

Alibis were contagious little things, a way to sweet-talk yourself into
believing whatever you wished could be true.

Beneath those first stars, Robin wished she would have demanded the keys
to the handcuffs even if Stephen had been ugly and old, even if he
hadn't looked at her that way.  She wished she could wash the dishes or
read a book while he told her brother the story of his life and not want
him all to herself.  She wished she had thought to comb the knots out of
her hair and change out of the soiled clothes she'd worn when they'd dug
out the roots of some fallen poplars earlier in the day.

Instead, she shooed the cat away and carried the empty glasses inside,
and she tried to pretend that just thinking about him didn't cause her a
ridiculous amount of pleasure.

Up in the guest room, Stephen was crouched down on the floor.

Stuart sat cross-legged facing him, his clothes wrinkling.

Between them was the tape recorder.  That evening, as Robin left the
unwashed dishes in the sink and searched for a comb to untangle her
hair, Stephen answered every question he was asked, but that didn't mean
he told the whole truth.  How could he have survived, that was what
Stuart wanted to know straight off.  What happened when the snowdrifts
were higher than his head or when ice locked his lips together?

What did he wear on his feet, on his back, what did he eat, where did he
sleep, did he understand fear and longing and desire?  If he ever saw
men did he run from them, convinced they were creatures completely
different from what he was?  Who, exactly, had he thought he was all
those years?

Stephen told Stuart half of everything, much the way he now knew men did
when they didn't want to lie outright.  The other half he couldn't even
say aloud.  He'd never tell that ticks plucked from under the skin were
always eaten whole or that blood was best washed off immediately,
otherwise it caked when it dried, especially on strands of hair and
under fingernails.  He didn't tell Stuart that his own reflection had
frightened him so badly that he took to closing his eyes when he
crouched down beside a stream to drink.  He did not dare mention that
he'd torn meat from the bone when a deer was still warm and struggling,
or that sometimes he was sent to attack not from the flanks, but
straight on, quick as an arrow, but much quieter, except for the blood
pounding inside his head as he pulled the deer down by the nose before
it had the chance to rear its head.

He told Stuart only the half that was easy to hear, explaining how it
was possible to know the hour of the day from the shadows on the ground
but not how, when you were hungry enough, you could kill without
thinking.  How if something didn't have a name, he had named it, inside
his head, and that was why language had come back to him easily.  But he
left out how much he hated those words he couldn't get rid of.  He never
said them aloud.  He used only the language of his brothers and in this
way he had deluded himself, and had come to believe he was truly one of
them, just as he was deluding himself again, right this minute,
pretending he was no different from any other man.

As he spoke, Stephen's voice was detached, but Stuart had been too
gripped to turn on a lamp.  He hadn't even noticed when the tape ran out
and facts were escaping into thin air.  Stephen's eyes, not his voice,
gave emphasis to every word.  They were hazel, with flecks of yellow and
green, depending on the light.

Look, and it was impossible to look away.  As he walked back to Kay's in
the dark, having gotten exactly what he'd believed he'd wanted, Stuart
felt unsure.  He'd been one of those to sign the transfer papers,
committing the Wolf Man for life.  Afterward he'd had lunch at his
favorite Chinese restaurant, he'd ordered Peking dumplings and Buddha's
Delight without thinking twice.  He wouldn't get just an article out of
this, he'd get a book, maybe even two, he should have been elated.  When
he returned to the house he and Kay had shared for so long, he should
have thrown open the front door and walked right in.

Damn the housepainter, who was probably still there, sipping the last of
his coffee, his arm around Kay's waist.  Damn the divorce.  He should
have headed for the back pantry, where Kay still kept the wine, so they
could celebrate.  Instead, he went around to the side of the house and
up the stairs to the third-floor entrance.

He remembered when Robin first put in the clematis that now wound its
way along the railing of the stairs.  As far as Stuart could tell, it
was nothing but a twig, and when Robin had insisted that someday the
vine would be so strong it could easily survive a hurricane, Stuart had
laughed.  He'd never once considered that not only might this be true
but he might not live here long enough to notice.  Well, he noticed now.
The clematis was so overgrown Stuart had to push it away each time he
wanted to open the door.  He went inside and put the tape recorder on
the table and switched it on, then went to the sink and drank two
glasses of cool, rusty tap water.

He had sat across from the Wolf Man in his hospital room and never once
had any idea of who he was.  He'd never even looked at him carefully,
and now he wondered how his own life had gotten away from him.  When was
the last time he had made a real decision or taken a stand?  What
exactly was it that he believed in?  The voice he'd captured on tape was
telling him what it was like to see stars beneath an open sky for the
first time.  Were they lamps suspended in the dark or ice crystals
caught in the web of the night?  Would they fall from above in a hail of
fire and light, or guide you on the path home?

Downstairs, in Kay's living room, music was playing.  Stuart recognized
it: Stephane Grappelli, a heartbreaking sound.  The housepainter had
left his bicycle leaning against the fence.  It was already past
midnight and the bicycle was still there.  Stuart remembered that on
nights as hot as these, their grandfather had allowed them to sleep out
on the porch on thin cotton pallets.

Robin had always fallen asleep quickly, her breathing soft and even, but
for Stuart the stars had been too disturbing and too bright, and he'd
often crept inside to his stuffy bedroom, relieved to be back in the
house.

Now he wondered why it was he'd been so easily frightened.  If he had
been the one to crawl out of that plane, would he have lain facedown on
the cold ground and given up?  Would he have scrambled into a tree when
the wolf first approached him, preferring to starve to death there in
the branches?  He let the tap water run until the rust was all gone and
the water was clear.  One month out of the year was all he had allowed
himself to be who he wanted to be, except in August, he'd been so busy
doing what he was supposed to do that he wouldn't have noticed if a
dragonfly had settled on the journal he was reading, the shadow of its
translucent wings drifting across the page.  For so long, things had
just happened to him that it took a moment before he fully understood
what he was about to do.  But actually it was a relief when he took
Stephen's cassette out of the tape recorder and placed it in the sink.

With every hour the night grew hotter and more humid, the way it
sometimes did late in August.  This was the sort of night when everyone
prayed for rain.  People couldn't sleep, or if they did doze off,
beneath rumpled white sheets, their dreams were not what they had hoped
for.  Richard Aaron dreamed he was chopping wood in a forest of a
thousand trees, his back and arms were tremendously strong, he could
feel the heat in his muscles.  He was high in the mountains, where the
air was chilly and blue, and he gasped as he woke into the hot August
night to find himself in his old body, and he tried his best not to fall
asleep again the whole night through.

Mosquitoes rose in clouds above the marshes, propelled upward by the
rise in the temperature, maddened by hunger and heat.  They swarmed
through the windows of the fisherman's shack where Connor and Lydia were
spending the night, both having lied to their parents.  Lydia had left a
note that she was sleeping at a friend's house, Connor was supposed to
be at his father's for the weekend.  Neither of them had felt the
slightest pang of guilt, but now they wondered if the mosquitoes had
been sent to harass them.  When they couldn't stand it anymore and were
covered with red bites, they ran out into the marsh and covered their
bodies with mud.  They wanted to hide nothing, and yet they continued to
keep their love a secret.  It was better this way, and much less
dangerous.  As long as no one knew, nothing could be ruined.  Let the
rest of the world just try to keep them apart, let anyone try to
interfere.

Some things lasted forever, didn't they?  Some things no one could deny.
The heat, for instance, and the slugs that visited Robin's vegetable
garden, traveling faster than anyone might expect as they made their way
through the dark grass.  Only a year before, on a night as hot as this,
Robin had sat in her parked truck on Delaney, the headlights and engine
turned off.  Although she hadn't smoked in years, she had bought a pack
of cigarettes and had already lit several, by then she was like a hunter
ready to blow off her own foot just to get the rat she was aiming for.
Roy had insisted he would be working, but when she'd called the
station--the air conditioner in the living room had blown all the fuses,
and blue sparks had shot out of the wall-George had been confused.  He'd
dodged around a bit and then had finally told the truth: Roy was off on
Thursday nights.  Apparently Roy had neglected to tell Robin that this
had been his schedule for more than six months.

Wearing only an undershirt and shorts, not taking the time to bother
with shoes, she had gotten into the truck and started driving.  After
she'd gone through town twice, she parked outside Harper's over on
Delaney, not just to check for Roy but to cool down.  Her clothes were
drenched with sweat, her skin was sizzling.  She dropped a lit cigarette
on her thigh and didn't feel a thing.  And just when she thought she
might be crazy, and George had been mistaken or she had misunderstood,
she saw them in a parked car, right across the street.

He was all over some woman, she'd have to be blind not to see it.

Later, Robin would realize that the car belonged to Julie Wynn, who was
in charge of the drug education program, but that night the woman didn't
matter.  Robin got out of the truck and walked across the street.

She didn't notice that the asphalt was burning her bare feet, she didn't
give a damn about that.  She went around and grabbed open the car door,
but once she'd opened it, she had nothing to say.

"This isn't what you think, baby," Roy told her, right away, as he was
getting out of the car.

His hair was messed up, but aside from that he was so calm you'd think
she'd discovered him picking out an inferior brand of frozen vegetables
at the market.  If only he had kept his mouth shut, maybe they would
have had a chance.  Amazing that he could say the wrong thing so
quickly.  It was exactly what she thought: There was no such thing as
trust or faith.  Or at least she had been convinced so at the time.

Now, as she stood outside, calling for the cat to come in for the night,
it seemed that last fight had happened to somebody else.

Somebody else had dragged all of Roy's clothes into the driveway.

Somebody else had sworn she would never fall in love again.  It couldn't
have been her, because if it had been she wouldn't be feeling this way.
Not like this.

Somewhere there was a book of love, with all the symptoms written down
in red ink: Dizziness and desire.  A tendency to stare at the night sky,
searching for a message that might be found up above.

A lurching in the pit of the stomach, as if something much too sweet had
been eaten.  The ability to hear the quietest sounds-snails munching the
lettuce leaves, moths drinking nectar from the overripe pears on the
tree by the fence, a rabbit trembling in the ivy--just in case he might
be there, which was what mattered all along.  Real hunger, just to see
him, as if this would ever be enough.

As an antidote, breathe in and out slowly.  Don't look at the sky.

Consider everyday things: toast on a plate, laundry in a basket, carpets
that haven't been vacuumed for weeks.  Don't ever think, and feel even
less.  Take the garbage out through the side door.

Tonight this was all Robin had to do: stay out in the yard near the
trashcans and pretend she didn't know he was on the other side of the
screen door.  He had come downstairs for a glass of water, that was all.
He couldn't sleep because of the heat, or the mosquitoes, or a stone
he'd found beneath his pillow.  All she needed was to call the cat,
ignore the moon, realize that in no time he would be gone.  She might
have been able to do all this if she hadn't taken one more step toward
the pear tree.  Beyond the place where the fruit had dropped and split
open there was a white circle, as if a piece of the moon had fallen to
earth.

Horrified, Robin staggered backward.  He never would have come outside
if she hadn't cried out.  He would have stood his distance forever, but
instead he slammed through the door and went right past her.  When he
knelt on the ground, all the crickets in the yard started to sing.  He
reached for the cat and lifted him up.

Homer's throat had been slit so neatly he seemed to be sleeping, but the
white fur around his neck and chest were deep red.

Watching Stephen crouched there, Robin had no idea that she had already
begun to cry.  She should have known better than to let Homer out, the
feral cats were rumored to go wild on nights as hot as this.  They tore
sparrows to bits and threatened house cats and clawed at the paint of
cars parked in driveways.  When Stephen rose to his feet, Robin came
toward him, but he shifted to make certain that his back was to her.

His shirt was covered in blood.

"Don't look at this," he told her.

The blood on his hands was already drying, it wouldn't be easy to wash
away.  His head was pounding just from the smell of it.  This was only
one small death in a fenced garden, nothing more.  He'd witnessed a
thousand acts more brutal, he'd done them himself, and yet this was
breaking him apart.  He clutched the cat to his chest.

"You shouldn't come over here," he said, as if he meant it, as if they
weren't already lost to whatever would happen next.

When Robin took Homer from him, the last rush of blood stained her shirt
and her hands.  She placed the small white body in the tall grass, which
hadn't yet been mowed, and it lay there curled up, like a question mark.
Robin wiped at her eyes and her wet cheeks, she wouldn't even notice the
blood on her face until morning.  Already, he had pulled her to him,
right there, beneath the pear tree, and she could feel the calluses on
his hands as he reached beneath her shirt.

He knew exactly what he wanted, and he wasn't going to stop now.  He
wasn't going to argue or justify himself or do any of those things
someone who'd lived as a man all his life would have done.  He wasn't
going to twist this up with reason.

Wait: that's what she should have said, but his mouth was on hers and
she felt too much to stop now.  This was no longer her garden, was it?

This was no longer the ground.  The heat couldn't possibly feel this
way, so deep inside there was nothing to do but give in to it.  Were
there neighbors out in their backyards?  Were there dogs barking?  Was
that the rattle of a trashcan as a raccoon or one of the wild cats
scavenged in the Dixons' shed for scraps of food?  She wouldn't let him
go.  Even when he pulled off his jeans and his blood-soaked shirt, she
kept her arms around him, she got up on her knees, just to stay with
him.  When she felt the scar on the inside of his thigh, she almost
spoke, but by then there was nothing to say.  She was already drowning.

Her arms were around his neck and she circled herself around him until
he made her let go and forced her down on her hands and knees.  When he
moved inside her, she cried out, but not because she wanted him to stop.
He wouldn't let go of her, and that was what she wanted.  And later,
when they'd gone into the house, and up to her room, they still couldn't
stay away from each other.

They did things they could never have spoken of, or known they needed so
badly.  And they didn't stop until they were sore, until there was only
one star left in the sky.

Outside, the first birds began to call to each other, but fortunately
they didn't wake Stephen, and for that Robin was grateful.  The sky in
the east grew milky and pale, but she could hold on to this night just a
little while longer, at least until daylight made it impossible.  She
could believe whatever she wanted, she could believe whatever she
wished.  He was turned with his back to her, and just watching him sleep
made Robin shiver, although the heat was still rising, as it would
continue to do until the rain came, late in the afternoon, a sudden,
drenching storm that would wash away every bit of blood under the pear
tree, until it was almost possible to forget what it was they'd found in
the garden.

Now THAT it had happened to him, Stephen understood why the black wolf
would have once had reason to kill him.  When he was small, Stephen had
hated to let the big dog out of his sight.  He trotted after her and
made a nuisance of himself, until at last the black wolf let him know
there were times when he was not wanted.  The lesson was harsh and
quick: the black wolf charged and pinned Stephen to the ground, showing
his teeth so close to Stephen's face that for months afterward he
dreamed he was being eaten alive and woke whimpering and feverish.

That the black wolf had tolerated Stephen at all was a measure of his
restraint, and now Stephen wished he had studied that restraint better,
because he himself seemed to have none of it.

He wanted Robin constantly, when Connor sneaked out at night Stephen
couldn't even wait for the door to close behind the boy before he went
to her room.  When she worried that they might be overheard, convinced
that Connor was asleep in his bed, it took all his control not to betray
the boy and just tell her they were alone.  He kissed her until she
stopped talking, he kept her there in bed until she didn't give a damn
who overheard.  He was jealous of everything she touched: The towels she
smoothed as she folded them into the laundry closet.  The sweetpea vines
she cut back beside the Feldmans' toolshed.  The ground coffee she
measured into the paper filter.  One morning, when he was alone in the
house, Stephen went into her bedroom and examined the clothes in her
dresser.  He found a photograph of Roy, an old one, taken years before,
when Connor was a baby, and he tore it in half for reasons he didn't
understand, and all the rest of that day he felt embarrassed by what he
had done, and he tried to patch Roy back together again, using glue and
tape, with no luck at all.

Whenever he went running, in the dusk that came earlier every day, he
ran flat-out, so that people sitting on their front porches didn't know
if they'd seen him or just a shadow cast by a cloud.  He ran until his
lungs hurt, hoping to extinguish some of what was burning him alive.

Sometimes, when he got to Old Dick's house, he stood by the sink and
drank water straight from the faucet, gallons it seemed, and still he
was on fire.  Instead of reading from the newspaper, he now read poems
from the musty volumes no one had opened for decades, meaningless words,
no sense in them at all, and yet some of those poems made his throat
tighten with longing.

"What are you trying to do?"  Old Dick shouted whenever Stephen began to
read poetry.  "Kill me?"  He held up the Tribune's sports page.

"Here's beauty," he spat.  "Here's truth."  Out of the hundred questions
Stephen might have asked the old man he finally chose the one that most
disturbed him.  There was almost no light left, Stephen put down his
book and moved his chair so that he could see Old Dick's face.

"Can what you feel inside kill you?"

"Absolutely," Old Dick said.  "Bet on it.  It'll tear you right up and
burst your blood vessels."

"If you want two things?"  Stephen asked.

"You're fucked," Old Dick said.

"That's what I thought," Stephen admitted.

Old Dick reached for his glasses.  What he wouldn't give to change
places with this fellow for one day, or a day and a night, a week--what
he wouldn't give for that.  Stephen was wound up about something, and it
was exquisite to see, all that pain and emotion.  By now, Old Dick often
found himself waiting for the sound of Stephen running along the gravel
driveway, he yelled at Ginny if she left out crackers as a snack, rather
than the good chocolate-dipped cookies from England.  On rainy days he
found himself fretting, he was so completely out of sorts, thinking he
was bound to be disappointed, that he coughed up blood.  But the rain
didn't bother Stephen, he ran in fine weather or foul, and if he
happened to leave a pool of rainwater on the carpet, Old Dick didn't
seem to care.  And now, although he was enjoying Stephen's agony--almost
feeling it himself, somewhere deep in his chest--there was something
else he was feeling, too, and it came as such a surprise to finally have
mercy in his heart that he began to cough, and he didn't stop until
Stephen got up and pounded him on the back.

Old Dick caught his breath and waved Stephen away.  As he struggled to
sit up straight, the money in his mattress shifted beneath his frail
weight.

"Love won't kill you, if that's what you're thinking," he said.

"Although if you have a choice, go for sex without it.

Far superior and less complicated."

Stephen looked down at the carpet.

"No choice," Old Dick judged, correctly.  "Poor bastard," he said
cheerfully.  "I envy you."

In what the old man determined was an enviable state, Stephen ran back
to Mansfield Terrace through the rain, not noticing the cars on the
street or the dogs that dared to chase him, snapping at his heels as he
outdistanced them.  By now, he had imagined, he would have already begun
the journey home, but the atlas lay on the floor of the guest room
closet, unopened since the night Homer died.  He could not go home and
still have Robin, but he was greedy, even though he knew that if he held
on to both, he'd be pulled apart, until all that was left of him was
scattered, like stars, across the dark space that separated what he
wanted most.

And now as he ran, he wondered if he had asked Richard Aaron the wrong
question.  Perhaps it was knowing you had to give something up that
could kill you.  Certainly this knowledge forced him to run with a
fierce speed that he couldn't control, not any more than he could
control his reaction when he realized Roy was following him again.

This time he couldn't just go on, acting as if he didn't know he was
being tracked.  Instead he turned and ran toward the car, straight at
the headlights, not caring, at that instant at least, if Roy ran him
down.

Roy had to brake suddenly.  He skidded up on the curb, then threw open
his door and got out.

"Are you crazy?"  he called.  "Are you out of your mind?"  He blinked in
the rain, not yet aware that Stephen was still headed straight for him.
Before Roy understood what was happening, Stephen had put both hands on
Roy's chest, he shoved him, hard, so that Roy reeled backward, smashing
up against the car.

"Hey!"  Roy said.

Stephen approached Roy again, and again he shoved him, but this time
Roy's back was up against the car and there was nowhere for him to go.

They stood face to face, breathing hard, ignoring the rain that was
drenching them to the skin.

"You're looking for a lot of fucking trouble, " Roy said.  He had bitten
his own lip, and now he wiped at the blood.  "Jesus," he said.

"Don't follow me anymore," Stephen told him.

Stephen turned and started to walk down the middle of the road, he could
feel something roaring in his ears.  He heard Roy coming up behind him,
and he was ready when Roy grabbed him.  Quickly, Stephen broke away, the
hair on the back of his neck rose.

"You're living in my house, aren't you?"  Roy said."  You're living
under the same roof as my kid and my wife."

"She's not your wife," Stephen said.

Roy felt a pain in his side, just below his chest.  He took a step
backward.  The rain was coming down harder, it could blind a man if he
looked straight up into the sky, it could confuse him, too, even leave
him speechless, particularly when faced with the truth, and that was
why, long after Stephen had disappeared down the street, Roy was still
standing there, right in the center of the white line.

A secret is always hard, a stone wedged just beneath the skin.  A
constant reminder that won't go away, a secret invokes longing, it takes
on a life of its own.  In order to keep one well, certain things have to
be done backward:

Laughter instead of tears, a slow walk when the urge is to run.

Always deny what is most important, at least in the presence of others.

And so it was possible to be together every night and then, each
morning, pretend that the night before hadn't happened.  Robin and
Stephen were tentative with each other in daylight, more distant than
polite.  If Stephen was at the refrigerator getting himself some juice
and Robin had to get to the sink to wash the dishes, she'd step around
him, or sometimes just forget the dishes altogether and let them pile
up.  When they were out on a job, she'd curtly direct him to the work
that needed to be done first, then set about by herself hauling manure
or chopping at twisted branches, even if it was far too much for one
person alone.

"Why are you so pissed off at Stephen?"  Connor asked her one night
after they'd all eaten dinner in silence and Stephen had gone upstairs,
to read, he'd said, although Robin knew it was to wait for her.

"I'm not," Robin told him, her voice unreliable.

"Could have fooled me."  Connor shrugged.

Maybe she should have said, Look, I'm crazy about him, I'm absolutely
insane with it, but instead she cleared the table and rubbed at her
throat, as if the secret were buried right there, above her collarbone.

Every once in a while she almost gave it away.  The last time she'd seen
her father-inlaw--they'd happened to pull into the Mobile station on
Cemetery Road at the same time-the Doctor took one look at her and asked
if she was feverish.

When he suggested rose hip tea to ward off the flu, Robin felt so giddy
that she had to turn away or she'd laugh out loud.  She couldn't even
talk to Michelle on the phone anymore for fear of blurting it out.

This is what's happened to me, she wanted to say.  You won't believe it.

She took cool baths and tried not to think about the future, but she
knew he wasn't hers alone.  There were nights when he couldn't stand
being confined, when he left her to go to the window, and the way he
looked out at the yard, the way he seemed to see right through the dark,
frightened Robin.  Sometimes, when he couldn't bear the heat of the
house and the closeness of the walls, he went out for a walk.  He
followed the marshes, then passed by the ginkgo trees in the center of
town, going only as far as the bridge where the weeping willows grew.

One night he came upon a deer that was so tame and unafraid of people
she went on eating the ivy that grew beside the Dixons' driveway.

Stephen stood there motionless, the way he'd been taught, but inside,
his heart was pounding.  In the dark, the deer's black nose looked soft
and wet, it was the best place to latch on if you wanted to take her
down quickly.  The deer breathed out warm puffs of air as she chewed
ivy, flanks shivering from the pure joy of eating.

When the wind shifted, the deer looked up at him, leaves hanging from
her mouth.  Stephen looked right back, not breathing at all now.  If
he'd been hungry, if he'd had nothing to eat but beetles and mice, his
stomach would now be churning in anticipation, he would have had to keep
from rushing.  The deer, in her stupidity, began to walk toward him, her
hooves making a sad clacking sound on the concrete.  Stephen watched the
deer's mild approach and was horrified, revolted by everything he had
done and now considered doing again.  You might lose the taste for blood
and bones once you were well fed, but not your appetite for the chase.
You didn't forget the way your legs felt just before you began to run,
as if a spring were coiled inside, with a time clock all its own.

The moon was in the center of the sky.  It was white as snow, white as
the bones ravens have picked clean.  Stephen waved his arms in the air.

The deer stopped and studied him with eyes as big as teacups.

"Go on," Stephen said.  "Run."

But this deer was used to the tone of a human voice, which sounded a
little like music, and she calmly sniffed the night air.  When Stephen
clapped his hands, the noise echoed like a shot.  The deer jumped over
some azaleas and ran across the lawn, leaving small hoofprints in the
grass.  Stephen closed his eyes and leaned up against the Dixons' car.

He put his hands on his knees and breathed deeply.  Some secrets were
much harder to keep than others, especially ones you kept from yourself.

Up in his bedroom, Matthew Dixon, who had begun to pack and would be
leaving in only a few days for his sophomore year at Cornell, watched
this whole encounter from his window.  It had been interesting enough to
pull him away from his computer terminal, although he had just managed
to access several calling-card numbers he would soon put to good use,
making as many long-distance calls as he wished without ever having to
pay the charges.  He felt almost as if he had caught something, the way
he did when he tricked feral cats into coming right to him by setting
out open cans of tuna.  He was smart enough to know that something had
just happened there in his driveway.  He had learned a great deal about
people by scrolling through their lives, as he often did when he gained
entry to private files.  With a few choice facts he could predict what
people would do.  What bills someone would hold off paying, for
instance, when going bankrupt.

How long it would take until a person realized his money card had been
accessed-- by the mysterious creature Matthew became at the keyboard in
order to make unauthorized withdrawals from an account.  But Matthew
never would have predicted that Stephen would frighten the deer away, or
that he'd stand in the driveway until he was certain she was gone.

When Stephen went home, he took the same route as the deer, but where
the deer had gone on toward Cemetery Road and the woods just beyond,
Stephen crossed the Carsons' lawn.  Most of the neighbors were already
asleep, but in the Carsons' driveway, Marco Polo faced Stephen with his
great rolling bark.  Stephen stopped where he was, beside the hedge of
lilacs.  He crouched down and called the dog to him.  Still, the basset
hound continued to bark.  He simply wouldn't budge.  Marco Polo was old,
he slept on the couch and was spoiled with dog biscuits and saucers of
cream, but he certainly wasn't a fool.  Any dog knows the difference
between a man and a wolf.  And long after Stephen had gone inside the
house, and had begun to walk down the hall to Robin's room, Marco Polo
went on barking, his face pointed upward, toward the moon.

Kay no longer kept sugar and flour and English breakfast tea in the
glass canisters along her kitchen counter.  She had replaced all that
with shells collected from every trip she had taken since her divorce,
including that first tearful vacation to Sanibel Island, when she'd wept
over each conch and sand dollar and reached out for Stuart every night
for a week as she slept, out of habit and perhaps just a little regret.
Since then, she'd traveled to Puerto Rico and Cancun, to Boca and
Bermuda and a Club Med on a pink island so tiny it had never been given
its own name.  Each time she returned from a trip she filled another
glass canister with mementos, although now when she searched a beach for
shells she was quite systematic and not at all teary.  She knew exactly
what was worth keeping and what she might just as well toss back into
the sea.

Kay planned to visit every damn beach she'd ever dreamed of when she was
married to Stuart and he was too busy to do anything as frivolous as
enjoy himself or pay her the least bit of attention.

There was a beach in Hawaii with black sand where shells in the shape of
children's ears washed onto shore, and another in Baja where the sand
sang beneath your feet and abalones had the sheen of opals.

Gregor, the housepainter, had told her about the beach of his childhood,
a cove on the Black Sea where the shells were as big as cats: put one
under a pillow at bedtime and it would whisper and purr all night long,
so that upon awakening you might know much more than you did the day
before.

Kay was in the kitchen, considering the pamphlets she'd picked up at the
travel agency, when she noticed that Stuart was leaving.

He came to the back door.  Kay could see him quite clearly through the
window, he had shaved and showered, and his clothes were clean and
pressed.  His overnight bag was slung over his shoulder, and he carried
the bucket and mop Robin had bought him.  He slipped the key to the
third-floor office under the doormat, and then he did the oddest thing:
he went right up to the door and kissed it, with a kiss so tender Kay
found that she'd begun to cry.  Suddenly, she had the feeling that she
didn't have the faintest idea who Stuart was, and that she never had,
and that she probably would never see him again.  When he had gone, Kay
took the key from beneath the mat and went up to the third floor.

She was shocked to discover just how tidy Stuart had left the rooms.

The cobwebs were gone, and the refrigerator had been washed with warm
water and baking soda, when she went to the window she could smell the
vinegar he'd used to clean the glass.  He hadn't left a dirty dish or a
ring around the old bathtub, and he certainly hadn't left a note.

After Stuart had been gone a few days, Kay called him, just to tell him
she'd decided on a trip to Jamaica, where a new hotel had been built so
close to the ocean that false angel wings and blue-eyed scallops were
sometimes found in the teapots.  She phoned his apartment, where the
message machine didn't answer, then tried the hospital, where she was
put on hold and later informed that he couldn't be reached.  She had
that feeling all over again, that he was gone completely, and yet every
once in a while she had the distinct sense that he was near, an
impression based, she believed, on the sort of radar that comes only
after having slept beside someone for nineteen years.  She thought she
saw him out of the corner of her eye when she was on line at the market,
only to discover that the aisle where she'd imagined he'd been browsing
was empty.  Could that be Stuart, on the steps of the church?

Was that his shadow slipping in between the library doors as they
closed?  Kay grew more and more edgy, but perhaps that was only because
Gregor was starting to bore hen-he was a crossword fanatic and had the
ability to ignore her for hours while studying clues.  "Alpha's
opposite," he'd mutter to himself.

"Hepburn's forte," he'd muse.  "Pride goeth before this," he'd whisper
into his beer.

After several more days of trying to contact Stuart, Kay phoned Robin,
who seemed unconcerned when she heard that her brother couldn't be
reached.

"Oh, he'll turn up," Robin said cheerfully.  "You know Stuart."  But in
fact, that was the point.  Kay wasn't quite sure that she did.  She
began to worry in earnest: He was dead in a ditch.  He was homeless and
drunk, surviving in alleys on cat food and rainwater.  He had ended it
all by hanging himself, perhaps from the lowest branch of one of the
oaks on his grandfather's old estate, and wouldn't be found until
spring.  Kay began to dream about him, slow, languid dreams in which he
was a young man, a boy really, serious and sweet, but absolutely deaf to
her whenever she called his name.

As for Stuart, he hadn't been giving much thought to his dreams.

He wasn't even certain if he was dreaming at all, though anytime his
patients had offered that as an excuse to avoid self-examination he'd
never believed them.  He was sleeping more soundly than he'd imagined
possible, here, in the fisherman's shack where he'd spent so much time
as a boy.  Since then, dozens of other boys had made use of the shack,
they'd run away from home, for an afternoon or an evening, they'd had
pirate clubhouses and, after they'd turned fourteen, secret beer bashes
as well.  Lovers had been here, on nights when they needed privacy, and
they'd listened to the wind in the marsh grass and sworn that someone
was sighing.

Everyone who had used the shack, and had thought of it as his or her
own, had left something behind: charred firewood and fishhooks, Coke
bottles and heer cans, homework that had never been turned in, tubes of
lipstick, blankets that had grown moldy over time, intertwined hearts
etched into the walls with burning-hot coals.  Stuart cleared most of
the mess away in a matter of hours, and then set to work with his mop
and dust rags.

The weather was still warm and fine, so he tied one of the rags around
his forehead to make certain that sweat wouldn't drip into his eyes.

After all the trash was sorted and ready to be carried to the dump, and
the old wooden floor was so clean it squeaked under his feet, Stuart
walked through the marsh grass to the beach and threw himself into the
water, and all the rest of the day he licked his lips, enjoying the
taste of salt.

Why shouldn't he buy wood putty and new panes of glass at the hardware
store?  Why not have a mattress and army blankets and a Coleman stove
delivered right to the road above the beach, even though the deliveryman
insisted it wasn't a proper address?  He dug a latrine and bought a
wheelbarrow to cart away the trash, he used the public phone near the
town green to phone the New York Times classifieds and place an ad to
sublet his apartment, then bought fresh coffee and bread at the bakery
and ate his lunch on the beach, where the sea gulls snapped up any
crumbs.  Now that he had all the time in the world, time itself had
become a different thing.  He could blink and there was a fish on his
line.  He could turn around twice and the sun would already be setting.

He ate one of the peaches he'd bought at the market for supper, a piece
of fruit so delicious he shivered with every bite.  And when the sun
went down, and the air grew cool, that complicated August air that
evoked both summer and autumn, he looked upward, waiting.  The sky was
inky and immutable, and then, quite suddenly, it cleared.  When he saw
the stars it was as if he were seeing each light for the very first
time.  What could be more beautiful?  Nothing in heaven, nothing on
earth.  He sat studying the night until his neck ached, and still he
felt he couldn't get quite enough of the sky.  He didn't bother to cover
the windows in the shack with pillowcases, as he had planned, and he
fell asleep in a wash of starlight, that deep, dreamless sleep that made
him smile even before he closed his eyes.

And that's the way they found him, when they rushed through the door,
already tangled together, their hands all over each other.  They hadn't
managed to sneak out for the night in more than a week, and they were
more desperate for each other than ever.  Soon the school term would
begin and they'd have to pass in the hallways, satisfied with only a
whisper and the promise of later.

"Have you missed me?"  Lydia asked, after she'd pulled her T-shirt off.

Connor nodded yes, he would have agreed to anything to please her.

"Have you thought about me every minute we've been apart?"  she wanted
to know.

Connor put his arms around her.  When he swallowed, his head rang, he
was ready to explode.  Lydia kissed him, then pulled away.

"Every second?"  she whispered.

"Oh, Jesus," Connor said.

When he saw Stuart in the shed he couldn't catch his breath, but
instinctively he pushed Lydia behind him to protect her, although from
what he wasn't exactly sure.

"It's my uncle," Connor told Lydia.

"Is he dead?"  Lydia peered at Stuart.  "We should check his pulse."

She was, Connor thought lovingly, the most practical girl in the world.

As Lydia fumbled to slip her T-shirt back on, Connor went to kneel
beside the body.  Stuart was still smiling, and because Connor had never
seen him look anything but anxious, he assumed his uncle was dead.

"Oh, man," Connor said.  "I think he is."

Lydia came up beside Connor and took Stuart's wrist into her own capable
hands.  "I wish I hadn't lost my Swatch," she said.

Stuart's eyes fluttered, then opened.  He looked at Con l nor, then at
Lydia, who, in her hurry, had put her shirt on inside out.  He would
have asked what they were doing there, if the answer hadn't been so
apparent.

"I've taken over your shack," Stuart guessed.  "I've put you out.

"He's alive," Lydia announced, proudly, as though she had personally
brought him back from the other side.

"Yeah," Connor said without much conviction.  His eyes had adjusted to
the darkness and now he could see the improvements his uncle had
made--no more garbage or broken glass, no more hideaway for him and
Lydia.  "You're planning on staying here?"

Connor asked his uncle.

Stuart raised himself up on his elbows.  "Let me put it this way," he
said.  "I'm not planning."

When people on the island heard the news about Stuart they clucked their
tongues and shook their heads and swore they'd known all along he'd wind
up this way.  What could anyone expect with a family like his?  Of
course he was now talking to bluefish on the beach and reading old
novels Lydia Altero got him from the free bin at the library.

Kay's travel agent was the one who told her that Stuart was claiming
squatter's rights and, by all accounts from the clerks in the hardware
store, was about to put a wood-burning stove into his shack.  He'd
ordered a set of the finest fish-scaling knives made in Bar Harbor,
Maine, and bought a pair of knee-high boots for walking through the
marsh.  He'd started going to the AA meetings at the Episcopal church on
Wednesday nights, though as far as anyone could tell, he didn't have the
slightest drinking problem.

Kay drove over to the north beach the following morning.  Stuart wasn't
her responsibility, she knew that.  Still, there was such a thing as a
clear conscience.  She'd just take a peek.  She parked at the beach lot,
then walked the rest of the way on the road, which curved around the
marshes and was often filled with mud puddles.  A green heron fishing in
the reeds frightened her.  That was completely ridiculous.  She was a
member of the Audubon Society, she had been to this beach a thousand
times before and had no reason on earth to be nervous.  The tumbledown
shacks were scattered along the beach, but she knew Stuart's as soon as
she saw it.  There was a wheelbarrow propped against the far wall and,
leading from the front door to the marsh, a path lined on either side
with shells.

Oyster shells, she could tell that from where she stood on the road,
creamy white with purple hearts, dropped from above by gulls to split
open on the rocks, then carefully gathered by Stuart.  Kay stood there
on the road for so long that the heron took her for a statue and came
close enough for her to see its heart beating in its chest.  By the time
she'd turned and walked back to her car, Kay had decided to put off her
trip to Jamaica, at least until after Christmas.  The weather was good
enough right where she was.

Summer was ending with pale golden sunlight and a sky full of geese,
already headed south to the Carolinas, where the beaches, she'd heard,
were excellent, although not quite as fine as this one, which was just
two and a half miles from her front door.

In the last week of August, Marco Polo was found in his driveway with
his throat slashed.  Jeff Carson covered him with a beach towel, and
toward evening he buried him in the backyard, beneath the forsythia,
where the dog had always hidden on days when he was to be taken to the
vet for a bath.  People whose backyards abutted the Carsons' yard pulled
down their shades and turned away, rather than watch Miriam throw
herself on the dog's grave.

That was too painful to see, it was bad enough that everyone could hear
her wailing, all through the night, and that they remembered how she had
fed the basset hound cream and called him sweetie when she took him out
for his morning walk.

For days afterward there were bloodstains in the driveway.  People kept
their pets inside, and George Tenney, who came to comfort Miriam and
wound up with her hysterical when he told her they'd probably never find
the culprit, took to suggesting that people build kennel runs for their
dogs and lock their front doors.  By Labor Day, tempers all over seemed
to flare, perhaps because of a heat wave, a final burst of summer that
often accompanied the beginning of the school term.

Michelle Altero had several overwrought girls come to the guidance
office on those first days of school, there were rumors that the dog had
been killed by a maniac, a slasher who wandered through the marshes and
along Cemetery Road looking for his next victim.  Michelle gave each
girl smelling salts and a good talking to, then sent her back to
homeroom.  But the truth was, even Michelle couldn't concentrate on her
work.  She had tried to discuss with Paul whatever it was that was
wrong.

"I just don't feel well," she'd told him.  "Things aren't right. "
"Okay," he'd said.  "What can we do about it?"

Well, she'd dropped it right then and there, he'd assumed she wanted him
to fix something, but it wasn't like that.  It was something inside,
some kind of loneliness, a bitter thing for which there was no easy
cure.  She felt as if her one pleasure in life was her twelve-year-old,
Jenny, a sweet, genuine girl who was still enough of a child to take
Michelle's hand occasionally when they walked down the street and who
often asked to have stories read to her when she was sick in bed.  Jenny
had been particularly helpful lately, perhaps only because she was
afraid her mother's temper might be unleashed.  She'd done the laundry
the week before as best she could, but accidentally had mixed in the
dark colors with the whites, she'd fixed macaroni and cheese one day and
brownies from a mix the next.

When Michelle saw the plate of unevenly cut brownies on the kitchen
table she had burst into tears.

It just wouldn't do.  She would have to snap out of this, ready or not.

She had her hair permed, then she set about seriously to work and didn't
think about the fact that her husband didn't understand her and her
older daughter didn't talk to her, and it was going quite well,
actually, this new regime, until the third Friday of the month, a lovely
crisp day when the girls at school could at last wear their new corduroy
slacks and their denim jackets.  She andJulie Wynn had just led a
seminar in drug awareness for interested faculty members, and Michelle
was on her way back to her office when she saw Lydia and Connor beside
the water fountain.  Lydia's arms were around him, she had to stand on
her tiptoes to kiss him, and she didn't stop kissing him until the bell
for class had rung.

Connor saw Michelle first.  He took Lydia's hand and nodded.  Lydia
stared across the hallway at her mother as if she were a total stranger.

"Get into my office," Michelle said to her daughter.  "Now."

"She's only late to class because of me," Connor said, unaware that no
one was interested in what he had to say.  Not about this.

"You're not my boss," Lydia said to her mother.  She was wearing long
silver earrings that chimed when she tossed her head.  "I don't have to
do whatever you tell me."

"Oh, yes you do," Michelle said.

"Technically, she really doesn't have to," Connor said.  "There's a
five-minute grace period after the bell."

His voice broke, but his eyes were steady and clear.  He was so tall
that Michelle had to look up to see how blue they were.  She was the
first one Robin had called, minutes after he'd been born, and she'd sat
up all that night to finish the baby blanket she'd been crocheting.

Blue and white, a basket stitch, and Robin had marveled over the match
with his eyes.

"Don't you dare talk to me," Michelle told Connor.  "Don't say one damn
word to me."

"You wonder why I don't tell you anything?"  Lydia said.  "You wonder
why I despise you?"

"This is not going to continue," Michelle said.

She left school, although dismissal wasn't for another hour, and drove
to Robin's in less than ten minutes, probably ruining the gearshift on
the way.  Robin was out in the driveway, shoveling mulch into the bed of
her truck.

"What?"  she said when Michelle came tearing up the driveway.

"What's wrong?"

"Your son," Michelle said.  She was standing in mulch up to her ankles,
and her face was so hot she looked sunburned.

Immediately Robin thought car accident.  She leaned against her truck
for support.  She used to worry about that when Roy worked at night and
there was ice on the roads, sometimes she wouldn't fall asleep until she
heard him come home.

"He's the one that Lydia wouldn't tell me about.  It's Connor."

"No," Robin said.  "They hate each other."

Michelle took off her jacket and tried to breathe deeply.

"Don't they?"  Robin said, more uncertain now.

"All this time, he was the one she was running off to meet.  He's like
his goddamn father.  I'd bet he'd fuck anything, just like Roy.  But
he's not getting my daughter."

Robin took a step back.  She refused to believe she had heard Michelle
correctly.  As a matter of fact, her ears were ringing, she could have
easily misunderstood.

"It's up to you to stop him," Michelle said.  "I want you to keep him
away from Lydia."

Robin looked at Connor's bike, which he'd left near the back gate.

Just the other night he suddenly decided he would go see his father, or
at least that was what he'd told her.  Robin had been so grateful to
have that time with Stephen that she hadn't thought to question Connor.

But then she'd happened to look outside as he was getting on his bike,
and he'd looked so joyful, intoxicated almost, that she'd been thrilled
by his youth.

"Did you hear what I said?"  Michelle asked.  "He's not to see her."

"It's not up to me," Robin said.  "I can't stop them."

"You'd better," Michelle told her.  "You started it."

"Wait a minute," Robin said.  "Are you blaming me?"

"Because you always let Connor get away with murder?  You never
disciplined him, not ever.  And now you're more concerned with who
you're screwing than what your son is doing every night.  And don't tell
me you're not at it with this assistant of yours.  I can see right
through you."

"We'd better stop."  Robin was truly frightened of where this had led
them.  "Right now."

"Maybe I'd better call Roy," Michelle said.  "Maybe what's going on is
statutory rape.  This is the sort of thing that runs in families."

"Maybe you'd better fuck yourself."

"Oh," Michelle said, "is that the way it is?"

Robin grabbed her shovel and started to clear away the mulch.  Her
breathing was coming too hard, but she refused to cry, and all the tears
she might have shed went downward, until they formed a lump in her
throat so large she couldn't have spoken even if she'd known what to
say.

"Okay," Michelle said.  "Fine.  That's the way it is."

Robin kept shoveling while Michelle got into her car and pulled away.

Once, a long time ago, they had painted a sign with tempera on a large
piece of pressed wood--NO ONE ALLOWED--and hung it on the trunk of the
tree they most loved to climb, the big oak at the back of the estate.

For years it did not matter if anyone else in the world existed, no one
was allowed past the gates of their friendship.  Robin's hands shook as
she finished her work, but she kept on going, pulling the hose around
the side of the house to wash the last bits of crushed mulch off the
driveway.  When she saw Connor and Lydia approaching, she turned off the
hose and wound it in a circle so it wouldn't get tangled.  She knew
enough to wait and let them do the talking.

"We were going to tell you," Connor said.

Robin looked at her son and saw how young he was and how little he knew,
and she wanted to weep.  Instead, she wiped her hands clean on her
jeans.

"When?"  Robin said.  "After your firstborn arrived?"

" You don't have to worry about that, " Lydia said.  "That's taken care
of."

Lydia had always been this way, serious and matter-of fact.  When she
was six she had asked Robin how she could stand to touch the bonemeal
she fed to her plants.

"Well, I would demand to know who those bones came from," Lydia had
said.

Robin had thrown her arms around the girl, and although she felt like
doing that now, all she did was nod and say, "That's good."

"My mother's just a bitch," Lydia said.  Her face was drawn, she sounded
much too harsh and grown-up.

But Robin knew this wasn't the truth, it was simply that Michelle
refused to see that not everything made sense, love least of all.

In a little while Stephen would be coming back from the market-he had
gone off to do Old Dick's weekly shopping, and would drag home the
groceries in the twowheeled cart Ginny had used for marketing before the
problem with her legs.  Robin's grandfather was extremely pleased with
this arrangement, because Stephen always bought two apple pies, the
fresh ones, from the bakery aisle, and together he and Stephen had
somehow managed to convince Ginny there wasn't a bit of sugar in the
recipe.  Nothing could be done once people fell in love, really, there
was nothing anyone could say.  Let a chart be printed up, predicting
doom and disaster, and unfurled on the kitchen table.  Let it be made
out of steel and lead, and still it would burn up like an old piece of
parchment.  Every time she saw Stephen from her kitchen window, Robin
felt some ridiculous, incurable hope inside her.  Every time she set out
the cobalt-blue dinner plates and the silverware, every time she kissed
him, every time she saw the way he looked at her, it happened all over
again.  Who would choose to stop that?  Who would even try?

Lydia and Connor were both staring at Robin, waiting for whatever came
next.  They looked so nervous, standing there in the driveway, their
schoolbooks tucked under their arms, that Robin felt the lump in her
throat begin to dissolve.

"Why don't you stay for dinner?"  she said to Lydia.

The minute she'd uttered the invitation, she knew that if Connor had
been just a little older, or a little younger, he would have thrown his
arms around her.  As it was, his look of gratitude would have to be
enough.  All she could hope for was that when it came time for him to
judge her, he wouldn't have forgotten what every boy should know.  He
wasn't the only one who wanted something to last longer than a lifetime.
He wasn't the only one who knew how that felt.

FORTY YEARS AGO Ginny Thorne had believed that her life was already
over, and she couldn't have been more glad of it.  She'd been cleaning
house for Mr. Aaron long enough that the house practically ran itself,
and her girls were grown and moved away, and she could finally allow
herself to consider how much she would prefer to die rather than
continue with this thing that had been given her as a life.  She
scribbled good-bye notes to her daughters and left her gold necklaces in
two white envelopes, with each girl's name printed carefully on the flap
to ensure that there'd be no arguing.  Every night when she lay down and
closed her eyes she said farewell to the earth as she knew it, and every
morning when she opened her eyes and found herself still alive she
cursed whatever power it was that controlled her fate.

No one who knew her would have ever imagined the depth of her bitterness
or guessed that she thought the human race horrid and evil.

She played bingo every Thursday night and seemed just as cheerful as
always, once a week she took Mr. Aaron's silverware out of the teak
storage boxes and polished each fork and spoon, although no one had
thought to use them since Mrs. Aaron had died.  Had she been asked, all
those years back, if she believed in heaven and hell, she would have had
to say she supposed she did, at least it was true of hell, because she
was condemned to it, of that she was certain.

It was the little things that set her husband off--an apple not
quartered correctly, the telephone ringing at suppertime, four rainy
days in a row.  She never knew what would anger Donald, and she wouldn't
know until bedtime-- when the girls were at home he'd waited till they'd
gone to sleep, growing more furious with each passing hour.

He rarely left marks.  Instead, he would twist her arm until the bones
popped and pull her hair so that it came out in clumps.  He would call
her names she wouldn't dream of repeating and make her beg for
forgiveness--for what, it really didn't matter.  Once, he had covered
her face with a pillow until she blacked out, and as she did, she
assumed that the end had finally come, and she was grateful.  When the
life rushed back into her, she locked herself in the bathroom and wept.

She might never have fought back if he hadn't come after her up at Mr.
Aaron's house.  It was a cold, rainy day and she was in the kitchen, she
lit a fire in the fieldstone fireplace, which was so large a pine
sapling could have fit neatly between the andirons, then set about
mopping the floor.  Every day before she left for home, she placed Mr.
Aaron's dinner on the kitchen table, since he didn't care to eat alone
in the dining room.  Tonight she had fixed him lamb chops and peas, and
she was about to pull the dinner rolls out of the oven when she heard
Donald's car coming down the gravel driveway.  Only something awful, she
knew, would make him come after her here instead of waiting for bedtime.

Quickly, she thought of things she might have done wrong, but the list
was endless, and by the time he walked through the side door, she'd
given up trying to guess.

"You whore."  Those were the first words out of Donald's mouth, right
there in Mr.  Aaron's kitchen.

He began to berate her for leaving the doors in their house unlocked,
he'd found them that way when he came home from the hardware store,
where he was a clerk, and maybe they'd been left unlocked for a reason.

Some man, that's what he was thinking, in spite of the fact that at this
point in her life, Ginny wanted nothing whatsoever to do with men.

Donald was still good-looking, and he had a polite sort of voice, which
made every wicked thing he said feel doubly wounding.  But perhaps
because the kitchen was larger than their own living room, and the wood
in the fireplace popped, hard and loud, like a shotgun, his words seemed
more puny than usual.

"This isn't the place," Ginny found herself saying, and to her surprise,
she meant it.

"You're telling me what to do?"  Donald said.  "Is that it?"

This time when he went for her, she moved away instead of simply closing
her eyes.  Her back was to the hearth and she felt as though her blood
were boiling.  Years and years later she still remembered the intensity
of her single thought: I will not let him get me fired.

When Donald grabbed her hair, she reached for the iron poker beside the
fireplace, a rush of soot circled toward her and blackened her face.

He was pulling the hair right out of her head, and she was thinking that
if Mr. Aaron had any idea of what was going on under his roof, he'd get
rid of her in a second and then she'd be trapped at home, in a house she
had come to despise simply because it belonged to her husband.  She was
in such a panic thinking of this that she didn't notice when Richard
Aaron walked through the kitchen door, drawn by the scent of dinner
rolls.  By that time Donald had grabbed her around the throat, as if he
intended to break her neck, and that was when she hit him with the
poker, as hard as she'd ever hit anything in her life.

Donald staggered backward, his head had been smashed open.  As he fell
to the floor he went for her one last time, grabbing out such a large
handful of hair that from that time forward Ginny had a bald spot on the
side of her head.  By then, the dinner rolls were burned black.

Ginny stood exactly where she was, her shoes in a pool of blood, as
Richard Aaron went to the phone and called the police.  All she could
think of was that she had just mopped the floor, and now it was ruined.

"It's Donald Thorne," Richard Aaron told Sam Tenney, George's father,
with whom Aaron occasionally played poker.  "He's slipped on my wet
kitchen floor and managed to crack his head in two."

"I killed him," Ginny said, after Richard Aaron had hung up the phone.

It was a simple self-evident fact, and Donald had always been irritated
by the way she stated what was already obvious, but Richard Aaron hadn't
seemed to notice there'd been a murder.  He ate a blackened dinner roll,
then wiped the sooty crumbs off his vest.

"The hell you did," he said.  He took the poker out of Ginny's hand and
held it in the fire, to burn away the blood, then returned it to its
proper place.  "He killed himself."

That night Ginny didn't go home.  She moved into the apartment above the
garage, thinking it was only temporary, but then, when Mr. Aaron's
grandchildren came up from Miami, she stayed on and sold the house she
hated, dividing the profit between her two girls.  She remained when it
became clear that Mr. Aaron's son had lost all his father's fortune, and
even after Robin and Stuart had grown up and moved out it didn't seem
right just to leave.

When the big house began to fall apart and there was no money left to
repair the roof and pay for the heating bills, Richard Aaron moved into
the carriage house with her, and the fact that he often couldn't pay her
weekly salary seemed perfectly natural as well.  Through all that, they
never said a word about what had happened in the kitchen, even though
Ginny knew that her life had started that day.  She'd begun to believe
in heaven.  Each morning when she woke up she found herself awed by the
shape of the clouds, the color of the sky, and for that she had no one
to thank but Mr.  Aaron.

One morning in October she woke with a headache, but she chose to ignore
it.  Later, when the pain spread to her arm, she knew it was another
stroke.  She'd had a series of little strokes that she'd failed to
mention to anyone, preferring to think of them as blackouts, but this
was a bad one.  When Old Dick called for his tea, she couldn't answer.
When her older daughter, Nancy, phoned, Ginny picked up the receiver,
then could make only small croaking sounds, as if she'd been turned into
a frog.  By evening she was able to convince herself that she was on the
mend, but when she brought Old Dick his supper he wasn't so easily
fooled.

"I don't like the way you look," he announced.

"Well, that's nothing new," she shot back.

Old Dick asked for the phone, insisting he wanted to call Robin, but in
fact he was calling Ginny's daughter.  At seven Nancy arrived, and she
and Old Dick both decided that the time had come for someone to look
after Ginny.  Old Dick asked again and again if the nursing home in New
Jersey was good enough for Ginny, and her daughter assured him again and
again that it was.  Ginny's suitcases were packed and brought down to
the car.  Still she refused to leave.  She went into Old Dick's room and
locked the door behind her so Nancy wouldn't interfere.

"I'm not ready to retire," Ginny said.

"Fine."  Old Dick nodded.  "You're fired."

"You could come with me," Ginny said.

"To a nursing home?"  Old Dick said.  "What do you take me for?"

She took him for the man who had saved her life and now couldn't dress
himself or get out of bed.

"I'll die right here," Old Dick said.  "And don't worry.

, It won't be for quite a while."

Ginny went to the side of the bed.  She made a funny little sound as she
approached him.

"Don't think you're going to kiss me."  Old Dick's voice was thin and
brittle, he wiped at his eyes, which were teary all the time, just a bit
more so now, making his sight blurry.  He couldn't really see her face
as she leaned over him and kissed his cheek.

"You're a brave girl," he said.  "I forgot to tell you that."

And because Ginny knew Old Dick better than anyone else did, she never
considered correcting him, although he could not have been more
mistaken.  He'd already told her exactly that at least a hundred times a
day.

The first woman Robin hired told Old Dick in no uncertain terms that she
was to have every Sunday off.  Her family would be coming on Thursday
evenings for supper, she'd have to have cable hooked up to the TV, and
she wouldn't tolerate crumbs in the bedsheets or his nasty habit of
pounding on the wall when it was time for his tea.  He fired her on the
spot, and when Robin arrived to see how the new housekeeper was getting
on, there was Old Dick alone, munching saltines in bed.

The second woman was younger, and nowhere near as bossy, she'd had
experience in nursing homes and swore nothing the old man did would faze
her.  She lasted a weekend, and after she'd gone she sent Robin a
dry-cleaning bill, Old Dick had thrown a glass of prune juice right at
her, and his aim was still quite good.

Robin had no choice but to take over.  She came and fixed Old Dick
breakfast, and while he shouted from bed that Ginny would never have put
raisins in his oatmeal, Robin vacuumed and rinsed the dishes in the
sink, then sat down and phoned everyone on the island who might have a
lead on a housekeeper, preferably one who didn't understand English and
wouldn't have a clue when she was being baited and cursed.  But Old
Dick's reputation was such that no one gave her a single referral, there
wasn't a soul with the right temperament to care for him, not in this
hemisphere, and certainly not for what Robin was able to pay.

When she suggested to her grandfather that he come live with her-a
desperate move, really, since she knew they would drive each other
insane--he spat on the floor, so that was the end of that.

She phoned Connor and had him come over late that afternoon, which would
allow her to go see Stuart and discuss a plan of action, however
temporary, for Old Dick's care.

"After you take him to the bathroom and sit him down, cover your eyes,"
Robin warned Connor.  "He doesn't like to be watched."

"Mom," Connor said mournfully.

"And don't give him sugar."  Robin had recently discovered its effects
after leaving a bag of Oreos on her grandfather's night table.  He had
devoured all the cookies, then told Robin he'd report her to the police
if she didn't go out and get him more.

"It only makes him worse."

Robin got into her truck and headed for the north beach.  The road was
covered with fallen leaves, clumps of brilliant goldenrod lined the
ditches.  That her brother had come to live here, for however brief a
time he might stay, still seemed to Robin some sort of joke.  A long
time back, during their first summer on the island, Robin had persuaded
Stuart to come with her to the meadow beyond this beach, to search for
earth stars, small puffball mushrooms that curled up in the palm of your
hand.  He had followed her dolefully, not noticing much, not the
chipmunks or the moccasin flowers, not the stretch of poison ivy he
meandered through.  That night he had had a terrible reaction, in spite
of the strong brown soap Ginny made him wash with.  He couldn't sleep at
all, just the touch of the sheet against his skin was agonizing.

Robin had been torn up with guilt for leading Stuart through the woods,
and when she heard him crying she went down the hall in her nightgown.

To her, so used to the brilliant, harsh colors of Florida, their
grandfather's house was particularly dark, especially at night, when she
was supposed to be in bed.

Robin walked barefoot along the parquet floor in the hallway, even
though Ginny had taken her out and bought her a pair of bunny slippers,
along with new school clothes, and a winter coat and warm pajamas.

Robin continued to wear the white nightgown she'd brought along from
Miami, though she shivered beneath the thin cotton.  The door to her
brother's room was open and Robin planned to go in and apologize.  In an
act of pure courage and solidarity, she intended to touch the raised red
rash on his skin and infect herself.

But she never did get to pledge her allegiance to Stuart, or to discover
whether poison ivy could be spread by human touch.  When she reached his
bedroom door she saw that her grandfather had gotten to Stuart's room
first.  He had spread calamine lotion on the worst of the rash and
already Stuart had stopped crying.

Stuart was exhausted, he fell asleep as soon as the itching was
relieved, but Old Dick pulled up a chair anyway, and he slept beside
Stuart's bed the whole night through.

Now, if the gossip Robin had heard was correct, Stuart was acting as
though he'd been a naturalist at heart all his life, instead of a boy
who despised mosquitoes and slugs.  Robin had been down to his shack a
few times and had been amazed by how comfortable he seemed, the last
time she'd seen him a wasp had been trapped inside the shack, bumping
into windows and walls, and Stuart had calmly slipped a coffee mug over
it, then, with a saucer keeping the wasp in place, tossed it out his
front door.  When Robin had asked how long Stuart planned to stay on the
island, he had hedged, insisting he was only taking a break from real
life.  But now when she reached the beach she saw that he'd made further
improvements: a laundry line had been strung between two pitch pines,
the roof had been freshly tarred.  Robin walked up the path edged with
seashells, knocked just to be polite, then went in to discover Stuart
and Kay having tea and brownies, the kind with walnuts that Stuart had
always liked.

"This is not what you think," Kay said.

"Not at all, " Stuart agreed.  He pulled up one of the milk crates he
used as chairs and poured some tea for Robin.

"Because, you know, that's the way it seems," Robin said.  "You two
together.  Not that there's anything wrong with it."

"Oh, no."  Kay smiled.

"Not what you think," Stuart said warmly.

Robin sat down and eyed the plate of small brown snails in the center of
the plank of wood that served as a table.  They were moving, slithering
along the edge of the china.

"Aren't they fascinating to watch?"  Kay said.

"Coffee beans, we used to call them," Stuart reminded Robin.

"That was me," Robin said, indignant.  "You didn't call them anything at
all.  You used to step on them so they wouldn't crawl anywhere near
you."

"Well, we call them coffee beans now," Kay said in soothing tones.

"That's what matters."

"Here's the problem that we have since Ginny's gone," Robin began.

"I talked to her yesterday," Stuart said.  "Phoned her from Kay's
house."  He neatly cut a brownie into quarters.  "She's not quite used
to having people do things for her, but it turns out that she's crazy
for bingo.  Seems she was something of a champ in her youth."

"Did you hear what I said?"  Robin cut in.  "We have a problem.  Old
Dick."

"Just because I'm on sabbatical doesn't mean I don't have some cash
flow," Stuart said.  "I'll pay for another housekeeper or a nurse."

"There's not money enough," Robin said.  "It has to be us.  We can take
turns staying with him."

"That's impossible for Stuart," Kay said.  "He can't leave the shack
overnight."

"Is this some religious belief," Robin asked her brother, "or just pure
selfishness?"

"I'm having a dispute with the county clerk and the town council,"
Stuart said.  "If I leave the premises for more than twenty-four hours I
forfeit my rights as a squatter and they'll bulldoze the place."  He
clapped his hands together.  "Boom."

"Never mind that there's a huge colony of coffee beans right under the
shack," Kay said hotly.  "They don't give a damn about that."

"You won't help."  Robin looked at her brother.  "That's what you're
saying."

"Old Dick and I wouldn't last under the same roof for more than an
hour," Stuart said.  "You know that."

That it was true made very little difference to Robin.  She was now the
old man's sole caretaker, and all the way back to the estate she had to
concentrate on the road to make certain she wouldn't suddenly turn and
head in the opposite direction from Poorman's Point.  By the time she
got back, it had begun to grow dark, and she worried that she'd left
Connor in charge for too long.  She'd forgotten to mention that Old Dick
liked his supper early, by four-thirty, and that whenever anyone put a
plate of noodles in front of him, he'd go berserk and call whoever
served him his least favorite food a horse's ass.  Since boiled noodles
were the one thing Connor knew how to cook for dinner, Robin parked in a
hurry and ran up the stairs.  Right away she saw that some sort of
dinner had been made--the tray was on the hall table--and possibly even
enjoyed, since no plates had been broken.  The door to the old man's
room was ajar and no one was shouting, there wasn't a sound, except for
the pages of a book being turned, as Stephen read in the chair by the
window.

I Connor had panicked after less than half an hour, when Stephen came by
on his run, he'd found Connor pacing the floor.  Old Dick had spilled a
glass of orange juice, which he wasn't even supposed to have because of
the kigh fructose, and now he was demanding a bath.  Connor was
terrified that he'd drop the old man, or that he'd turn for an instant
and Old Dick would drown.

"I'm not ready for this," Connor confided in Stephen.  "It's like having
a baby.  But one who curses like you wouldn't believe when you don't do
things fast enough."

Connor had been so relieved when Stephen suggested he go home that he'd
thrown his fist in the air.

"Yes!"  he said.  "I owe you," he added as he grabbed for his jacket.

"Big."

When Stephen went into the bedroom, Old Dick was pounding on the wall.

He stopped when he saw Stephen, and slipped his glasses on.

"Finally," Old Dick said with a sigh, "they've sent someone reasonable."

Stephen bathed him, then fixed a can of soup for supper, which they ate
together in silence as they watched the leaves of the wisteria fall from
the arbor to the ground.  That was when Stephen decided he would move
into Ginny's old room.

"You don't have to do this," Robin said when Stephen came into the hall,
closing the door behind him, but not all the way, just in case Old Dick
should call out.

Instead of answering, Stephen kissed her, then pulled her toward Ginny's
old bedroom.

"I can't," Robin said.  "Not here."

Stephen looked at her, confused.

"My grandfather," Robin explained.  "He'd be in the next room."

Stephen grinned.

"What?"  Robin was flustered.

"He won't know," Stephen said.

"I'd know," Robin insisted.

"All right," Stephen said.  "Then we won't."

He would have gone into the kitchen, to make them some coffee, if he
hadn't wanted her so much.

"Don't look at me," Robin said.  She took a single step backward.

"I have to," Stephen said.

He could look at her for the rest of his life and still not understand
her, though he certainly wasn't about to ask why when she suddenly
changed her mind.  He followed her into Ginny's bedroom, where the
wallpaper was so faded it was nearly impossible to tell there were roses
climbing up the wall.  He didn't dare ask if she was sure this was what
she wanted to do.

But as Robin turned down the bed, which Ginny's daughter had made up
with fresh sheets before she left, she didn't have a single doubt.  As
far as she was concerned, her logic was perfect.  In order to have him,
she could get used to almost anything.

There were only ninety-three days left beforeJenny Altero's thirteenth
birthday, and that was why she knew exactly how a caterpillar felt
trapped inside its chrysalis.  She knew just how hard it was to wait for
that last transformation, the beating wings, the endless arc of the sky.
As she sat in front of a mirror she could see that her face had begun to
change: the cheekbones becoming more prominent, the mouth wider, the
eyebrows raised, as if in surprise.  She slept longer and longer, and
often her mother had to shake her awake in the morning.

She spent entire afternoons suspended in time, counting off the seconds
until her birthday with exquisite precision.

And all the while Jenny waited for that mysterious instant when she
would become a teenager, she was carefully studying her sister for
clues.  Secretly she cultivated the haughty toss of the head Lydia used
so effectively when confronted by their mother.

She longed to acquire Lydia's self-assured manner and often sat perched
on the bathroom counter watching Lydia apply eye pencil with bold
strokes.

"Aren't you afraid you'll poke yourself in the eye?"  Jenny asked.

"It takes practice," Lydia said.  She looked at her sister, something
she hadn't bothered to do for quite a while, and was surprised to see
that in no time at all Jenny would actually be pretty.  "Here," Lydia
said.  "Let me do you."

Jenny obediently closed her eyes and tilted her head back.  She could
smell her sister's shampoo as Lydia leaned over her, and she thought
Lydia would never notice if she started to use it, too.

"What a difference," Lydia said, when she was done.

"Wow."  Jenny looked in the mirror and blinked.  Her eyes looked twice
as big.

"Let's really do you," Lydia said, and Jenny was so thrilled by her
sister's attention that she sat motionless for nearly twenty minutes as
Lydia applied lip liner and blush, then French-braidedJenny's hair in
the style that Lydia herself often favored.  When she had finished,
Lydia madeJenny keep her back to the mirror, then slowly turned her to
face her reflection.

"I'm beautiful," Jenny said, completely surprised.

"I wouldn't go that far," Lydia said.  She checked her own reflection to
make certain it was still superior in every way.  "But you really do
look fantastic," she graciously admitted, and seeing the gratitude on
her little sister's face, Lydia gave her a hug.

"Better not let Mom catch you," Lydia advised.  "She'll ground you for
the rest of your life."

Still, Jenny decided not to wash the makeup off, not yet.  It was late
enough that she could sneak into her room, and before her mother came to
say good night, she made certain all the lights were off.  As soon as
her mother had gone out of the room, Jenny got out of bed and grabbed a
flashlight.  She rummaged through her dresser drawer until she found a
pair of dangling earrings she had swiped from Lydia's jewelry box.  She
pulled on Lydia's white sweater.  At a quarter to eleven she heard the
front door open, then close.  She went to the window and watched Lydia
run to meet Connor, it was a clear night andJenny could see them
perfectly.

As soon as they headed down Mansfield Terrace, their arms around each
other's waist, Jenny opened her window, she climbed out and dropped to
the ground.  She followed them all along Cemetery Road, far enough
behind to ensure that Lydia and Connor weren't the least bit suspicious,
but close enough to hear bits of their conversation.  She wanted to know
how a girl talked to a boy when they were in love.  Did she reach for a
boy's hand first, or wait till he came to her?  When he kissed her,
should she back away or throw her arms around him and hold him tight?
Did she ever admit how she really felt, or was it best simply to act
scornful when he swore that his heart was breaking in two?

There was a full moon that night, and the fallen leaves along the road
looked as if they were made of gold.  The air was cool, but Lydia's
white sweater kept Jenny warm.  She almost felt that she was the one who
was in love, her heart raced and the stars in the sky seemed unusually
bright.  Before she knew it, they had reached Poorman's Point.  Jenny
hid behind a pine tree as Connor tried to jimmy open the lock of an
abandoned storage shed.  Lydia laughed when he had trouble with the
lock, and Connor pretended to be angry, he chased her until she threw
back her head and said she gave up, although it was clear from the look
on Connor's face that he was the one who had given up.

And suddenly they were all over each other, some force had pulled them
together.  They were kissing each other in a way Jenny had never seen
before, and that was when she realized how cold she was, wearing only
her sister's thin sweater.  Connor turned and Lydia kept her arms around
him, she pressed up against him as he fought with the lock and finally
opened the door to the shed.  By then Lydia had slipped her hand into
his jeans, and Connor bowed his head, as if he were in pain, as if he
couldn't wait.

Jenny wasn't ready to see this.  She wouldn't even be thirteen for three
more months.  She turned right then and ran, tripping over bushes and
stones, frightened by her own shadow.  All at once, Poorman's Point
seemed a very long way from home.  There were clouds in the sky she
hadn't noticed before.  She hadn't paid attention to the path when she'd
followed Lydia and Connor, and now it seemed to loop around in a
confusing way, she kept passing the same spot, getting nowhere at all.

At last she found the road.  Somewhere a dog kept in its kennel was
howling and a night heron answered the call.  Jenny crossed her fingers
on both hands.

If she made it back home, she wouldn't be such a sneak anymore.

When she reached Cemetery Road she should have been relieved, she always
took this route in the summer on her way home from the town recreation
program, where she taught kids how to weave belts and key chains out of
plastic rope.  But now the idea of walking past the graveyard this late
at night made her stomach lurch.  She held her breath and kept going,
she didn't have a choice.

When some headlights came up behind her, Jenny felt herself panic
completely.  If she hadn't turned and recognized Robin's truck pulling
up alongside her, she would have run right into the cemetery to hide.

Robin swung the door of the pickup open and Jenny quickly climbed
inside.

"Does your mother know you're out here?"  Robin asked.  She was on her
way home from being with Stephen, and she felt somehow exposed, as
though she were the one who'd been caught breaking curfew.  Most nights
she went over before supper, taking charge of her grandfather while
Stephen went running, and often she didn't go home until after midnight.

Jenny shrugged and looked straight ahead, she was still shivering.

"I take it that means no," Robin said.  "You know it's dangerous and
stupid.  I don't have to tell you that.  Right?"

"Right," Jenny agreed.  "Incredibly stupid."

"I thought you were Lydia," Robin said as they turned onto Mansfield
Terrace.

"Really?"  Jenny looked over at Robin, pleased, then saw the concern on
Robin's face.  She wasn't out of trouble yet.  "Don't tell my mother,"
Jenny begged.  "Please."

They'd pulled into Robin's driveway and they both looked over at the
Altero house, all the windows were dark, as if everyone were safely
asleep in bed.

"Since your mother's not talking to me, I can't tell her anything, can
I?"  Robin said.  "Just don't let me catch you doing this again."

"I won't,"Jenny said.

L She hugged Robin, then opened the door and jumped out.  She ran all
the way home, and by the time she climbed in her window she was giddy
with her own success.  Already, Jenny couldn't remember how afraid she
had been to pass by the cemetery, or why she had begun to run home in
the first place.  She looked at herself in the mirror and felt very
grown-up, her cheeks were pink with excitement.  The moon was just
outside her window, as though it had followed her home.  She lay down on
her bed and tried her best to stay awake until Lydia came home, but by
midnight she was fast asleep, still wearing her sister's white sweater,
which, she had already decided, she wouldn't be returning anytime soon.

Where he came from, October was the time of frost.  Twilight arrived
earlier and was a deeper blue, ice crystals formed on the surface of the
shallow ponds in the morning, owls called at odd hours.  It was a bad
time to be a wolf: men came into the woods, and they weren't there to
see the sky change color or to watch the ice form.  They weren't there
to listen to the owls in the trees.

Trappers moved quietly and they knew what they were looking for, but in
October the hunters came, ready to shoot at almost anything.  They would
take down deer or moose, beavers or wood ducks, occasionally, they would
shoot each other.  Once, Stephen found a man before anyone else could
get to him.  The man's friends, the ones who had shot him accidentally,
were convinced they had gotten a bear, which they intended to let bleed
to death before they followed its trail.  So the hunter died by himself
in a clearing, and Stephen watched, shivering, as he did.  After the
hunter had stopped breathing, Stephen slowly approached, he crouched
down beside him, even though he knew he should run.  He had never seen
anything like this close up before, not since he'd come here, and he had
a knotted feeling inside his stomach.  The face seemed too much like the
one he saw when he had knelt down to drink from the clear pool.  He
backed away from the man, he refused to be like this thing.  He didn't
care what he saw.  He didn't care if he needed to run on two legs,
because when he went flat-out and felt the wind against him he might
just as well have been running on all fours.

He had difficulty catching his breath in that clearing, there was the
acrid smell of gunpowder and human flesh.  It made perfect sense to
avoid men, they all knew what could happen if you didn't.  One October,
when Stephen wasn't more than eleven or twelve, they had failed.  The
pack was big then, fifteen, including yearlings and that spring's pups.

It was a good season for deer, and they may have been lazier than usual,
the afternoons were still warm enough to lie in the sun, especially if
your belly was full.  The men came against the wind, but that was only
one reason they were at an advantage.  These hunters carried rifles with
telescopic sights, expensive things they had bought in Detroit, with
enough scope and power to get a hit before their scent was picked up.

The oldest wolf was shot first.  He was ancient, nearly eighteen, for
several years he'd had to eat the meat regurgitated for pups.

Three of his toes had been chewed offby a steel trap, two of his ribs
had been badly broken, years before, during an encounter with a moose.

They could hear the instant of his death, and it took just another
instant to know what they had to do.  Before the old wolfhad collapsed
to the ground, the rest of them were running.  They ran as one creature
with a single mind, except for two reckless pups who panicked and headed
for the open field and were shot straightaway.  The others took
offthrough the woods, where it was harder to be tracked and, if they got
far enough away, nearly impossible for a man to see through the trees.

More of them fell before they reached the deepest part of the woods, and
those who were left ran so hard and fast they barely touched the earth.
One minute Stephen was with them completely, blood pounding in his ears,
skin torn by brambles and low branches, and the next he could no longer
see even the most awkward yearling's tail.  They had disappeared right
in front of him.  There were no paw prints, no trail, just the trees
that grew on top of each other, blocking out the light from above.  The
men were still coming, he knew that, and because he could not escape by
running, Stephen had no choice but to go upward.

This was a skill that amazed his brothers, they often ringed a tree when
he climbed it, barking or making confused little yelps.  Now, he threw
himself at the tallest pine and hauled himself into the branches.

He scrambled higher and higher, quickly, tearing the skin off his palms
as he grabbed at the wood.  He went farther than he'd ever been before,
up where the owls nested, and he didn't stop until he had reached the
sky.

They came so close that he could hear their voices: ugly, rough sounds
that made him feel sick.  He could smell their sweat and their smoke,
they were clumsy as they navigated through the thick growth of trees,
and the earth shuddered beneath their feet.

Stephen was not nearly as foolish as the pups had been.  He did what
he'd been taught to do: he didn't move a muscle, not even when his arms
and legs were riddled with cramps from hanging on to the tree.  He
slowed his heartbeat until it was quiet as a mouse's.  Had the men
thought to look up, they would have believed he was a piece of wood, a
twisted branch set perilously high.

Long after the hunters had gone, Stephen stayed where he'd found safety,
he was there all through the night.  He could see every star from where
he was perched, the moon was so close he might have been able to touch
it, had he been willing to let go of the branch he had wrapped himself
around, even for an instant.  At dawn he heard the wolves calling for
him, and when he answered, the sound of his own voice sent a chill
through his body.  It seemed to him that a single voice was the saddest
sound on earth, far worse than the thud the old wolf's body had made
when it collapsed to the ground.

By the first light they had found him, they circled the tree, and
because they had run hard they left a ring of bloody paw prints.

Counting Stephen, there were only eight of them left, the bodies of the
rest had been tied up and dragged through the woods, back to the men's
camp, all except for the old wolf, who hadn't seemed much of a trophy
once the men examined him.  From the arms of the tree where Stephen had
hidden all night, the ground seemed much too far away.  He was afraid to
come down, as if all his terror had been released now that the danger
was past.  From somewhere inside him he remembered pictures in a book: a
longtailed animal had chased a sparrow into a tree but then was too
frightened to come back down.  Men in a big red truck had to come to the
rescue.

Ding, ding went their bell.  Clack, clack went their ladders.

The wolves started calling to him from down below, with such clear,
strong voices that he found he had more courage than he had believed.

He climbed down slowly, carefully, in a hail of pine needles that
smelled incredibly sweet.  When he reached the ground, the wolves who
were left rushed him, they bumped against him, and took his hands in
their mouths, making sure the scent of the men was off before they went
any farther into the woods.

By the time he came face to face with the dead man, he was a man
himself.  That is, he had reached his full height and weight and was as
fast as he would ever be.  If he couldn't quite keep up with his
brothers, he could do a good job trying, so that he almost never lost
sight of them.  He traveled with his three brothers, the ones he had
raised when the big dog died.  They had broken away from the other
wolves because they were an efficient team, especially now that Stephen
used a sharpened rock to make up for his inferior claws and teeth.

Each of them knew exactly what the others thought and felt, the biggest
of them was the leader, but it was a mild leadership, since there were
few disputes or conflicts.  Of all his brothers, this big silver wolf
was the one Stephen loved best.  They slept close together on cold
nights, and in the summer they pulled brown ticks out of each other's
skin.  Sometimes they went hunting alone, just the two of them, and they
never had to exchange signals.  Each knew what the other wanted,
completely, as if they shared one mind.

Sitting in the clearing with the dead man, Stephen felt much too far
from his brothers.  It wasn't just loneliness, it was more than that:
the sight of the dead man had somehow removed him from who and what he
was.  He couldn't take his eyes off the dead man's rifle, he reached for
it, but as soon as he touched it he had to drop it again.  It had burned
right through his flesh.  He might still have been crouched beside the
body when the hunter's friends finally tracked down their counterfeit
bear, if the silver wolf hadn't come for him.  Stephen knew he was there
before he saw him, and when he looked up, his brother was there on the
edge of the clearing.  His winter coat was coming in and he seemed huge,
though he couldn't have been more than u.

ninety pounds.  Still, Stephen was unable to move, he rocked back and
forth on his heels, grieving for something he had never seen or had or
been.

The silver wolf came into the clearing then, slowly, because of the
gunpowder stench.  He stood beside Stephen, and although he could smell
the scent of men, he began to sing.  Stephen closed his eyes and leaned
his head back, he heard his own voice join with his brother's.  All that
day, Stephen's brother kept close to him, and by evening Stephen was no
longer thinking about the man he had found, although from then on,
whenever he bent beside still water to drink, he closed his eyes so that
he could not see what he was.

Sometimes, now, when he dressed Richard Aaron, or when he bathed him,
Stephen realized that the old man was about ninety pounds, the same
weight as a full-grown wolf.  But Old Dick was six feet tall and so
gaunt his bones poked through his skin.  When he was lifted from his
bed, he seemed to fold up, like a piece of paper.

Ninety pounds of muscle and heart could be unstoppable, but all that was
left of Old Dick was the heart, wrapped inside a miserable bundle of
flesh.  Touch him with one finger and he'd bruise.  Leave the window
open, just the slightest bit, on a cool October night, and he'd cough
for days afterward.  As the twilight came earlier, Stephen spent more
time sitting beside the old man, but there was no longer much of a
reason to read to him, and often they didn't even speak.  There were
times when Stephen felt certain that Old Dick was sleeping, but no, his
eyes were open, he was calmly watching the shadows on the wall.

"Looks like a giraffe, doesn't it?"  Old Dick said once, in such a
strong, pleasant voice that Stephen was completely confused until he saw
the shape the lamp cast on the other side of the room.

One afternoon, when the light was cool and bright, Stephen went into the
kitchen to fix their lunch, and when he returned he found Old Dick
crying.  All at once Stephen realized what had been happening during
those hours when they didn't speak: he had been learning how to tell
what it was Old Dick wanted just by looking at him.  That he should ever
know a man as well as he knew one of his brothers was disturbing, but it
was also a simple fact.

Stephen put their plates of soup down on the night table, then bundled
Old Dick in a blanket, the heaviest one he could find, and carried him
downstairs.  It was nothing to carry him.  Stephen felt he could have
gone on forever, but he stopped in the center of the lawn, where a pile
of scarlet leaves was scattered on the grass.  This was all Old Dick
wanted, to see the sky, not through glass but as it truly was, a blue
dome so brilliant it could bring tears to a man's eyes.

TE DOCTOR passed right by his son one windy day and didn't even
recognize him.  He truly didn't know him, his one and only boy, not
until Roy reached out and grabbed him by the arm.

"What's wrong with you?"  the Doctor said.

"Me?"  Roy said.  "You're the one walking around in a daze."

"The hell I am," the Doctor said.

e was hopping mad, and the wind didn't sit right with him, it was a foul
sort of wind, with a yellow edge to it.  Before evening the thin
branches of young crab apple and peach trees would begin to snap off
with sulfurous pops.  Just the sort of thing earwigs and beetles would
search out in the spring, and once they found their way into a fruit
tree the damage couldn't be reversed.

"Did you take my advice?  Did you even try to get her back?"  The Doctor
had to shout against the wind, the collar of his coat flapped against
his neck.

Roy grinned and cupped one hand over his ear.  "What?"  he said.

The Doctor eased up and smiled in spite of himself.  He clapped Roy on
the back.  "Idiot," he said.

They decided to go over to Fred's for coffee, even though Roy was on
duty and the Doctor had been set to go home and put up his storm
windows.

"You warned me," Roy said, once they were settled in a booth.  "I got
married too young."

"Yeah, well, you're getting divorced too young, too," the Doctor said.

Then he ordered a plate of hash and a black coffee.

"I'll have a Poland Spring water," Roy told the waitress.  "So?"  he
said, when he saw the Doctor's look of contempt.  "I'm more
health-conscious now than I used to be."

"Next thing you'll tell me is that you're a vegetarian."  The Doctor
laughed.  "No," he said when Roy looked away, embarrassed.

"Not you.  Robin drove you crazy with all that brown rice."

"Maybe she was right," Roy said.  "Maybe I was a total fucking
blockhead."

"Now there you go," the Doctor said, appraising his hash as it was set
in front of him.  "That's something we can agree on."  He began to eat,
far more pleased than he'd expected to be.  "The question is, what are
you going to do about it?"

Roy laughed out loud.  His father was a great guy, but there were some
things he just didn't get.  He was what George Tenney called a
black-or-white man: Right or wrong.  Do it or shut up about it.

Not a single shade of gray.  Those sorts of clear-cut choices weren't so
easy for Roy, not now.  He had kept on seeingJulie Wynn for a while
after Robin threw him out.  Why shouldn't he?  Julie was pretty, and a
good, easy fuck, never asking for anything like a commitment.  The only
problem was that as soon as he could have another woman he didn't want
her.  Just knowing that, that he'd been playing some kind of game with
himself, unnerved him.

Everything seemed suspect, including his own feelings.  He hadn't even
realized that he was in love with Robin until Stephen reminded him that
she was no longer his wife.  Then he remembered why he'd wanted her in
the first place, and why he wanted her still.

"I'm not doing anything about it," Roy finally said to his father.

"Pretty much what you expected."

The Doctor put down his fork and pushed his plate away.  "You know what
every father tells his son eventually?"  He placed his hands flat on the
table.  "I wish you'd listened to me.  Just once."

The Doctor looked so serious that Roy felt like reaching out for his
father's hand.  Instead, he poured himself more Poland Spring.

"That hash is going to harden your arteries, and then you won't remember
whether I took your advice or not."

"Here comes your just reward," the Doctor said.  "Sooner or later he'll
put you through the wringer.  Then you'll understand me."

The Doctor nodded out the window and Roy turned to see Lydia and Connor
walking toward the diner, their arms around each other.

Roy knew all about this.  Michelle had called him a while ago, nearly
hysterical, demanding that he do something, and quick.

"What do you want me to do?"  he'd said.  "Give them a term in federal
prison for kissing in the school hallways?"

Michelle had then accused him of being a neglectful father and a
Casanova and a few other things, too.  He'd tried his best to calm her
down and promised to have a talk with Connor, but whenever he and Connor
got together, he didn't know what to say.

"I hear you've got a girlfriend."

That was his brilliant lead-in, one night when they'd met at McDonald's
for a quick dinner.

"Yeah," Connor said warily.

"Pretty," Roy had said.

"Excuse me?"  Connor had been unwrapping his hamburger, and maybe he
hadn't heard over the crinkling paper, or maybe he couldn't imagine
Lydia's being reduced to one trivial word.

"Lydia.  She turned out to be pretty."

"Oh, yeah," Connor had said, desperate to drop the subject.

"Really."  What Roy had wanted to say, and didn't, wasn't anything that
would have pleased Michelle.  Don'tget hurt.  That was it.  Don't let
yourselfget hurt by this.

In the past few months Roy had been floored by just how dangerous life
was.  Amazing that he had never noticed it before, since he was often
the one who arrived on the scene first when there was a car accident or
when a fisherman's boat washed up on the beach, empty except for some
netting and bait.  He could have blood on his hands and still calmly
write out his reports.  It was possible to do this by compartmentalizing
everything into puzzle pieces: the skids on the road, the height of the
tides, the human beings who happened to be in the way.  Once someone
started to think, he was in big trouble, and that's what had happened to
Roy.  Maybe it had begun when he started living alone and had too much
free time, but whatever it was, it was getting worse.

Last Tuesday, he and George had had to go down to Poorman's Point on a
miserable mission.  A group of boys playing King of the Mountain had
stumbled upon a mass grave filled with animal carcasses.  Two of the
kids were hysterical, the others appeared to be in shock.  None of them
was any older than nine, and they all seemed to feel responsible, the
way people did sometimes when they were unfortunate enough to be the
first to discover something unspeakable.

Roy gave all the boys lollipops to settle their stomachs, and after
George threw a tarp over the grave, they drove the children home, then
spoke with their parents, warning them about the nightmares most of the
boys might be having that night.  They drove back to the Point in
silence, got some shovels out of the storage shed, then set to work
lifting the carcasses onto the tarp so they could be taken to the animal
hospital and destroyed properly.  Some of the animals had been there for
months and were nothing more than skeletons, others were not yet
decomposed.  Most were cats, but there was one that seemed to have been
a large dog, some were birds that could now be identified only by the
piles of feathers that were left.  The birds had been strangled,
everything else had had its throat slit.  At the top of the pile were
three baby raccoons set in a row, their paws looked so human that Roy
went over behind the shed and threw up.  When he came back, George
offered him a piece of gum.

"The work of a sick mind," George said grimly.

"How do people get this way?"  Roy wondered.

George shook his head, not understanding that Roy really wanted an
answer.  Roy had been pacing, but now he stood directly in front of
George.  He was so wound up he felt as if he might explode.

"How the hell do they get this way?"  he demanded.

"Jesus, Roy, I don't know," George said.  "Take it easy."

"Yeah," Roy agreed.  "You're right."

They took the whole mess over to the animal hospital, knowing as they
did that they'd probably never find out who had done this.

Roy wrote up the report, and that was the end of it.  Except he kept
thinking about those raccoons and the way their hands were closed up
tight.  They reminded him of Connor, when Connor was a baby he would
grab on to Roy's finger and hold on with all his might.  Roy and Robin
used to laugh about it and call him Superbaby.  There were too many
things that could go wrong, too many ways a boy could get hurt.

Looking out the window of the diner, seeing his son out there with
Lydia, Roy felt a moment of relief.  Connor, he saw, was truly happy, at
least for today, standing in the wind, grinning as he listened to
everything the girl he loved had to say.

"They call it puppy love," Roy said to his father as they fought over
the bill, which Roy finally managed to get hold of.

"You were just about the same age when you started going with Robin,"
the Doctor reminded him after they got up to leave.  "I'd say that
turned out to be pretty serious."

Connor opened the door for Lydia, without noticing that his father and
grandfather were approaching.  Today, for the first time, he and Lydia
had talked about their future--not just tomorrow and the next day, but
their whole lives.  They'd been tentative at first, both afraid to admit
what they hoped for until they knew the other hoped for exactly the same
thing.  They would spend their lives together, they had vowed that on
the corner of the town green, and kissed each other twenty times, and
then found themselves too shy to speak.  Lydia finally suggested they
celebrate, and they'd come to Fred's for Cokes and French fries and a
warm place to hold hands under the table.  Connor T U R E had turned to
look for a booth in the back, when Lydia nudged him.

"Relative alert," she whispered.

"Hey there, buddy," Roy said as he came up to them.  "Hey, Lydia."

Connor mumbled something no one could hear, but Lydia smiled brightly at
Roy, then turned to the Doctor.

"I'll bet this wind is murder on any saplings you put in this summer,"
she said.

"Precisely."  The Doctor was impressed.  "Hold on to this one," he
suggested to Connor.  He elbowed Roy.  "Come on.  They don't want old
farts like us around."

"Speak for yourself," Roy shot back.

Roy could see that Connor couldn't take his eyes offthis girl.

When she laughed and headed for a rear booth, Connor began to follow as
if she were a magnet.  The boy had it so bad Roy would have laughed out
loud if he hadn't remembered exactly how it felt.  And maybe that was
why Roy grabbed Connor's arm, even though he knew he wouldn't be able to
say what he wanted to.  The best he could do was pull his son close as
he handed him a twenty-dollar bill.

"My treat," Roy told Connor.  He was glad that his own father was out of
hearing, because he would have really enjoyed this one.

"Just don't run offand get married," Roy advised his son.

In the middle of the month, when the moon turned orange and every
windowpane was thick with frost, Richard Aaron dreamed he was alone in
the woods.  He didn't recognize the sort of trees that grew here, huge
dark things with trunks large enough for a man to hide in and roots so
coiled it was impossible to find secure footing.  He was walking fast
and his breath came hard, it was amazing that he had this much strength
in his arms and legs.  It was impossible, and yet it was true.

Something had happened to him.  He removed his thick leather gloves and
discovered that his hands were no longer bony and twisted.  He touched
his forehead and found that the skin was smooth.  He called out just to
hear his own voice, and there it was: a bellow edged with the pride of a
young man, a truly beautiful noise.

He walked on, over the hard earth, the frozen pine needles breaking
beneath his boots.  He v,as lost, he knew that much, just as he knew he
had to go forward.  The birds above him were calling, signaling the end
of the day.  Soon he would no longer be able to see, and he had to hurry
through the woods.  As he went on he grew younger and stronger, he could
snap the branches blocking his way with his bare hands, he could leap
over the gray rocks that littered the path.  He was much younger than he
had been the day he got married, his full height had come back to him
and his hair was dark brown, a chestnut color the girls had all admired.

Richard Aaron went on through the woods, and finally he reached what
he'd been searching for, the white horse that was waiting for him.  The
horse was so white his eyes hurt just to look at it, but he couldn't
look away, not now, not after he'd come this far.

He stopped at the edge of the clearing, out of breath and terrified.

He knew he would have to ride this thing, a horse twice as big as any
he'd seen before, but first he'd have to catch it.  He tried edging up
to the horse slowly, but the horse whinnied and backed away, tossing its
huge head.  Richard Aaron kept walking forward, slowly and gently, but
the horse grew agitated and began to trot away.  That was when Richard
Aaron knew why he'd been granted these legs, he'd have to chase this
horse down.  He'd have to run for it one last time.

He followed the white horse through the woods as darkness fell, several
times he was close enough to grab on to its tail, but the horse always
pulled away.  At last they came to an open field, where the grass was as
high as Richard Aaron's waist, and he knew this was his last chance to
do this right.  The horse was galloping now, black hooves shaking the
ground.  It was breathing smoke in the cold, dark air, challenging
Richard Aaron to race.

He was as fast and as strong as he'd ever been.  He ran with all his
heart, and the wind followed along behind, slapping against his back.

Straight ahead was an even deeper wood, with trees impossibly tangled
and black, he would never be able to catch the horse once they entered
that forest.  He had to do it now, in this field, where the grass
whipped against him and smelled sweeter than any lawn he had ever walked
across.  With his last, best effort he came up beside the horse, keeping
pace, but that was not enough and he knew it.

And then Richard Aaron realized that there was a man running beside him,
a young man, like himself, whose face was filled with concern.

This young man had no trouble keeping up with the horse, he would have
run right past, , if he hadn't slowed his pace to talk to Richard Aaron.

"Are you all right?"  the young man said.  He spoke as if it were the
most natural thing in the world for them to be running alongside the
horse.  He wasn't even sweating.

Richard Aaron was too out of breath to speak.  The horse's legs were
much stronger than his, in the dark the horse looked like a cloud.  ,
"Are you all right?"  the young man continued to ask.

There was the moon, shining through the window.

There was the wood, looming just ahead.  I "Help me up," Richard Aaron
shouted over the sound of the hooves hitting against the earth.  "Just
help me up."

Stephen grabbed onto Richard Aaron's hand and held on tight.

"That's it," Richard Aaron called as the young man lifted him onto the
horse.  It was the instant before they reached the endless woods, and
quite suddenly the field was green, and it went forever, forever and
ever, and because the horse would now do anything Richard Aaron told it
to except turn back, he never had the chance to say thank you.

They buried Old Dick the day before Thanksgiving, in the spot he'd
chosen himself when he first came to the island.  Nearly everyone in
town came out to the cemetery, in spite of the sleet that was falling.

The ice was so stubborn the gravediggers had been forced to work all
morning just to loosen the top layer of dirt.  Every shop in town was
closed that day, except for the market--since people still had to pick
up their fresh-killed turkeys--although the butcher cried as he wrapped
each of the birds in waxed paper.  He remembered when Old Dick had been
his best customer, he remembered when Ginny Thorne would come in and
smack each lamb chop before she bought it, to make certain it was fresh
enough for Old Dick.

Robin wore her black dress to the funeral, the one with the silver
buttons.  She combed her hair and put it up neatly with clips shaped
like stars.  The only good coat she had was meant for spring, but it was
black and would just have to do.  Of course she'd known this day would
come--how long could someone live, after all--and yet she could not
truly believe it was Old Dick inside the coffin.  The box seemed
absurdly small, much too small to ever contain him.  Robin stood with
Connor on one side of her and Stuart on T U R E the other, with Kay
beside him, her arm hooked through his.

Connor's face was pale and he looked reed-thin, Stuart may have been
crying, but it was difficult to tell--his shack was so chilly, even with
the insulation he'd put in, that his nose was red most of the time.

After the service, they took turns shoveling the frozen earth back into.
the grave.  A chair had been brought to the gravesite so that Ginny
would not have to stand.  Her daughters hadn't wanted to drive her down
from New Jersey, they'd said it was bad for her health and pointless
besides, but Ginny had insisted.  She clutched her purse and was
completely composed, gracefully accepting people's sympathies, but when
they started to shovel the dirt over Old Dick's coffin she began to
weep, and her grief was strong enough to chase the sparrows from the
trees.

"That's the end, isn't it?"  Ginny said.

Robin went to her and hugged her, then reached into her coat pocket for
the tissues no one in the family had used.  Ginny blew her nose, but her
tears continued to fall and each tear melted a little hole in the ice on
the ground.

"There won't be another like him," Ginny said, and nobody could argue
with that.

Just before Ginny's daughters took her home, claiming it was too much of
a strain for her to go back to Kay's house for supper, Roy walked them
to their car.  Robin came up beside him as he handed Ginny's daughters
the bankbook Old Dick's attorney had given him.  In the years before his
fortune had been lost, Old Dick had set some money aside in an account
he never touched, not even when he no longer had any accounts of his
own.  It was all in Ginny's name-- thirty-seven thousand dollars.  Robin
was furious, not because Old Dick had left Ginny the bank account,
certainly she deserved that, but because the attorney had gone over Old
Dick's will with Roy.  As soon as they were alone, Robin turned on Roy,
even though Connor and Stuart were already waiting for her in Kay's car.

"You're not even related," she told Roy.

"Look, Robin, if you're going to argue, you're going to have to do it
with a dead man.  Old Dick's lawyer called me, not the other way around.
It turns out he made me his executor."

"He never would have done that."

"But he did," Roy said.  "Go figure."

Actually, Roy hadn't been very surprised when the attorney phoned him.

Years ago, when Connor was a baby and they'd all gone over to Old Dick's
for dinner, the old man had taken Roy aside.

"You're in the business," Old Dick had said.  "Take a look at this."

He went through his desk and pulled out a Dade County police report that
was more than fifteen years old.

"Robin's father," Old Dick had said--an odd choice of words, since the
suicide the report covered was also his son.

Roy had looked the report over carefully, then handed it back.  As far
as he could tell, there'd been no foul play, it seemed a simple enough
report, one he could have filled out in under ten minutes if he'd been
assigned the case.

"I think about it every day," Old Dick had said.  "But of course that's
what they want you to do when they're gone.  Wonder why."

Old Dick returned the file to his desk drawer.  "So what's your
opinion?"  he had asked Roy.  "Why would he do it?"

Roy felt extremely uncomfortable, not only because he now knew details
Robin had been spared--that her father had shot himself on a Tuesday,
for example, that he hadn't even bothered to leave a note--but also
because Old Dick, who Roy knew despised him, was now looking to him for
an answer.

"I don't have all the facts," Roy had begun.

"Come on.  Come on," Old Dick had insisted.  "Your best guess."

"He was miserable," Roy finally ventured.

"You're absolutely right," Old Dick had agreed after some consideration.
"He was."

It had taken all this time for Roy to figure out why Old Dick had turned
to him on such a private matter.  He hadn't understood until the
attorney's call on the evening of the old man's death.

"Looks like he trusted me," Roy told Robin.

"Just goes to show how anyone can make a mistake," Robin said.

Kay honked her horn, the mourners would be arriving at her house before
she had time to set out the buffet.

"Go on," Robin called to Kay.  "I'll walk."

The gravediggers were still at work, cursing the sleet.  Old Dick would
have been pleased to know he'd managed to cause one last hard time.

"I never thought he'd go," Robin said.  "Remember when he poured a
pitcher of ice on your head?"

When Robin was sixteen and they still lived in the big house, she always
refused to have sex with Roy there.  Even when he begged and swore there
were so many rooms-- the attic, for instance, the little pantry Ginny
never bothered with, the all-but-forgotten guest room on the third
floor, used for nothing more than storing an old sewing machine--they'd
never be found, Robin couldn't bring herself to do it right there, in
the house.  She would sneak out her window, climbing down the arbor
meant for wisteria.  Roy would wait for her, near the kitchen door,
shifting his weight from foot to foot, clapping his hands together when
it was especially cold, hidden, they assumed, from sight.

Old Dick had found out soon enough--how, they never knew--and he
stationed himself at an upstairs window with the ice water.  Although
they had never discussed it, Robin had always been certain she'd heard
him laughing when Roy, drenched and freezing, yowled like a cat caught
by the tail.

"I guess he liked your new boyfriend a whole lot better than he ever
liked me," Roy said.  He sounded calm, but the muscles in his jaw
betrayed him, they pulsed the way they always did when he was upset.

"He left him the rest of his estate.  Nothing for Connor or for Stuart.

Nothing for you.

"There was nothing to leave," Robin said.

"The carriage house.  And enough cash to cover the taxes for the next
few years.  He used his mattress as a bank.  I slit it open last night.

No wonder he had trouble sleein.  It was the lumpiest mattress I've ever
seen."

I "And I'll bet you've seen lots," Robin said before she could stop
herself.

"Robin."  Roy shook his head and looked up at the sky, the sleet had let
up, but the air was iron-gray and cold.  Some things, Roy figured, still
had to be paid for long after they were found to be worthless.

"The cash is in an escrow account.  But you and Stuart have a perfect
right to the carriage house if you want to contest the will.  Old Dick
had it drawn up last month, and believe me, no one in town will vouch
for his sanity."

Robin turned to walk down the path that led to the cemetery gates.  She
was wearing black high heels, which made navigating on the ice
difficult, she raised her arms for balance, like an acrobat.

"It doesn't bother you?"  Roy said.  He had come up beside her, but he
kept his hands in his pockets to make certain he wouldn't be tempted to
reach out and grab her.  "You don't feel like you've been cheated?"

The night before, when Roy went to the carriage house to collect the
money hidden in the mattress, he and Stephen had been careful to avoid
each other.  But as he was leaving, Roy couldn't hold himself back.

"This place is yours now," he'd told Stephen.  "Looks like you got
everything you wanted.  Congratulations."

Now, as he walked beside Robin, Roy still couldn't let it go.  "Is it
fair that it all goes to a stranger?"  he asked her.

"You don't understand anything," Robin said.

She wished the weather were better, it was much harder leaving someone
behind when the ground was so cold.  She'd begun to think ridiculous
things: that she should have left a blanket, that someone should have
stayed, just so Old Dick wouldn't be all alone.

"Explain it," Roy said.  There was sometning different in his voice,
which made Robin turn to him.  "Go on," Roy said.  "Explain it to me."

The fact was, Robin admired Old Dick's honesty.  Why should he bother
with niceties after he was dead, when he'd never bothered before?  He
did what he wanted, always.  When she was younger, Robin would have
ascribed this to pure selfishness, but now she wasn't so sure.  Who,
after all, had made his bed and washed his sheets, cooked his supper and
shaved him every morning?  Who had sat beside him at the very last
moment?

"I can't explain it," Robin said.  "Not to you."

They had reached the cemetery gates, which opened out to the road.  The
gates were wrought-iron, ordered from a blacksmith in Albany.

"Well, I feel cheated," Roy said.  "I was supposed to get you."  After
that, there was nothing left to say.  They walked down Cemetery Road as
the twilight turned the ice blue.  Once, Roy almost reached out when
Robin slipped on the road, but he thought better of it.  She didn't want
that, and he knew it.  Walking beside her, on the way to Kay's, he
thought that some loose talk he'd heard in a bar once really was true,
in spite of its dubious source.  The first person you fucked had a hold
on you forever.

The first person you fell in love with, you could never escape.

If it turned out this was the same person, you were done for, and that
was what had happened to him.

"You're not coming in for supper?"  Robin asked when Roy stopped at
Kay's driveway.  The house was already full of people Old Dick had
despised, Kay had ordered platters of cold cuts and good scotch, the
kind Old Dick would have appreciated.  "Are you sick?"

Robin asked when she saw the look on Roy's face.

"You didn't deny it when I called him your boyfriend," Roy said.

"I'm not fighting with you," Robin said.  She was shivering in her light
spring coat.  She was much too tired for this.  "Not today."

"Don't expect me to make it easy for you," Roy told her.  "That's all
I'm saying."

"Are you threatening me?"  Robin said.  "Because that's what it sounds
like, Roy."

"No, I'm not.  That is not what I'm doing."  He really looked at her
now.  "And you know it."

What he was doing was actually a hundred times worse.  He was telling
her that he loved her, something he hadn't mentioned and may not even
have known when they were married.  She used to whisper it to him
sometimes, while he was fucking her, and he had to turn off his mind
every time she did that.  For some reason that declaration had seemed
like a curse to him back then, he couldn't even hear it spoken aloud.

"Forget it, Roy," Robin said.  She wrapped her coat around herself.

"You can't do this to me.  I'm not going to feel guilty about wanting
more than we could ever have.  Those days are over."

Inside, Lydia was watching from the window as Roy threw his hands up in
defeat.  He'd left his car parked at the cemetery just to accompany
Robin to Kay's, and now he'd have to make that long walk back alone.

"Your parents are fighting," Lydia said to Connor.

"That's what they do," Connor said.  "They're real good at it."

"We would never be like that," Lydia told him.

"No," Connor agreed, in love both with her and with her certainty.

"Never."

Kay's house was so crowded it wasn't easy to find space to stand.

There was the librarian, Sofia Peters, eating salami and rye.

There was Fred, from the diner, all dressed up in a black suit he hadn't
worn for fifteen years, and George Tenney, with the Doctor and a group
of men who had gathered around the scotch to toast Old Dick's memory,
again and again.  Robin went straight to the kitchen, where she poured
herself a cup of hot coffee.

"A madhouse," Stuart said as he came up beside Robin so he could collect
more wineglasses from the cabinet.  "Kay made the potato salad.

Without bacon.  You should try it."

Robin was still wearing her coat, but that didn't keep her from
shivering.  "I didn't think I'd feel this way," she admitted.

"Come on."  Stuart left the glasses for a moment so he could put one arm
around her.  "He had a great life.  He did exactly as he pleased."

"Right," Robin said.

"God, he would have hated this party," Stuart said.

In spite of herself, Robin grinned when she thought of what their
grandfather could have done to this group with a few choice words.

Half of these people would have already headed for the door.

"But he would have appreciated the potato salad," Stuart said as he took
the wineglasses out to the dining room.

Still, Robin couldn't bring herself to join the crowd.  Stephen had
refused to come to the funeral, and she hadn't understood why until now.
Now she wondered if it was really possible to mourn between bites of
potato salad.  Perhaps the only thing a gathering such as this served to
do was separate the living from the dead.

If Lydia and Connor hadn't come looking for her, Robin might have gone
out the back door, with the hope that no one would notice.

"Did you have anything to eat?"  Connor asked.  "Do you want me to get
you a sandwich?"

Robin shook her head no, but she loved him just for asking, and for
being so awkward, and for drinking a Pepsi, rather than the beer or wine
he could have had without anyone's noticing.

"You shouldn't be in here all by yourself," Lydia said.  She'd already
retrieved her red jacket from the hall closet.  She reached into the
wide pocket and took out a loaf of banana bread, which she handed to
Robin.  "My mother," Lydia explained.  "She didn't think you'd want to
see her, but she sent this.  She said when she was little she was
convinced that Old Dick was a giant."

Robin started crying right then.  Lydia and Connor were both too
embarrassed to look at her.

"I said something wrong," Lydia decided.

"No," Robin said, but she kept crying.

"I'd better stay with her," Connor told Lydia.

"Absolutely," Lydia agreed.  She buttoned her jacket and pulled on her
woolen mittens.  She went to Connor and kissed him.  "I'll miss you,"
she whispered.

Lydia went outside and slipped the hood of her jacket over her head.

The sky had cleared to reveal a few stars, but it was even colder now.

The trees were cloaked in ice, and some of the thinnest branches
snapped.  She had never met Connor's great-grandfather, yet his death,
she saw, would affect her anyway.  It was an awful, selfish thought, but
one she couldn't get rid of.  Connor's mom would no longer be going to
visit Old Dick--she had often stayed until well after midnight--and so
Lydia and Connor would no longer have the house to themselves in the
evenings.  Where would they go to be alone together?  It was too cold
for Poorman's Point, and the county had begun to bulldoze all the old
fishermen's shacks, except for the one Stuart had appropriated.

Neither of them had a driver's license yet, or use of a car, and if they
checked into the one motel on the island, an inn really, run by an
elderly woman named Mrs. Plant, everyone would know the news by the
following morning.

Desperadoes for love, that's what they'd be, searching out privacy
wherever they could find it.  At least for now.  Someday they'd be
married and then they could do whatever they wanted.

Someday her mother would have to call on the phone and make an
appointment if she wanted to see her.

Lydia often managed to have her own way, but that wasn't a crime.

All this week she'd been working on her , .

.

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father, who was good-natured and hated the sound of an argument in his
own house.  Twice she'd cried in front of him, she'd confided that she
wouldn't be able to eat a bite of turkey or stuffing if Connor wasn't
invited to dinner.  That was all it took, the invitation had been
issued, but now Lydia worried that her mother might make a scene.  Poor
Connor was so nervous he planned to bring Michelle roses, although they
were out of season and much too expensive.  It was a long way from Kay's
house to Mansfield Terrace, and Lydia had plenty of time to think.  As
she reached Cemetery Road she'd already decided that if her mother said
one unkind word to Connor she would never forgive her, and what's more,
she would consider running away, a least for a day or two, until she got
what she wanted.

Lydia had begun to walk faster, although now and then she skidded on the
sidewalk.  She kept hearing that snapping sound.  Once it was so close
to her she imagined a branch was about to come at her from behind, but
when she turned there was nothing, only the dark cold road and the black
iron fence no child in town would dare to climb after twilight.  She
almost believed that there was a man inside the gates of the cemetery,
but she knew that wasn't possible.  She was not a girl who scared
easily, she wasn't frightened by empty roads or lone crows perched on
telephone wires.  She went on, fighting the urge to run.

Probably the funeral was what made her so uneasy, it was perfectly
natural to be spooked after such an occasion.  Still, when she reached
the corner of Mansfield Terrace, she felt certain that the snapping
sound was footsteps.  She thought about Connor to make herself feel
better, she thought about tomorrow, when he'd arrive at their door for
Thanksgiving dinner, about the roses he'd be holding, the stems wrapped
in green paper.

She could have sworn then that someone was following her, she heard
someone breathing.  Another girl would have run right then, but Lydia
was too practical for that: she had to see what she was running from.

When she turned and saw it was only Matthew Dixon on his way home, she
stopped where she was and laughed.  She had never been more relieved.

If anything, Matthew was the one who looked frightened when she turned
on him--in spite of his size, which seemed even larger beneath a bulky
green coat.

"God," Lydia said.  "You scared me."  She slipped off her hood, in order
to get a better look at him.  "What are you doing here?"

"I'm home for Thanksgiving," Matthew said.  "Vacation."

"I mean here."  Lydia grinned.  "Walking behind me."  He was such a big
dope, even if he did go to Cornell.

"I don't know," Matthew said.  "I went out for a walk.  My parents are
driving me crazy."

"Tell me about it.  My mother's like a member of the secret police.

But no one's going to tell me what to do."

"I know what you mean," Matthew began, but Lydia's attention had
shifted.

Half a block away, Michelle was out in the driveway, sprinkling rock
salt on the concrete.  When she looked down the street she recognized
Lydia's red coat.  Michelle had had just about enough of teenaged
antics, especially on a night as cold and miserable as this.

"Get inside," Michelle called.  "It's freezing."

"Parents."  Lydia shrugged, then she headed for home.  She took her
time, just to annoy Michelle, even though the night was so dark and cold
she had the urge to throw her arms around her mother when she reached
their driveway, a silly, childish urge she made absolutely certain to
control.

After Old Dick died, Stephen had covered him with a clean, white sheet
and pulled down the window shades.  When Robin and the ambulance
arrived, they'd had to persuade him to let them take the body.  Robin
had put her arms around Stephen, she didn't care that the driver of the
ambulance happened to be Eugene Douglas, an old friend of Roy's, or that
Eugene was watching them carefully from the doorway, the better to
report back to Roy and anyone else who cared to listen.

"This is the way we do it," Robin had whispered to Stephen.  "It's the
way to say good-bye."

She could feel how upset he was just by touching him.  He wouldn't look
at her, not even for a second.

"You let strangers take him away?  That's the way you do it?"  At that
moment, Stephen believed he could never belong among them.

He closed his eyes, considering, then stood up.  "Fine," he said,
although that hardly meant he agreed.  "Then that's the way we'll do
it."

Stephen had insisted on carrying the old man downstairs himself, but he
had refused to go to the funeral, and instead he'd spent the day
gathering Old Dick's clothes from the closets, carefully folding the
suits and the white shirts Ginny had always washed by hand, before
putting them into cardboard boxes.  When the sky grew dark, he put on
his heavy black coat and went out, without bothering to lock the door
behind him.  Everything was still the same: the ice on the road, the
bare trees, the sky above him.  All of it went on, as if Old Dick had
appeared in a dream that had nothing to do with the road and the trees
and the evening star.

Stephen followed the route to Robin's house, but he didn't plan to go
there or to the supper at Kay's.  Instead, he walked down Cemetery Road,
then went through the gates.  It was a miserable night, but Stephen
didn't feel the cold.  He went to the freshly dug grave and knelt beside
it, he took his hands out of his pockets and placed his palms on the
newly spaded earth, which had already turned icy and hard.

Two of the cemetery crows, which seemed never to sleep, circled above
him, curious.  This is what men did to remember the dead: They visited a
place where nothing was left.  They put up stones in the shape of their
grief.  Stephen stretched himself out on the pile of dirt, facedown, and
he stayed there for so long that one of the crows came to perch on his
back, and might have settled there for the night if Stephen hadn't
finally risen to his feet.

If he walked along Cemetery Road every night for the rest of his life he
still might not feel as if he were on his way home.  But he wasn't going
to choose to leave Robin, he saw that now.  He'd been making this choice
every day, a little at a time, until at last there was nothing to
decide.  Whether he belonged here or not no longer mattered.  When he
saw her truck in the driveway, he didn't have to think: he ran until he
reached the carriage house, then went inside and took the stairs two at
a time.

Stephen hadn't bothered to turn on the heat since the hour of Old Dick's
death, and now the rooms were colder than the air outside.

There was ice on the window ledges and along the hems of the faded
chintz curtains, ice had been woven through the bands of lace on the
dining room tablecloth and had left a blue veneer on the bookshelves and
the floor.  Robin had been waiting for him for nearly two hours.

She was still wearing her coat, and although her hair had come undone,
she hadn't bothered to fix it.  When Stephen came up beside her and
looped his arms around her waist, she wanted to stop breathing.  She
wanted the hour on the clock to freeze so that he could kiss her
forever, until their lips were bruised, until he drew blood.  He opened
her coat and the buttons of her black dress.  She wanted him so much
that she couldn't look at him, and she was grateful that he always
wanted to have her from behind.  She leaned down against the table,
leaving the print of her body in the ice, but that just made her hotter,
especially when he wrapped himself around her.  He was holding her even
tighter, and his mouth moved along the delicate skin on the side of her
throat, she could feel the edge of his teeth, not as if he wanted to
hurt her but as if he thought she might try to get away, even now, when
she was telling him not to stop.

Through each and every window Orion could clearly be seen.  He'd be
there until the stars shifted and he had to flee from the milky edges of
the sky, or be stung, in spite of his arrow and bow.  On this night
before Thanksgiving, the temperature dropped quickly.  Clotheslines
snapped in two and car batteries froze solid and would later need to be
thawed with hand-held hair dryers.  A single night, nothing more, one
that some people would sleep right through, beneath heavy quilts, and
others would praise for each cold, clear second.  When at last Robin
hurried to get home, she didn't notice the position of the last few
stars.

She gunned the engine of her truck to keep it from freezing up on her,
and when she got to Mansfield Terrace she turned off the ignition and
let the pickup roll into the driveway so no one asleep in bed would
hear.  She made certain not to slam the truck's door, then went to
retrieve the newspaper from the frozen lawn.  She felt the marks he'd
left on her throat and began to shiver.  She'd have to go inside and run
a comb through her tangled hair, she'd have to run the water in the
bathtub and wash with hot, soapy water.  But for now she stood there on
the lawn, for just a little while longer, as if that could stop the
night from ending.  At that moment, she truly believed she had
everything she'd ever wanted, and she never once imagined that Connor
might be watching from his window and that he had already judged her,
hours before daylight.

L THROUGH December the ice stayed with them.  For the first time in
fifty years the water surrounding the island froze solid and children
could skate the whole way around, ducking under the bridge where the
willows grew, hooting until their own voices scared them.  There were
twelve car accidents during the first two weeks of the month, tires just
skidded right off the road.  People found themselves wishing for snow.
At least that would be something, a change from the blue-gray ice, but
even when snow was predicted it never fell.

The Doctor had taken to making models out of toothpicks because there
was no need for him and his men to go out and plow, as they usually did
to pick up the slack during the winter, and finally he had to let Angelo
go, although he'd worked for him for nine years, the Doctor couldn't
very well pay Angelo his regular salary when he himself was gluing tiny
dinosaurs and ships together all day long.

T U R E During the short gray days that faded into a white twilight an
hour before supper, people grew restless and were suddenly well aware
that this was indeed an island they lived on.  Still, they were the ones
who had chosen to vote down the mall proposal and who had believed a
triplex cinema would create traffic jams.  They were the ones who had
moved here so they could watch the deer from their kitchen windows, and
now the poor things pawed the ice, trying to get at some greenery.  The
AA meetings at the Episcopal church were more crowded than ever, a
ham-and-bean supper to raise funds for the library drew a crowd of more
than a hundred.  Basketball games at the high school were so well
attended that the vice principal considered charging admission, but of
course he was voted down by the School Board, without a few diversions
like basketball, the teenagers on the island would go absolutely nuts.

Already there'd been several incidents: A gang of bored high school boys
had taken to hacking down mailboxes with an axe.  One ten-year-old
daredevil had ridden his bike far out on the ice, scaring sea gulls,
joyfully skidding over the frozen bay before crashing through into the
water, where he would have drowned if George Tenney, who'd taken the
afternoon off to go ice-fishing, hadn't managed to pull him out.  A
group of teenaged girls, with nothing but time on their hands, had
formed a club, each morning before homeroom they met in the girls' room
to drink vodka from a grapejuice bottle.  Roy was relieved that Connor
wasn't involved in any of these sorts of pranks, but that didn't mean he
wasn't worried.  On Thanksgiving Day, Connor had arrived at Roy's
apartment with a gym bag filled with clothes and an armful of
schoolbooks, and he'd been living there ever since.  He slept on the
couch, often fully dressed, , i me."  and ate nothing but pizza, washed
down with Kool-Aid.  Every time Roy approached him and tried to find out
what had forced his decision, Connor would turn on the TV.

When Robin telephoned, he refused to speak to her.  Teenagers were
moody, that was nothing out of the ordinary.  But when Robin didn't come
to the apartment, to argue with Connor and insist on taking him home,
Roy knew that whatever had happened was serious.  It wasn't like her to
give up so easily, particularly when retreating meant Roy might win.

Roy went over to see her the week before Christmas, when the pizza boxes
in his kitchen had reached a staggering height and nearly every mailbox
on the island had been decapitated, with the perpetrators still on the
loose.  Mansfield Terrace was one of the slickest streets on the island,
though it had been dusted with salt and sand a dozen times or more.  The
front steps to Robin's house were downright perilous.  A man could break
his neck with one false move, and then where would he be?

"I don't want to talk to you," Robin said when she looked through the
storm door and saw that it was Roy.  Her hair was pulled back and she
was wearing one of Roy's old sweatshirts and a pair of jeans.

"Fine," Roy said.  He came inside even though she hadn't opened the door
for him.  "I'll talk."

Robin wrapped her arms around herself and stood by the door, just so he
wouldn't get the idea that he'd be staying.

"What happened?"  he asked.  "Connor won't tell "He hates me," Robin
said.  "That should give you endless pleasure."

"Jesus Christ," Roy said.  "You won't give me a fucking inch."

"I didn't want to tell him about Stephen because I thought he'd be
upset, but he figured it out and he's furious."

"Figured what out?"

Robin looked at him sharply.  "You know."

Roy laughed out loud.  How stupid could he be?  Was it just that he
didn't want to think about Robin making love with anyone else, or was he
really a total idiot?  Every time he even began to conjure up Robin in
bed with someone else, a black curtain fell across his mind to block out
the scene.  Last Saturday he had actually gone shopping and bought Robin
a Christmas present, gold hoop earrings that were far too expensive.

"So he knows you're fucking your little helper and he's pissed."  He
really enjoyed Robin's wounded look, and he wished, just for an instant,
that he'd been even crueler.  Then she might have burst into tears.

"Oh, that's nice," Robin said.  "I'm so glad Connor's under your
influence now."

She was mouthing off, but Roy could tell how upset she was.  She'd lost
weight, and her eyelids were that soft purple color they turned when she
couldn't sleep.

"Is Stephen living here with you?"  Roy said.  When Robin didn't answer,
he shook his head.  "It's not like I'm asking you for state secrets or
anything."

"He's at my grandfather's."

"Just comes over here when he wants some?"  Roy spoke before he could
stop himself.  "Forget I said that," he told Robin.  "Forget everything
I ever said."

"Connor's all right, isn't he?"  Robin tilted her face up to Roy, she
wasn't quite sure what she wanted his answer to be.

"No, he's not all right," Roy said.

He would have liked to get her down on the floor and fuck her right
there, he could do that, he could have her begging for more.  That's
when he knew he had to get out.  He went to the door.

It was so goddamn cold, it was almost too much for a man to bear.

"Connor should be living here with you," Roy said.

Robin couldn't believe she'd heard correctly.  She put her hands on her
hips, waiting for the put-down she was certain would follow, but then
she saw that Roy had meant what he said.  For the past few weeks she'd
considered giving Stephen up, maybe that was what she was supposed to do
to make Connor happy.  A few nights earlier she'd told Stephen she
couldn't be with him anymore, just to see how it felt to say it aloud.

It was awful, not just the words she'd said, but the way Stephen looked
at her.  She'd gone to lock herself in the bathroom, where she ran the
water in the sink to make sure that Stephen wouldn't hear her crying.

An hour later, when Robin came out of the bathroom, her eyes red, she
found that he'd been waiting for her, just outside the bathroom door,
and she knew she wouldn't be able to let him go.  Not yet.

Those who kept secrets paid dearly, Robin saw that now.  For six months
before she'd found him out, Roy hadn't been able to sleep.

She'd discover him in the kitchen, just before dawn, and each time he'd
assure her nothing was wrong--indigestion perhaps, or bad dreams--and
maybe he'd even believed it, at least back then, never mind that his
insomnia always coincided with the times he cheated on her.  It was
totally disconcerting now to think that Roy, of all people, might best
understand her, and yet that's what seemed to have happened.  When Roy
went out the back door, Robin almost regretted his leaving.  He stood
out on the porch, turning to face her as he buttoned his coat.

"I'll talk to Connor," Roy told her.

"That won't do any good," Robin said.  "He's too angry to listen."

"Perfect," Roy said.  "I'm used to that."

Robin surprised them both by laughing.

Roy grinned at her.  "Don't worry.  He'll listen."

He talked to Connor that night, over a pepperoni pizza that had far too
much salt for human consumption.  Roy lifted the pepperoni off his slice
with the edge of a knife.  He knew if he didn't talk fast he'd miss his
chance with Connor, not just because Connor would be off to see Lydia
but because Roy himself would lose his nerve.

"It's been great having you here," Roy said.  "But your mother wants you
back home."

Connor folded a slice of pizza neatly in half.  "Are you saying you
don't want me to live with you?"

"No," Roy said, a little too quickly.  "My house is your house. " Connor
thought that over.  "Good."

"Here's the weird thing," Roy said.  His hands had started to sweat.

"Everybody's parents have sex.  Otherwise they wouldn't be parents.

They could adopt, sure."  He was getting off the track, and he knew it.

"But they still have sex, Connor.  Even when they break up.  Even if
they're not sleeping with each other.  That's the facts."

Connor pushed his chair away from the table.

"You're not going to say a few words on this subject?"  Roy said.

Connor had already grabbed his leather jacket.  Robin would have had a
fit if she knew he was wearing it, rather than his winter coat.  She
probably would have insisted on mittens and a scarf.

"I'll be back after eleven," Connor said.

"After you've screwed Lydia?"  Roy said, real easy, as if baiting Connor
was the last thing on his mind.

Connor came back to the table, he towered over Roy, and Roy just had to
hope his son would hold himself back.

"Just shut up.  All right?"  Connor said.  "Who I'm with is none of your
business."

"I couldn't agree more," Roy said.  "It happens to go both ways."

"Are you defending her?"  Connor said.  "Don't you get it?  The whole
time they were pretending that nothing was happening."  If it had been
anyone but Stephen, Connor might not have felt so betrayed.  He was just
a pawn, moved around at will--feel this way, feel that way, feel nothing
at all.  Connor saw his real mistake now.  He'd trusted Stephen
completely, as he would the family dog.  He'd taught him tricks: how to
play chess, fix a sandwich, handle a razor without slitting your throat.
Someone else might have been repelled by all the things Stephen must
have done just to survive, but Connor had to go and admire him.  He'd
kept Stephen's secret, he'd run alongside him, down to the Point, until
he was too winded to keep up.  In return he'd gotten nothing but lies
and he'd been played for a fool, too blind to see what was set out right
in front of him.

"Take my advice," Roy said now.  "Mind your own business."

"You don't know anything about it," Connor said.  "You don't even know
what he is.

Maybe you think you're talking to a human being when you're talking to
him, but you're not."

Connor ran all the way to Lydia's house that night, in spite of the ice
and the dread he felt inside.  He took the long route, so he wouldn't
have to pass by his own house.  He really didn't know what he'd do if he
saw Stephen face to face, and he didn't want to know.  When he got to
Lydia's, Paul Altero answered the door.  A lucky break.  Connor knew
that Mr. Altero had always liked him, and now he managed to have a
conversation with Lydia's father, although about what, Connor later
couldn't remember.  Mr. Altero insisted that he come into the kitchen
for a soda, and that meant Connor would have to speak to Lydia's mother,
something he usually managed to avoid.

"Is Lydia taking the car tonight?"  Michelle asked her husband.

Connor still had only a permit, but Lydia had gotten her license, and
the Toyota was now the only place she and Connor could have any privacy.
"It's so icy," Michelle added.

"She's a good driver," Paul said.

Now Michelle turned to Connor, and without thinking he took a step
backward and crashed into the refrigerator.

"You moved out," Michelle said to him.

Just what he'd dreaded.  An actual conversation.

"Your mother must be upset."

"I wouldn't know," Connor said.  "You'd have to ask her."  That
suggestion effectively ended the conversation, just as Connor hoped it
would.  Still, he was grateful beyond words when Lydia finally came
down, already wearing her coat.  She smiled at Connor, and since they
didn't dare greet each other the way they wanted to, Connor looked down
at the floor, he didn't want her parents to see how desperate he was to
be alone with Lydia.

"Thanks, Pop," Lydia said when her father handed her the car keys.

As soon as they got into the Toyota, Connor pulled Lydia to him, even
though they were parked in the driveway and Michelle could have easily
looked out the kitchen window and seen them.  His arms were shaking, his
throat was completely dry.  When he was with her he didn't give a damn
about anything else.  He was dizzy with wanting her, he didn't have to
think about wrong and right.  Lydia threw her head back and laughed, but
she was a little panicked by how desperate he seemed.

"Wait a second," she said to him.  "We're not in a race."

Connor slouched over to his side of the front seat.  Just looking at
him, hunched over and filled with longing, Lydia felt herself falling in
love with him all over again.  She climbed onto his lap, and she kissed
him so deeply and for so long that for years afterward Connor would
remember the exact thought that kept running through his head as the car
idled in the driveway.  This will neveY change.  That's what he'd
thought.  Not this.

Christmas Day was the coldest ever recorded in the island's short
history, and the next day was even worse.  It was a good day to stay
indoors, preferably in bed, and when evening came, suddenly, as if a
curtain had been drawn, it was best to have a hot rum and some leftover
turkey and go right back under the covers.  Of course, some people had
more important things to think about than the weather.  Jenny Altero,
for one--who'd gotten the hand-stitched stuffed palomino pony she'd
wanted for Christmas, as well as a pair of beautiful black boots--simply
couldn't sit still.

A note had been dropped into Jenny's desk at school before vacation
started, Tim Lester, whose father owned the diner in town and who was a
grade ahead, had a crush on her.  The note was anonymous, and Jenny
didn't know if it was Tim himself or one of his friends who'd written
it.  But it was male handwriting, of that she was certain, a sloppy
scrawl that had sent her reeling.

Her heart had been racing ever since that day, and tonight she planned
to do something about it.  She washed and dried the supper dishes, she
played Pictionary with her father and kissed her mother before she went
upstairs at bedtime.  Then she waited for her parents to go into their
room, and once she heard them turn on the TV beside their bed, she began
to put on her eye makeup, with quick, accurate movements, the way Lydia
had taught her.  She chose her earrings carefully, the pearl ones that
dropped like tears.  Actually, they weren't hers at all, but she'd taken
them from Lydia several months before, in the summer, and by now it
seemed reasonable that they should fully belong to her.

As Jenny braided her hair, she took a certain pleasure in tonight's
reversal.  Lydia, after all, had come home at nine, her French braid
untangled, her lips kissed raw, contrite for the first time in ages.

The Toyota had skidded into one of the Feldmans' crab apple trees,
splitting it right in half.  The front left fender would have to be
replaced, and the headlight as well, but not even their mother had had
the heart to scream at Lydia, that's how shaken she'd been by the
accident.  It was the passenger side of the car that had been dented,
and for one sickening instant Lydia had thought Connor was hurt.  He'd
only been dazed, but Lydia still had wanted to go right home.  Michelle
had given her a few drops of whiskey and a cup of hot tea for her
nerves, and now there Lydia was, already asleep in her bed, and it was
Jenny who had better things to do.

She pulled on the white sweater and a pair of corduroy slacks, then
tiptoed downstairs to the hall closet and grabbed Lydia's coat, which
was so much more grown-up than her own pink ski jacket.  She closed the
front door so quietly she might have been a mouse sneaking out with some
Christmas pudding in its cheeks.

As she walked along Mansfield Terrace, she saw that Robin's bedroom
light was on, good, there was no need to worry about being caught by her
this time around.  Jenny knew of at least three other girls who often
slipped out after their curfews to go down to Fred's Diner, which never
closed before two.  They went for the vanilla Cokes and the fries, as
well as the chance to flirt with Tim, if he was working behind the
counter.

TonightJenny hoped these girls would be there, in a rear booth, they
probably would think she was fifteen at least.  They'd whisper to each
other, "Who is she?"  as she leaned toward Tim, and when they finally
recognized Jenny in Lydia's borrowed clothes and called for her to join
them, she'd call back that she was busy, then turn her full attention to
Tim.

At this hour of the night the ice along the roads turned to diamonds,
and the wind shook the black branches of the trees.

Jenny walked quickly, and when she reached the town green the ginkgos
moaned and the telephone wires crackled in the cold.  She ran all the
rest of the way to Fred's, and once she was inside the diner, the sudden
heat, from the radiators and the fryers, came as a shock.  No one was
here, at least not yet, only Fred behind the counter, cleaning up the
grill.  Jenny went and sat on a stool and ordered a vanilla Coke.  She
was extremely polite, she was, after all, addressing the father of the
boy who might be crazy about her.

"I go to school with Tim," she informed Fred when he brought her the
Coke.  She was so casual, so cool, Lydia would have been proud of her.

"Isn't he working tonight?"

"He sprained his foot yesterday," Fred told her.  "Ice hockey."  Jenny
thought this over.  She hated to imagine Tim in pain, and she was
disappointed to have come all this way for nothing.  She paid for her
Coke and tugged the hood of Lydia's coat over her head, in preparation
for the long walk home.

"He'll be home all day tomorrow," Fred told her, as if he were a mind
reader.  Jenny had just been wondering how on earth she could make
contact, when school would be out for another week.

"I could visit him," Jenny said.  She hoped she didn't look as flustered
as she felt.  She crossed her fingers for luck.

"I'll tell him," Fred said.

Jenny was so excited she could barely speak.  She'd wear her new black
boots.  She debated about bringing the palomino pony, she knew Tim rode
down at the stables, but he might think her Christmas present was too
babyish.  No, she'd bring him cookies, that's what she'd do.  She'd stop
at the bakery on the way to his house.

"Great," Jenny said.  She had a big grin on her face, but even Lydia
might not have been able to control that.  "I'll see him tomorrow.

I'll come by at ten."

Tim waited until eleven-thirty, and when Jenny didn't show he went down
to the bridge to meet his friends for hockey, since his sprain wasn't as
bad as his parents had thought.  It was a gorgeous day and the ice was
perfect, and none of the boys paid any attention to the siren that
echoed across the frozen bay.  And later in the afternoon they were
still far too involved in their game to notice what looked like a red
sack beneath the bridge where the willows grew, where you could scare
yourself if you weren't careful.  They played on for hours, until their
toes and fingers were nearly frozen solid, and not one of them had the
slightest idea that Tim's father had been the last one to seeJenny
Altero alive, and that he'd been too busy wiping down the counter to see
or appreciate her last beautiful smile.

The search parties were still out in the frozen blue twilight with a
pack of dogs borrowed from the state police.  But long before they found
the body, with the throat so neatly slit, Michelle Altero knew her
daughter would never come home.  She knew it early that morning, when
she opened Jenny's bedroom door to find that the bed hadn't been slept
in.  Paul had been crazy with worry and had insisted on going out with a
band of neighbors to hunt through the marshes.  Michelle hadn't said a
word as he'd pulled on his fishing boots and grabbed the big flashlight
out of the hall closet.  She did nothing more than nod when he told her
not to worry, and she'd let him kiss her good-bye, but as soon as he'd
gone out, she went inside the hall closet and closed the door.  She
crouched down among the boots and the umbrellas, and cried so hard she
thought she'd dissolve, right there on the floor.

If Lydia hadn't come to take her out of the closet, Michelle might have
stayed there forever.  Instead, she let herself be led to the couch,
where she sat holding Lydia's hand, the stuffed palomino pony on her
lap.  She didn't move a muscle, she didn't say a word--not even yes or
no when Lydia tentatively asked if she wanted a cup of tea--but at a
little before nine that night, Michelle suddenly sat bolt upright and
began to tear out her hair.  She pulled out fistfuls and made a gurgling
noise in her throat, and Lydia had to restrain her and reassure her
again and again, "It's all right."

U R E But of course it wasn't.  Down at the bridge, at the instant when
Michelle began to tear at herself, Stuart and Kay came to sit on a
wooden bench so they could lace up their skates.  Stuart wore an old
woolen hat Kay had dug out of a box in her basement and an ancient down
parka, and Kay had on a camel-colored coat and a pair of leather gloves
Stuart had ordered for her from L. L.

Bean.  They hadn't gone skating together in the moonlight for more than
twenty years, and it was a much colder activity than they'd remembered.

Once on the ice, they were clumsier than they'd remembered as well, and
had to hold on to each other for support.

And just as Stuart was beginning to hit his stride, and had let out a
whoop, Kay signaled him over, then grabbed his arm.  Out in the marshes
the search dogs were barking, and the sound echoed above the frozen bay.
The moon was huge and white and circled by a halo of frost.

"What's wrong?"  Stuart said.  His face looked healthy from racing along
the ice.  "Are my knees creaking?  Am I too old for this?"

Kay came close to him and hid her face in his parka.  As soon as Stuart
looked past her he saw that something had been wrong with the ice all
along and they hadn't even noticed.  Blood had seeped through the water
beneath the ice and turned it deep red.  The beams of light he and Kay
had seen in the woods weren't moonlight reflecting off the ice but
flashlights and lanterns.  He helped Kay back to shore, then shouted as
loud as he could until at last people in the search party heard him,
although once they approached, the dogs refused to set foot on the red
ice, and they pulled at their leashes, then fell silent all at once.

Because Stuart was a doctor, George Tenney called him over as he and
Woody Preston knelt beneath the bridge.  Stuart calmly examined the
girl, but afterward he realized he'd been crying the whole time, and
that night he went home with Kay and they held each other tight, while
outside the wind grew so fierce it tore the new shingles off the roof of
the fisherman's shack down on the icy beach.

It might have been Woody Preston who began the talk of an animal, one
who knew exactly how to slash a throat in the most efficient manner, a
predator so quiet it could come up behind its victim before she had the
chance to run.

"I wouldn't write about any animals in your report," Roy advised him.

"Unless you want to be fitted for a straitjacket."  All the same, the
rumor grew, so that by midnight most people had locked themselves in
their houses.  Jeff Carson went down to his basement and got out the
rifle he hadn't used for twelve years, not since he'd gone hunting with
his cousins in upstate New York and shot two swans he'd believed to be
wood ducks.  The Feldmans set out broken bottles on their front stoop,
any creature that took a step toward their door would have its feet cut
to bloody ribbons.

It fell to George Tenney and Woody Preston to speak to the family, and
George told Woody in no uncertain terms to keep his mouth shut,
especially about his animal theory.  Michelle Altero said nothing at
all, she had cried so many tears that she seemed completely drained.

The girl's father, Paul, was so slow to answer even the most simple
questions--who her friends were, whether he'd known she had been to
Fred's Diner the night she disappeared--that George felt like a heel
just for being in their house.

Lydia stood in the doorway of the living room, her arms and legs
crisscrossed with jitters, she could hardly stand up straight.

She was in her nightgown, with her hair loose, and she'd already thrown
up five times.  The strange thing was, she was the one who felt like a
ghost, so weightless it seemed possible that any minute she would rise
up through the living room ceiling.

"You haven't noticed anything unusual in the last few days?"

George Tenney was asking in his deep, sad voice.  "Any strangers?"

Lydia closed her eyes.  Her skin felt much too cold.  She had a curious
sensation up and down her spine, as if she were growing completely numb.

"Anything suspicious at all?"  George Tenney asked.

That was when Lydia told them about the Wolf Man.  The secret she had
kept all these months, a silly secret she'd thought, which no one would
much care about, now seemed crucial.  Lydia saw everything clearly at
that moment.  This was all her fault.

"I told you it was an animal!"  Woody Preston said.  "I swear there were
claw marks," he managed to add before George told him to just keep his
mouth shut.

"I felt sorry for him," Lydia said.  The numbness was spreading, all
over her body.  "Connor said he'd be locked up if anyone found out who
he was."

Paul Altero put his head in his hands and wept, but Michelle stood and
went to Lydia.  When she reached her daughter, Michelle had to lean up
against the wall or she would have fallen to the floor in a heap.

Lydia didn't need her mother to tell her that the wrong daughter had
been taken from her, Lydia already knew that.  She knew it all night, as
she heard her parents weeping.  She knew it in the morning, when she
heard someone knocking at the front door.  Lydia found herself hoping
that whoever had done this to Jenny had now come for her as well.  She
went downstairs in her nightgown, her feet bare, and opened the door to
find Connor, his shirt unbuttoned, his hair wild from sleep.  Roy had
told him aboutJenny as soon as he'd woken, and he'd run all the way to
Mansfield Terrace.

"Lydia," he said.  His voice broke as he spoke her beloved name.

"I'm sorry."

He held her to him, but she was like a piece of ice.

"They'll find the person who did it," Connor said.  He wished he could
wrap his arms around Lydia and carry her far from this dangerous earth,
someplace where it was just the two of them, where terrible things never
happened and nothing ever changed.

"They already have," Lydia said.  "I told them about the Wolf Man.

" When Connor let go of her and stepped back, Lydia didn't move at all.

The wind came in the front door and blew at the hem of her nightgown.

"You told them about Stephen?"  Connor couldn't believe she would do
this.  "It was a secret."

"Is that all you care about?"  Lydia said.  "My sister's dead and all
you can think about is your secret."

"He didn't do it," Connor said.  "I mean, I know him.  He would never do
anything like that, and now they're going to think he did.  All because
of you."

Michelle came down the stairs just as Lydia slapped Connor.  She hit him
hard, and the imprint of her hand would remain on his face for hours.
Even after it did disappear he'd be able to feel it, as if he'd been
marked for life.

"You piece of shit," Lydia said.  She was so cold she could barely move
her mouth, her toes and the tips of her fingers had begun to turn blue.

"You pathetic creature."

Connor blinked, she couldn't possibly be saying what he thought he was
hearing.  Lydia gave him a push, and he lurched back over the threshold.

"Lydia," he said.  "Please."

Lydia looked him right in the eye, she had no idea that she was shaking,
or that her mother had come up behind her.  Who had she thought she was
to find happiness, to even think she might have a right to it?

"What a mistake you were," Lydia said.  "A mistake from the very
beginning."

She slammed the door, and she didn't care if he stayed out there
pounding on it all day and all night.  She turned and found herself in
her mother's arms, the only place she wanted to be.

"Baby," Michelle whispered to her, as she stroked Lydia's tangled hair,
just as if she'd been the daughter who deserved to be here on this
winter morning all along.

When they came for him, Stephen was reading one of Old Dick's books, a
collection of stories so lovely and strange he knew he'd have to read
them again.  He had learned to like coffee and had made himself a pot,
fixing the French-roast beans with the hand grinder Ginny had always
used.  He was nearly halfway through "The Twelve Dancing Princesses"
when he heard the tires on the gravel driveway.  In spite of the cold,
he had the windows open and his shirt off, since the temperature inside
houses always seemed much too warm.

They allowed him to put on his black coat and his boots before they
drove him down to the station.  It was Woody Preston who tried to put
him in handcuffs, and Stephen panicked just at the sight of them.  He
would have struck Woody, he might have gone to the open window and
jumped, if George Tenney hadn't intervened.

They were only taking him in for questioning, after all, it was routine
after the Altero girl's murder.  But when they got to Main Street,
Stephen saw that a crowd had already gathered on the green, men in
parkas and heavy leather gloves waited to get a look at him as he was
led from the car, as if they'd be able to tell, just by the sight of
him, whether he was guilty or not.

The room they took him to had glass on two sides, but the windows were
barred, and Stephen didn't like that one bit.  After he'd sat down, he
tried not to look directly at any of the officers, since they were six
and he was one.  He knew when to back down and when to fight and when it
was best to act as though you were already defeated.  Just a few
friendly questions, that's what they told him.  There was nothing that
officially attached him to a crime, not even a legal reason to search
him.

Roy was in the back of the room.  He wasn't one of the ones who was
asking Stephen questions, instead, he leaned up against the wall and
drank coffee.  It was impossible to tell whether he was enjoying this,
although Stephen believed he must have been.  Here were his buddies, his
friends, demanding to know where Stephen had been the previous night
between ten and two, and Stephen was at their mercy.  When he said he'd
been reading, some of them exchanged a look, although Roy didn't blink.
After that they wanted to know strange things: how many times he'd
spoken to Jenny Altero, whether he'd been to Fred's Diner, whether, when
he'd lived in the woods, he'd killed deer with his bare hands or maybe
used a knife to slit their throats.  He accepted a cup of bitter coffee
and answered as best he could, but he stopped talking to them when Woody
Preston asked if he'd ever tasted human flesh.

They'd already decided something for themselves, with or without his
answers.

George Tenney went to get himself some coffee, then stood next to Roy.

"The stuff those kids found over at Poorman's Point," George said.  He
had his back to the rest of the guys to make certain that they wouldn't
overhear.  "Those animals.  Their throats were all slit.  Maybe that was
him, too."

Roy narrowed his eyes and nodded.  His stomach was a mess and his head
was pounding.

"Nobody will think anything if you want to get out of here," George
said.  "Considering him and Robin and all."

Roy was about to say something, but now he looked at George.

"He asked me to call her, " George said.  "At the moment, we can't keep
him, not yet, and that means she'll probably come get him.

Go on," George advised.  Roy's skin was ashy and there were dark circles
under his eyes.  "Take a break."  By the time Robin came down to the
station, Roy was sitting on a stool at the bar at Harper's and the group
of men out on the green had grown to more than two dozen.

Robin went right up to the desk where Woody Preston was filling out his
report.

"What's going on out there?"  she asked him.

"I guess they think we've got a killer in here," Woody said.  "And now
you're going to take him home with you, after what happened to Jenny
Altero?"

Twice Robin had gone over to see Michelle, and both times Michelle had
refused to see her.

"Don't ever come here again," Lydia had finally told her.

When George phoned he'd informed Robin that Stephen had been brought in
for questioning, now she understood why.  She understood why Lydia had
slammed the door while Robin was still standing out on the porch, just
about to ask if she could bring dinner over for them in a wicker basket.

"Do you have some proof?"  she asked Woody now.  "Or are you just going
on your own stupidity?"

She waited on the bench in the hallway until George brought Stephen out.

"I'll take you home," Robin said.

Stephen nodded but he didn't look at her, not even when she took George
aside.

"You know it wasn't Stephen," Robin said.

"Are you sure?"  George said.

"Yes, I'm sure," Robin said.  "Was this Roy's idea?  Is that it?"

"Look, we know all about him.  I had a long talk with the director at
Kelvin, so we know his history.  He lived like an animal, Robin.  Face
it."

Robin tilted her chin up, her lips were tight and dry.  "Am I supposed
to give you bail or something?"

"He was just here for questioning," George said.  "But it's not the end
of it."

"Can I go, or am I being charged with something, too?"

"Robin," George said sadly.  "You know you can go."

Robin headed for the exit.  "We can leave," she told Stephen.  He
followed her, then put a hand on her arm to stop her.  He nodded toward
the green, where the men were ',4"' still gathered.

"Fuck them," Robin said as she pushed open the door.

No one said a word as they walked to the truck, there were no shouts or
catcalls, although one rock was thrown as Robin made the turn onto
Cemetery Road.  She drove as though there were no ice, and when the
tires skidded, nearly off the road, she didn't seem to notice.  She'd
decided it would be better to take Stephen to her house, because of that
crowd on the green, and as soon as they were in the kitchen, she
doubled-locked the back door.

"Did you have dinner?"  she asked Stephen.

Stephen came up behind her and put his arms around her.

"Hamburgers?"  she said, and then she started to cry.  "It's nothing,"
she insisted, but she let him kiss her, softly, the way he did when she
was upset, before she moved away.  "Let me have that awful coat," she
told him, and at that they were both able to smile.

Stephen took off the coat and handed it to her.

"They didn't even give you time to put on a shirt?"  Robin said.

"I didn't think of it," Stephen said.

"Those bastards," Robin said.

She went to the closet in the living room, and as she reached for a
hanger the black coat fell from her hands.  When she bent to retrieve
it, she felt something sharp in the pocket.  She reached in and found
the carpenter's knife.  Stephen was making coffee in the kitchen, his
back was toward her as she approached him.

"What is this?"  Robin said.

Stephen turned to her and blinked.  "I found it up in the attic," he
said.  "A long time ago."

"Have you used it?"  Robin asked.

Her voice sounded very sharp and strange.  Stephen knew that when people
sounded like that it was best not to speak to them directly.  He shook
his head.  No.

"Not once?"  Robin said.  "Not ever?"

She had come up close to him.  He could almost feel her.

"Tell me the truth," she said.  Her face was white and drawn, it didn't
even look like her.  "Not ever?"

She was whispering now, in a funny way, as if she might hit him or run
away.  There was no clear answer, not one he was certain would please
her.

"I kept it just in case," Stephen said.  "That's all."

Robin quickly went to the cabinet beneath the sink and took out a spade.
A box of detergent had toppled and a stream of soap powder fell onto the
floor, but Robin paid no attention.

"Robin," Stephen said, but she didn't seem to hear him.  Instead she
went outside, not bothering with a coat.  Stephen grabbed one of
Connor's old sweatshirts left on a hook by the door and pulled it on,
then followed her.  She was out behind the pear tree, down on her hands
and knees.

"They could have found this," Robin said.  She attacked the ice with her
spade until she could dig up some frozen earth.  "Well, they're not
going to find it now."

Her hair kept falling over her face, so that it was difficult for
Stephen to see her.

"There," Robin said, satisfied, when the hole was big enough.  She
placed the carpenter's knife in the hole, then began covering it up
until Stephen stopped her.  He had knelt down beside her, but she hadn't
even noticed until he touched her.  "What?"  she said.

Her voice was still sharp and she was out of breath.

"You don't have to do this," Stephen said.

"Oh, really?"  Robin said.  There was frozen dirt caked under her nails
and streaks of black earth were on her face.  "What do you imagine Roy
and his friends would think if they found this knife on you?"

"What do yo think?"  Stephen said.

Robin pulled her arm away and stood up.  She looked at him for a long
time, her breath turned to smoke in the air.

"I'm going to bed," she said.

She started toward the back door, but Stephen stayed crouching beneath
the pear tree.  The night was so clear he could almost believe those
were the same stars he'd always seen, far away from here, in a place
where it was impossible to hear a man or a woman cry.

"Are you coming?"  Robin asked.

All she wanted at that moment was to be alone, and Stephen knew it.

"Not yet," he said.

After she'd gone inside, Stephen went to the rear of the yard, away from
the branches of the pear tree, to have a better look at the sky.

He knew from a book he'd taken from Old Dick's shelf that stars died,
but he found this hard to believe.  Make a wish, that's what his mother
had said to him once.  Close your eyes.

Matthew Dixon, who was home for Christmas vacation and wouldn't have to
return for the spring semester until the end of January, had come
outside.  He was supposed to drag the garbage cans out to the curb, but
instead he'd been watching Stephen.  Now he zipped up his parka and came
to his side of the redwood fence.  Stephen heard him approach, but he
kept on looking at the stars.

"I hear they're really after you," Matthew said.  "I knew you weren't
like other people.  I could tell right away."

Don't tell your wish, Stephen's mother had said.  Or it won't come true.

"Wolves," Matthew said now.  "I think it's fantastic.  Of course they're
going to go after you.  It makes perfect sense to a small mind."

Matthew leaned his elbows on the fence, he was chewing peppermint gum
and the scent was sweet every time he breathed out.

"You're going to have to get out of here," Matthew said.  "I mean, you
can't sit around and think they're going to treat you fairly, because
they won't."

Stephen thought this over.

"You see my point," Matthew said.  "You've got to outwit them.

You've got to go back."

"I don't know where it is," Stephen said.

"I could find out for you," Matthew told him.

"No," Stephen said.  "I've looked in the atlas.  The maps don't mean
anything.  I knew my way because of the way things were."

"Rocks?  Mountains?  Landmarks like that?"  Matthew was grinning.

"Topography.  I can get that."

Stephen looked over at him.

"I'm serious."  This was just the sort of thing Matthew found exciting.

"You give me the information, and I'll tap into the USGS and do the
graphics.  It's simple."

From where he stood, Stephen could see Robin's bedroom window.

"So should I?"  Matthew said.

"Why would you?"  Stephen said.

"Because I know how it feels," Matthew Dixon told him, "when they all
hate you."

, The night was filled with so many stars it would have seemed
impossible for the streets to be dark, but the road to Poorman's Point
was filled with shadows.  That was where Roy had headed after he was
done drinking at Harper's.  He'd gone directly to the old estate, every
tree that had been planted here had been chosen by his father, yet Roy
couldn't have given the correct name for more than half a dozen
varieties.  He regretted that now, it would have been so easy, if only
he'd paid some attention.

He parked on the grass in front of the entrance to the driveway.

Through the trees he could see the dark carriage house, the windows had
all been left open, even though no one was home.  He turned off the car
headlights and settled back in his seat, he was wishing he'd thought to
stop at the 7-Eleven for a six-pack of beer, when he saw the men from
the green making their way along the black, looping road.

There were more than a dozen of them, and although it was difficult to
distinguish one man from another in their down jackets and parkas, Roy
recognized Jeff Carson and Fred Lester from the diner and several
others.  Either they didn't see his parked car or they were so outraged
and bold they just didn't care.  Roy grabbed the steering wheel and sat
up straight.  They were much too silent for such a large group, and when
they turned into the driveway the gravel made absolutely no noise
beneath the weight of their boots.

Roy realized that he was sweating, his shirt was drenched and his hands
were too wet to keep hold of the steering wheel.  He sat there and
didn't even think to try to stop them as they threw bucket after bucket
of red paint on the carriage house, on the stucco walls and the mailbox
and the arbor where the wisteria had always grown.  One of the men,
perhaps it was Jeff Carson, dipped his hands into the paint and drew a
five-pointed star on the door, as if a sign like that could ever ward
offtrue evil.  By the time the men had finished, Roy had stopped
sweating, and his skin had turned clammy.  He had a siren under his
front seat, and he could have radioed in to the station, but instead he
just watched, exactly as he had the previous night when Jenny Altero was
murdered, when he'd followed Stephen all the way back here from Robin's
and parked in this same place, watching through the open window as the
Wolf Man read a book with a leather binding, and not turning for home
until at last those few birds that could tolerate winter on this island
began to sing.

IT MAY BE true that marjoram sprinkled onto the earth helps the dead
sleep in peace, but it does nothing at all for the living.  The living
can pick wild garlic and place pots of clover on their windowsills and
still not be able to rest.  They can cut down a larch and huddle around
it on a cold winter night as it burns and smokes for hours, down at the
Point, where the fire ignites the black sky, yet continue to be afraid
of the dark.

For the next three days, as soon as the sun went down, the main street
of town became deserted, all at once, as though a curfew had been set.

There were no customers at Fred's Diner, and Harper's began closing at
six because even the regulars had taken to staying home and drinking gin
or beer in front of their own TVs.  Boys stopped playing hockey long
before dusk, even when their mothers hadn't yet called them home.

Dogs went unwalked, and scratched at front doors.  Every single cat had
a bell around its neck, and even the toms had to wait until morning
before going out on the prowl.

The only ones who ventured out after dark were the men who had formed
the patrol, and they always went out in groups no smaller than five or
six, unless one of them had a gun.  Sometimes people were already in bed
when they heard the patrol round their corners.  The sound of those men,
whose only mission was to protect their neighbors, should have been
comforting, but it wasn't.  Flashlights made shaky white circles on the
lawns and the front porches, garbage cans were rattled and turned upside
down as the men searched for anything suspicious, though at this time of
year, on nights such as these, almost everything was suspect.

Whenever Stuart heard the patrol inspecting Kay's street, he went down
to the kitchen for tea and Alka-Seltzer, and then he could never get
back to sleep.  As soon as the board of Kelvin Medical Center was
informed by the police that their patient had never been transferred,
Stuart was asked to resign.  There was no proof to tie Robin to
Stephen's escape, and no evidence that Stuart had been an accomplice,
but the board had already tried Stuart and found him guilty of gross
negligence.  He dutifully composed his letter of resignation and mailed
it to the medical center, in return no criminal charges would be filed
against him.  A request had already been placed to return Stephen to
Kelvin, where he would be reevaluated and most probably sent upstate to
the locked ward that had been his original destination.  The hospital
would wait until the criminal investigation on the island was completed,
and this time they would send not only three attendants but two armed
guards as well, just to make certain there wouldn't be any trouble.

Stuart had never suffered from insomnia before, and now he understood
why his patients who did often felt persecuted, as though sleep had
somehow singled them out and denied them their rightful rest.  Kay
begged him not to go back to the shack, at least not for a while, and
he'd thought she was overreacting, until he went to his usual AA meeting
and discovered that no one would sit on the same side of the room with
him.  No one would wait on him in the hardware store or the bait shop.
Sofia Peters, down at the library, indexed an entire tray of the card
catalogue before finally checking out his books, and then she wouldn't
look at him, not even a glance.

Robin was having an even worse time of it.  Some people actually spat on
the floor when she walked into the market.  She'd left without buying
anything, and when she phoned and asked Max Schaeffer, who'd known her
since she was ten, if she could have her groceries delivered, he told
her that the delivery boy would refuse to come to her house and that he
himself wouldn't walk up her front steps for all the money in the world.
The Doctor had come over and sadly informed her that five of her clients
had phoned to hire him, and spring was still almost three months away.
He'd turned them down, of course, but that didn't mean they would be
coming back to Robin.

"This is all Roy's fault," the Doctor said as he drank the tea Robin
served him, made from the peppermint that grew in her yard, since she'd
used up her last tea bag and had intended to buy more at the market.

"If he hadn't screwed up, you wouldn't have divorced him, and this wolf
fellow would never have come here."

After the Doctor left, Robin found five hundred dollars under his
teacup.  She knew he could ill afford the loan, and she would have run
after him and forced him to take it back if she hadn't been so totally
broke.  She and Stephen had taken to eating Minute Rice flavored with
coriander, and winter potatoes from the vegetable bin.  At night, when
they slept in Robin's bed, they didn't touch each other.  In the
morning, when the wind howled down the chimney, they sat drinking the
last of the coffee at the kitchen table, but they didn't dare talk.

Suspicion grows that way, between the sheets, in the teacups, with every
word that isn't spoken.  One day, while Robin was at the sink washing
out soup bowls, Stephen came up behind her, and she jumped.

She tried to blame it on too much caffeine and the awful sound of the
wind, but Stephen knew that wasn't what had frightened her.

He moved out that afternoon.  When he put on his black coat Robin didn't
try to stop him.  He ran all the way to Poorman's Point.  It was almost
dusk and the patrol always began its rounds as darkness fell.

The sky was as gray as stone when Stephen reached the carriage house,
the oaks and the Russian olives no longer cast shadows across the lawn.

He saw the pools of red paint in the driveway and the ruined stucco
walls, but he walked right past them.  Stephen refused to be stopped by
the mark on the front door.  He went inside and locked the door behind
him before he went upstairs.  He left the lights off and closed all the
windows, then sat down in the overstuffed chair beside the bookcases to
wait.  They weren't about to let him go, not when they had every
advantage.  That's what men called a fair fight, when they were a dozen
strong, not one of them would have approached on his own, except forJeff
Carson and a few of the others who had guns, and even they might have
turned and run when the branches of the oaks shifted in the wind.

They didn't come up the driveway until a little before eight, and they
stayed for more than an hour, huddled around a fire they made in one of
Old Dick's garbage cans, after they'd chopped down the wisteria for
kindling.  The wood gave off a sour scent as it burned, and yellow
sparks shot out, so that several of the men's down coats were singed.

The carriage house looked abandoned, and after a while the men guessed
that Stephen hadn't come back, that he wouldn't have dared to, and they
left to patrol the town green, throwing a few rocks at the windows just
for good measure.

Stephen didn't bother with the broken glass.  He didn't sweep it away,
although there were shards of it on the table and all across the
orange-and-black Persian rug Old Dick had had carried across the bridge
by two strong men whose knees buckled under its weight.  He didn't get
up and light the stove to boil water for coffee or tea, or fix himself
supper, although there were still cans of vegetables and soup in the
pantry.  He didn't have to make a choice anymore, the choice had already
been made for him.  Robin had watched him put on his coat, and when he'd
left she'd locked the back door.  At that instant, when he heard the
turn of the lock, he knew he had lost her.  It was as simple and quick
as that.  One way open, the other closed.

All that night Stephen listened to the wind through the broken windows.

It was a sound he recognized, and it made him feel homesick in some
deep, awful way.  In the morning he changed his clothes, he showered and
shaved and took some scissors to his long hair.  He might as well look
like other men, at least until he was gone.  He ate half a package of
crackers, the kind Old Dick preferred, even though they tasted like
sand.  It wouldn't do him the least bit of good to get sick or weak now,
not when he had so far to go, not when the snow along the ridgetops
would already be deep and thick, slowing him down, it was true, but also
covering his tracks.

"You let him go back to the carriage house?"  Stuart said when he came
to see Robin.  He'd brought along a basket of corn muffins Kay had baked
and two bags of groceries they'd shopped for off the island, at a Grand
Union on the North Shore.  "With the way feelings are running around
here?  You don't think that's dangerous?"

Robin had been up since dawn, but she hadn't bothered to dress and was
still wearing the T-shirt and sweatpants she'd slept in.

"He's not my puppet," Robin told her brother.  "I don't tell him what to
do.  Was I supposed to throw myself across the door and force him to
stay?"

"He shouldn't have left," Stuart insisted.  "There's something wrong
with these people.  They want a monster.  They won't be satisfied until
they have one."  He grabbed a corn muffin and ripped it in two.  "Kay
could sell these.  They're better than the ones at the bakery."

Stuart reached for a pot of jam and happened to see Robin's unguarded
face.  She was so pale it almost seemed possible that the monster he'd
spoken of had just appeared at the back door.

"Robin," Stuart said.

"I'll make coffee."  Robin went to the stove for the kettle, but Stuart
followed her.

"You think he might have done it," Stuart said.

"You've always liked to tell me what I think," Robin said.  She filled
the kettle and pleated a paper towel into quarters.  It was cheaper than
using coffee filters but for some reason folding it made her feel like
weeping.

"Stephen doesn't fit the profile."

"There you go," Robin said.  "You do know everything."

"He is not obsessive-compulsive, he has absolutely no violent history,
no sexual perversions--unless you want to correct me on that--no
abnormal aggression."

"And no alibi," Robin said.

"They're wrong about Stephen," Stuart said.  "He didn't kill that girl."

"You're so sure of yourself," Robin said.  "Aren't you the person who
lives in a shack and has a nervous breakdown at the drop of a hat?"

Stuart put his corn muffin into the sink, uneaten.  "I don't deserve
that."

"No," Robin said.  "You don't."

"I was fired," Stuart told her.  "Asked to resign."

"That's it," Robin said.  "I've ruined everything."  She turned, so that
Stuart wouldn't see her cry.

"Stop it," Stuart said.  "I wasn't certain I was ever going back.

To tell you the truth, I'm not quite certain of any I thing.

Stuart put his arms around Robin, then politely busied himself with
pouring hot water over the ground coffee, while Robin wiped at her eyes
and blew her nose.  People t really could be one way outside, when
inside they were torn to shreds, a fine white powder of grief and regret
replacing blood and bones, and no one even noticed.  Robin and Stuart
had their coffee, lightened with evaporated milk, but they were careful
to speak only of the weather, which the meteorologists swore would be
warming in less than twenty-four hours.  They'd done this when their
father died and they'd sat on the living room couch in their Miami
apartment, knees touching, as they waited to hear their fate.

They'd done it on the plane years later, returning to Florida , , for
their mother's funeral.  They'd become experts when it came to cold
fronts and cumulus clouds, novices still when it came to speaking about
real pain.  Stuart had once had a patient, a teenaged girl who refused
to eat anything but small portions of mashed potatoes.  When he'd
realized she thought of them as clouds, and that she was obsessively
listening to the radio for weather reports, he felt such tender
affection for her that he'd asked to be taken off her case.  He didn't
have the heart to make her face her pain, he'd spent most of his last
session with her discussing the lack of rainfall in the Southwest.  As
it was, when Stuart was leaving Robin's he suggested that she wear a
scarf if she went outside, since the wind-chill factor was high, and
that advice alone nearly made Robin burst into tears.  She knew what
he'd meant by it, and she kissed his cheek before he left.

"Maybe you're the one who shouldn't be alone," Stuart said, considering
her through the storm door.

"Stop worrying about me," Robin told him.  "Thank Kay for the muffins."

After Stuart had driven away, Robin stored the groceries he'd brought
her, then wrapped Kay's corn muffins in foil.  She made buttered toast
and sat down at the table, but she couldn't bring herself to eat
breakfast.  She carried her dishes to the sink and told herself she'd be
absolutely fine, but that wasn't the truth, and she knew it.  It wasn't
just that she missed Stephen terribly or that she felt she'd betrayed
him, for reasons she still didn't understand.  She was sick to her
stomach, as she had been every morning for the past three weeks.

Only, this time when she went to the bathroom to vomit, she stayed there
on her knees for a long while, just as she had when she knew she was
pregnant with Connor, and she didn't get back on her feet until she was
certain she'd be able to stand.

, P They met just before dawn, when the birds were still asleep and the
men in the patrol had all gone home to soak their frozen toes in tubs of
hot water and crawl into their beds.  Stephen got to the cemetery first.
He stayed crouched down low until he heard footsteps, then he quickly
rose to his feet.  Matthew Dixon was having a hard time climbing up the
hill.  When he reached the top of the incline his face was blotchy and
he'd just about run out of steam.

"I wasn't sure you'd really show up," Matthew said.  "When I was a kid I
wouldn't even walk through the gates, let alone do it in the dark.

It still kind of gives me the creeps."  They were standing in front of
Old Dick's grave.  The sweeping view of the island, from the beaches to
the bridge, was nothing now but a black blanket, except for the cluster
of lampposts set around the town green.

"Did you find out anything for me?"  Stephen asked.

All fall semester Matthew had made certain that he had no classes before
ten, he wasn't used to being awake this early in the day, and his eyes
looked swollen.  Still, he grinned as he pulled a disk from the inside
pocket of his parka.  Stephen looked away when he saw that Matthew had
printed WOLFMAN across the disk.

"It's all here," Matthew said.  "You know, I really envy you. " "Don't,"
Stephen told him.

"No, really, I'm serious."  When Matthew spoke, great puffs of smoke
rose into the air.  He moved his weight from foot to foot and turned up
his collar.  "I'll bet the cold doesn't even bother you.  I'll bet
nothing bothers you."  Matthew sat down on a wrought-iron bench that Old
Dick had ordered from England during his first year on the island.

Black swans were coiled along the back of the bench.  "Do you mind if I
ask you something personal?"  Matthew had lowered his voice.  "I'm just
interested in knowing what your most frequent prey was."

Stephen looked at him, confused.

"What you killed most often to eat," Matthew said.

"Beetles," Stephen said.

"No way."  Matthew grinned.  "Not little squiggly bugs."

"You found out exactly where I came from?"  Stephen asked, impatient.

From this vantage point on the hill he could see that the lights around
the green were growing dim, by sunrise they'd have turned off
automatically.

"I pretty much have it pinpointed.  I rolled the graphics in three-D
from every single angle till I got it right.  Information is a dangerous
thing in the wrong hands, which is why I'll keep this file."

Matthew put the disk back in his pocket and unrolled the printout of the
map.  For an instant he hesitated, perhaps only to see the craving on
Stephen's face, then he handed it over.  Stephen folded the map, placed
it in the pocket of his black overcoat, and shook Matthew's hand.

"I really owe you," Stephen said.  "I know that."

"Let's have the truth," Matthew said.  "It wasn't just beetles. " "No,"
Stephen said.

"I saw you that night with the deer.  I know you wanted to kill it."

Matthew pushed his hair out of his eyes, then shook his head.  "You
really held yourself back.  I wish you hadn't. "

,'

. t h : , '.") .

The birds in the quince bushes around Old Dick's grave began to wake
with their first tentative songs.  To the right and the left grew hedges
of boxwood, and in the spring there would be daffodils and sweet ivy.

"When you first get them and they're too surprised to fight back?

That's the best part.  You understand that," Matthew said.  "I can
tell."

Stephen didn't move, but inside his coat, inside his skin, he felt as if
something were crawling along his spine.  This was the moment when he
began to pay attention to everything: the movement of the wind in the
branches, the last star disappearing above them, the way Matthew chewed
on his bottom lip when he grew excited.  It was easy to tell what men
wanted to hear, even Matthew, who was breathing too hard, the way he had
when he first climbed the hill.

"I understand," Stephen said.

Matthew threw his arms up to the sky and made a noise deep inside
himself.  "To talk to someone who knows how I feel is incredible.

It's like a relief or something.  You know?"

Stephen nodded, just the way Matthew wanted him to.  Today would be
warmer, Stephen could feel it already, and when the ice began to melt,
the air would turn foggy and white.  There was often a thaw at this time
of year, and the turn in the weather could surprise some people and
catch them off guard.

"You were taught," Matthew Dixon said.  "I had to learn it all by
myself, step by step.  And I did everything right, until the mistake at
the end, when it was the wrong girl."

The wind shifted slightly.  Stephen kept his hands in his pockets, he
didn't take his eyes off Matthew.

"Things happen that you can't control when you go hunting," Stephen
said.

"I can control it," Matthew said.  "I know I can.  Lydia just messed
things up.  That won't happen next time."

Next time, Matthew confided, he wouldn't leave anything to chance.

He'd go get Lydia.  No one would suspect someone with the courage to
knock at her door.  He'd ask for her help with a dog who had been hit by
a car, and since she liked to pretend she was generous, she wouldn't
deny him.  He would guide her to the cemetery.

"The perfect place," he confided to Stephen.

When they arrived, and there was no dog to be seen, he would tell her it
must have crawled into the bushes.  It was injured, too desperate to
fend for itself.  And she'd call to the poor thing, and she'd whistle
for it, and that was when Matthew would get her.

He came a little closer to Stephen now.  "You choose who you're going to
kill carefully, don't you?  You plan it all out."

Stephen didn't blink.  "Whatever runs," he said.  Stephen's voice was
thick, but Matthew didn't seem to notice.

"Whatever asks to be chased."  Matthew had whispered, as if afraid that
the birds might overhear.  "Just the way she's asking for it.

" There was a thin line of light at the bottom of the sky.  The
footprints Matthew had left as he climbed up to Old Dick's grave were
already disappearing as the ice melted.  Matthew was talking softly
about Lydia, how she thought she was too good for everyone, how she
stared right through people and thought no one could ever tell her what
to do, but Stephen was thinking about another set of footprints he'd
once overlooked, tracks through the woods that were set much too close
together.  That's what rabies could do, make it more and more difficult
for a wolf to walk straight, because its rear legs would wobble.  But it
had been spring, and the tracks had been left in the damp earth, then
covered with the moss that grew overnight, and Stephen hadn't spotted
them until it was too late.  It hadn't been a hard winter, and the
spring had been even easier.  Stephen hadn't been hungry for a while,
and he may have grown lazy, but whatever it was, he'd been careless
enough not to pick up the scent of the lone wolf who had come into their
territory.  Or maybe the wolf had been extraordinarily silent, as if his
sickness had given him the power of deceit with one hand as it stole
away his life and health with the other.

Stephen was at the stream when he felt another presence.  He raised his
eyes, slowly, the way he'd been taught, and there was the wolf, right in
front of him, a male who was all gray, except for his black muzzle, and
who was already looking at something that wasn't there.  Lone wolves had
come into their territory before, some they'd chased away easily, some
they'd had to fight, one female had remained with them until she died of
old age.

Stephen stayed where he was, waiting for a sign of what was to happen
next.  The lone wolf's ears were already flattened close to his head and
his tail was raised.  He licked at his lips, though he couldn't have
been thirsty, the stream was right in front of him, and all he needed to
do to drink was lower his head.  The sickness was the only thing that
drove him, a wolf tied up in such agonizing knots was capable of
anything.  It was as if he had swallowed a bolt of lightning whole and
was now electrified from mouth to tail.

The wolf began his charge slowly, through the ferns that grew alongside
the stream.  Stephen felt his own fear rising up through his skin, but
he'd forced himself not to run, to keep his fear in check to make
certain that the lone wolf wouldn't smell it.  The sick wolf's mouth was
open, so wide it seemed the jaws had been forced apart by wire, his
breath was hot and foul.  Beneath his unsteady feet, the ferns broke in
two.  When he made his attack, Stephen was ready, but the lone wolf was
propelled by the lightning inside him.  Stephen knew that if he rammed
his fist into the wolf's throat, it would be nearly impossible for him
to bite down with full pressure.  But the lone wolf clawed at him so
savagely he cut right through to the bone, Stephen's thigh was split
open.  Right then, he began to see the white light in front of his eyes.

Stephen called to his brothers with a voice he'd never used before.

His fist was being crushed inside the lone wolf's jaws, and the white
light was growing stronger, urging him to follow it.  He didn't hear his
brothers approach, all he heard was their teeth and the sound deep in
their throats, and he didn't open his eyes until they had managed to
drive the lone wolf off.  That night, after Stephen had thrown himself
in the cold water of the stream and washed off his own blood before it
congealed, he wrapped a doe's skin around his thigh, so that pieces of
himself wouldn't fall off.  He would feel the pain from this for a long
time, and it would serve to remind him of his own carelessness.

His brothers licked at their own bloody legs, they circled around him,
and together they listened to the sick wolf's call.  He was just on the
other side of the ridge, their territory still, and that wasn't nearly
far enough.

Stephen looked at his favorite brother as he listened to the lone wolf's
call.  The silver wolf's throat trembled, he may have wanted to answer,
but he did not.  That was when Stephen knew what his brothers would do,
and that it couldn't wait another night.  A rabid wolf cannot remain in
the same territory, not ever.  They would never know when he would
return, they'd be listening for him always, frightened by a breaking
branch, an owl's call, more and more edgy, perhaps even turning on each
other.  One day he'd come back, he'd be driven to it.

Together or alone, near the spring on a morning when the air was foggy
or deep in the woods where it was always night, he'd find them.

Stephen's leg was throbbing and he was feverish and hot, but he went
with his brothers to the other side of the ridgetop, following behind,
leaving a trail of blood.  They were as silent as the stars above, the
ones the lone wolf howled at as he stood high on the ridge, condemned to
his aloneness.

They moved in on him so quickly that he never had the chance to bite.

And as he was dying, the wolf looked at them, with the eyes he had seen
through before he was rabid, before he was cast out again and again, as
though grateful for his release.  Then Stephen saw the lone wolf for who
he was.  He knelt beside the body and grieved for him, not the agonized
thing they had killed that night, but that other wolf, the one who'd
been lost long ago.

Men think about right and wrong, they have to debate it, discuss it,
draw upon possibilities and statistics, laws and codes.

Wolves have to know.  They have to know in an instant, pure instinct,
not thought, because they can never be wrong.  If they're wrong, the ice
they walk upon cracks, and they drown, their lungs filled with cold
water and crystals.  If they're wrong, their brothers and sisters starve
and their pups are shot as they run.  If they're wrong, the rabid wolf
comes back, and he always comes back, only this time they're sleeping,
and they can't even put up a fight as he splits them apart.

Stephen should not have even been on the hill where Old Dick was buried,
because the sky was now pearl-gray, opening into light all along the
shore.  In only a few hours, the trucks would be out, sanding Cemetery
Road, and the men who took the train to work would kiss their children
and wives good-bye and walk across the bridge to the station.

Stephen had been among them too long, he was slowed down by pity,
something no wolf can afford.  But he hadn't been among them long enough
that it lasted.

"I wish I'd known about you from the beginning," Matthew was saying.

They had begun to walk down the hill, and Stephen paced himself, he
couldn't go too fast with Matthew beside him.  "We could have been in it
together," Matthew said.

"I stay alone," Stephen said.  "It's better that way."

While Matthew thought this over, he slipped on the ice.  Stephen reached
out to steady him.  Matthew was heavy, and Stephen had to hold tight so
he wouldn't fall.

"Thanks," Matthew said.  "This damn ice."

They were near the boxwood hedge, where rabbits liked to hide in spring.

"I'll get her next time," Matthew said.  "You know I will, don't you?"

Matthew was about to head for the gate when he felt Stephen grab him
again.  Thinking there was a patch of ice ahead, Matthew grinned,
grateful for the help.  It never occurred to him to defend himself.  In
the end he was quite certain that the birds that had been chirping,
signaling the close of night, had quieted all at once, when in fact they
continued to sing long after Stephen had reached Mansfield Terrace, long
after he'd climbed over Robin's fence and used the hose to wash the
blood from his hands.

All that night Robin had been dreaming about him, and when he appeared
in her yard at the first light of day it seemed like a miracle.  She
brought him inside and kissed him for as long as she could.  She'd made
a mistake: she told him that immediately.  She'd been wrong.  That she'd
ever thought to doubt him now felt like a crime, every kiss begged his
forgiveness.  She wanted him so badly it hurt, but he moved away from
her and asked for a glass of water.

He was out of breath, Robin could see that.  He'd run all the way, just
to see her.  How selfish she was, how crazy for him.  She got them both
glasses of cool tap water, and Stephen gratefully took the water and
drank it in one long gulp.  He wiped his mouth with the back of his
hand.  He looked at her carefully, memorizing the angles of her face and
the arch of her neck.

Robin laughed.  "Don't look at me that way," she said.  He was making
her nervous.  He'd looked at her a thousand times before, and yet she
had the urge to hide her face in her hands.

"Stephen," she said.  "Don't."

At last he turned and went to the window.  He could see the rosebushes
that were always the first to bloom on the island, he could see the
redwood fence that circled the yard.

Robin came to stand behind him.  Somehow, what they' d had was already
over, and she hadn't even been aware of the end.  This happened with
roses: it was possible to take them for granted all summer as they wound
along fences and gates, and then in September, when they faded, how
beautiful they'd once been suddenly took hold.  That was when people
began to yearn for them, and all winter long they'd watch the bare
branches for buds, vowing that this time they'd be grateful for all that
they had.

"I did something," Stephen said.

"Whatever happened, it doesn't matter."  Robin knew she sounded frantic.
"You don't have to tell me anything."

As soon as he started to explain, Robin put her hands over her ears.

But that didn't stop him from telling her that Matthew Dixon hadn't made
a sound, he'd made certain of that by crushing his windpipe quickly.

"Stop it," Robin begged him.

It was an act of mercy.  He couldn't have walked away before that moment
when Matthew fell into the hedge of boxwood, where his parka caught on
the branches and the low sticker brambles that grew wild all over the
island.

"I had to do it," Stephen told Robin.

"You had to!  You couldn't tell the police?  Or me?  Or Roy?  Don't you
understand?  You don't just kill someone because you think he's guilty."

"He was guilty," Stephen said.

"Because you think it!"  Robin said.  She had begun to cry, and that
just made her feel more helpless.  "And even if he was, that is not the
way we do it!  You can't just kill someone.  You can't just decide
that."

This was not what Stephen had come here for.  He reached for Robin, but
she wrenched her arm away.

"Who are you that you could do this?  Who are you?"  she cried.

Stephen didn't flinch, even though Robin raised her hand as if to strike
him.  But she didn't hit him.  She knew exactly who he was.

She had from the very start.

"All right," Robin said.  "This is what we'll do."  She wiped her eyes
and tried to concentrate on every word, not on what she felt inside.

"We'll explain that you didn't understand.  You didn't know the way
things work, no one ever told you.  We'll tell them that."

Stephen knew that he would change things.  Later, when he remembered,
her eyes would not be filled with tears, her face would not be so pale.

Robin had already gone to the phone and had begun to dial Roy's number.

Stephen took the phone away from her just the way she knew he would.

She didn't have to turn to him to know he was looking at her as though
he'd never see her again.  He had never once said he could believe what
men believed in, he'd never pretended that.  She'd known him all along,
she'd been locking the doors in order to keep him, praying that he could
get used to the easy chair, the dinner hour, the pillows on her bed.

"You'll leave," Robin said.  He had both arms around her now.

"That's what you'll do, isn't it?"  He rested his cheek against the base
of her neck.

Robin locked the doors one last time and took him to her bedroom.

She led him up the stairs and along the hallway.  She would never love
anyone again, not like this, not ever again.  She wanted him in her bed.
She wanted to always remember this one morning, when the shades were
drawn against the morning light and he told her that there would never
be anyone else.  She didn't have to cry when she felt this way, that's
what she had discovered.  She just had to hold on tight, because before
she knew it, it would be over and she'd have to watch him reach for his
clothes that had been dropped on the floor.  She'd have to make up the
bed so that it might look as though he'd never been there at all.

All that day the thaw continued, and by midafternoon most of the ice had
melted, bringing the level of the water beneath the old bridge
dangerously high.  Streets flooded, forsythia was nearly tricked into
budding, children who'd been forced to stay inside for weeks pulled on
their rubber boots and splashed through the mud.  By afternoon, it was
nearly sixty degrees, a record high, yet when they went out to the
truck, Stephen continued to wear his old black coat.  Robin had given
him the five hundred dollars Roy's father had left on her table, she
would drive him out of New York, to a bus station in New Jersey, and be
home by midnight.

She had her hair tied back and she wore her boots and her old work
jacket, stained with mud.  Stephen didn't offer to show her the map
Matthew had given him, and she didn't ask to see it.  She might have
torn it in half, she might have been tempted to follow him.  She had to
think of everyday things: how much gas they would need for the trip,
whether the truck might stall out, as it often did on damp days such as
this.  The truck was idling roughly, and Robin had to concentrate so
that she wouldn't flood the motor.

She didn't even realize they were being followed until the bridge was
right in front of them.  Stephen reached out and put a hand on her arm,
then nodded to the rearview mirror.  Roy's car was behind them.

"Damn him," Robin said.

She pulled over, and the wheels on the right side of the pickup sank
into the mud.

"I'll talk to him," she told Stephen.  "You'd better stay here. " Robin
got out and slammed her door shut.  If pushed, she just might explode,
but then Roy was used to that, he wouldn't find it the least bit
unusual.

"You're fucking doing it again," Robin said to Roy.  He'd parked behind
her and was now rolling down his window.  "You have no right to follow
me."

She leaned down, the better to curse him, and that was when she saw that
it was Connor who was behind the wheel.

"I didn't know it was you," Robin said, flustered.  "What are you doing
with your dad's car?"

"I got my license last week," Connor said.

As Connor got out of the car and leaned up against it, Robin could have
sworn he'd gotten taller and thinner since she'd seen him last.  He was
wearing his leather jacket and jeans, and he'd had his hair cut shorter
than usual, so his neck was exposed.

"Your dad doesn't mind you driving with all the flooding that's going
on?"

"Mom," Connor said.

"All right."  Robin backed off.  "Fine."

When Connor was a baby, Robin would count his fingers and toes, and each
time she did she was counting her good fortune.  He was all in one
piece, he was hers.  She'd never liked babies much, never begged for a
closer look or asked to hold them in her arms, until she had Connor.

Even Michelle had laughed at her because his whole first year she didn't
want to put him down for an instant.  He'll never learn to walk, Roy
teased her.  You'll still be carrying him when he's a grown man with
afamily of his own.

"Is that Stephen in there?"  Connor nodded to Robin's truck.  "I've been
wanting to talk to him."

"He can't talk now.  We're going to the mall," Robin said, just a little
too quickly.  Connor looked at her.  "He needs some clothes.

Sweatshirts, things like that."

"I should have told him right away," Connor said.  He looked much more
angular, Robin saw that now, as if he'd grown up overnight.

"I know he didn't do anything to Jenny."

"No," Robin agreed.  She kept pushing her hair away from her face, the
way she always did when she was upset.

"You're not taking him to the mall," Connor said.

Stephen opened the door of the pickup, then stood beside it, there on
the side of the road, where the mud was so thick a man could easily get
stuck in it.  He waved to Connor and Connor waved back.

"You're not taking him shopping," Connor said to his mother.

"No," Robin said.

Connor smiled and ran a hand through his hair."  Yeah, " he said.

"That's what I thought."  From where he stood Connor could see the
bridge and the willow trees that had grown there for a hundred years,
longer than anyone could remember.

"You'd better go," he said.  "You don't want the mall to close before
you get there."

Connor got into his father's car and watched his mother walk back to the
pickup.  Stephen was still by the side of the road, and even after Robin
started the truck, and exhaust filtered into the air, he didn't move.
Connor grinned and flicked his headlights on and off.

"Go on, you jerk," Connor called.

Stephen got into the truck then, and as soon as he did Robin headed for
the bridge.  Connor leaned his head back and closed his eyes.  He
listened to the beat of the truck's tires until it was replaced by the
low rustling echo of the willows, which could sound exactly like crying
to anyone who didn't understand that their branches formed a wind tunnel
through which even the slightest breeze could spin itself into a moan.
Connor headed toward his father's place, since he'd promised to get the
car there before dark.  He drove slowly, because the roads were indeed
flooded, and when he reached the end of Cemetery Road he thought maybe
the sewers had backed up.  Several police cars were parked at the gates
and traffic was a mess.  When he saw that it was George Tenney who was
directing the detour, Connor parked up on the grass and went over to
talk to him.  By now, Connor knew, his mother had already pulled onto
the Long Island Expressway, still, it couldn't hurt to tie up George
Tenney with conversation.

"I'm legal," Connor said when George looked shocked to see him.

"I got my license last week."

"Then go on and drive yourself home," George said.

Connor saw that there were several officers beneath the hill where Old
Dick's grave was, his own father among them.  Roy was over near the
boxwood, and Connor had a strange feeling inside his throat, as if Roy
had been hurt.

"I'm just going to see my dad," Connor said.

George Tenney blocked his way.

"Hey, George," Connor said.  "Come on."

"There's a corpse up there, and you're not going to take a look," George
said.

"Who is it?"  Connor asked.  "I'm going to find out sooner or later," he
added when George hesitated.

"Matthew Dixon," George said.  "It looks like he fell down and broke his
neck.  Happy now?"

"Not exactly," Connor said.  "I think I'll just wait for my dad."

Several people had gathered around the gates, and when Connor went over
he heard that Patty Dixon had called the police when she realized
Matthew wasn't home early that morning.  He'd never gotten out of bed
before ten, let alone dressed, fixed himselfbreakfast, and just
disappeared.  What was more, she had found one of Matthew's old shirts
covered with blood in the garage, stuffed under some old newspapers.

Connor broke away from the group at the gates and went along the fence
until George couldn't see him, then he climbed over and made his way up
the back of the hill.  From here he could look down and see his father,
along with Woody Preston and several other men who were waiting for a
forensics team from the state police to arrive.

Julie Wynn, from drug education, had brought them coffee in a thermos
and some paper cups.  Roy drank his coffee.  Then he must have made a
joke, because everyone laughed, and they were still laughing as Roy
walked back to the hedges.  He had a green tarp over his arm, which he
was supposed to place over the body, but before he did he knelt down,
placing his coffee cup on the ground.

Connor watched as his father quickly went through the pockets of
Matthew's parka.  He took out some candy wrappers, and then a photograph
that seemed to jar him, because he slowed down and stared at it, before
reaching into Matthew's other pocket.  He pulled out a computer disk.
Connor moved closer to the edge of the hill, brushing against some
quinces.  Roy looked up, but he saw nothing, and he replaced the candy
wrappers and the photograph of Lydia that the forensics team would find
in the next half-hour.  The computer disk he put in his own pocket.

Watching his father kneeling there, Connor had a peculiar feeling, and
he almost called out, but he didn't.  And later, when the sky was
growing dark, Roy found Connor standing at the cemetery gates.

"What are you doing here?"  Roy said.  "You're supposed to have the car
home by dark."

Connor shrugged.  "I felt like waiting for you."

"Oh, yeah?"  Roy said, pleased.

"Yeah," Connor said.  "Let's go home."

Roy thought about that moment for a long time, the way it felt to see
his son, who was now taller than he was, waiting for him by the car.

He thought about it as they had pizza together in front of the TV, and
later as he walked through the living room after Connor had fallen
asleep on the couch.  He went out at eleven and drove over to Mansfield
Terrace and sat in his parked car.  He hadn't been a particularly good
father.  Not that he'd done anything spectacularly wrong, but he felt,
all at once, that he was about to be granted a second chance.  He'd
never say it aloud, but he was sorry, not for the things he'd done, but
for all that he'd left undone.  He could have managed a hell of a lot
better, he saw that now.  He could have tried his best.  It wasn't just
Connor whom he'd failed.  Out of jealousy, he'd refused to give Stephen
his rightful alibi, and if Roy wasn't careful he'd wind up ruined by his
own spite.  It would lead him around by the nose and take over his life,
until finally he wouldn't even remember who he'd been before that night
when he sat in his parked car and did nothing at all.

Robin didn't come home until twelve-thirty.  She had cried all the way
back through New Jersey, then taken the wrong exit off the expressway,
and wound up on the old road that was once the only direct route to the
end of Long Island.  She drove for miles, past doughnut shops and gas
stations, calmed by the blue-black puddles on the asphalt and the
wavering neon signs.  At midnight, she had found a road that cut across
to the North Shore, and by the time she reached the bridge she felt
better.

Twice she'd almost told him.  Once when she'd had to stop to fill the
truck with gas and then again when they turned off the New Jersey
Turnpike.  But she knew enough not to.  A baby could turn into a trap,
its fingers holding fast, the sound of its milky cry bringing him back
to someplace he'd never intended to go.  Maybe that's what she'd planned
once, without even knowing it, since she'd been especially careful not
to get pregnant all those years after Connor.  It was possible, after
all, that this was no accident, because as it turned out, this baby was
exactly what she wanted.

She got out of the truck, carrying the black coat over her arm.

She was actually hungry, always a good sign in the first three months.

Her plan was to go inside and make herself a pot of oatmeal, flavored
with cinnamon and raisins, and perhaps some buttered toast if she still
wanted more, but Roy had met her in the driveway and he insisted on
coming in to fix them both scrambled eggs, which were far more
nutritious.

"We're not going to fight?"  Robin said as he broke four eggs into a
bowl.  "You're not going to say, I told you so?"

Roy rolled up his sleeves, then searched through the drawers for a
whisk.

"Tabasco sauce?"  he asked, considering some bottles on the spice rack.

"I think you've gone crazy," Robin decided.  "I truly believe you have."

But that wasn't it at all, it was only that he was so sure of what he
had to do.  After they'd eaten, he stayed long enough to wash the
dishes, since Robin was clearly exhausted.  Roy should have been tired
as well, but he wasn't.  He had the oddest feeling deep inside, and he
had the urge to stay up all night.  This time he wasn't about to make a
mistake, and he knew it.  When he gave Robin the disk, which she would
later put up in the attic, along with the black coat and all of
Stephen's books, he had simply set them all free.

On the morning of his twenty-sixth birthday, Connor Moore left his
apartment in Boston, kissed the woman he loved good-bye, and got onto
the Mass Pike, heading west.  He had a lump in his throat for the first
three hundred miles, and he pulled off the road for coffee so often he
began to wonder if he was stopping in order to give himself a chance to
turn back.  He drove for two days, getting off the highways each time
dusk fell, searching out inexpensive motels, still wondering if he
should reconsider and head back east.  But on the third day of his
journey, he suddenly felt lightheaded and clear.  He pulled over at a
truck stop and telephoned the woman he would marry in only a few months
just to tell her that the trees here in northern Michigan were huge
enough to put the pines in the White Mountains to shame.  The sky was so
blue it hurt just to look at it.

He'd become, of all things, a doctor, something he'd never planned or
imagined he'd be.  As it turned out, he was good at it, he inspired
confidence and actually listened when his patients spoke.  His father
liked to joke that most traits skipped a generation in families, and now
they had two doctors, one for trees, the other for people.  The tree
doctor would have liked the upper peninsula of Michigan, Connor thought
as he drove, off the highway now, over winding, rutted roads, because
there was nothing but trees here, he had to get out of his car and stare
upward through the branches when he wanted to know what the sky was
like, otherwise he would have sworn it was dusk around the clock.

His mother and sister had moved at the beginning of the month, and he'd
gone down to help with the packing.  Robin had finally gotten the
carriage house into shape.  The renovation had taken much longer than it
should have, since she did everything with such care.  There was a new
kitchen, and a shower had been installed beside the claw-footed tub, the
roof no longer leaked and the chimney had been rebuilt.  But there were
also details no one else would have troubled with: she had spent an
entire summer laying out the bluestone patio, and had interviewed
several furniture-makers before choosing the right one to restore the
dining room table.  As the work on the carriage house had progressed,
deer had ventured closer and closer, by the time the painters had
arrived, the deer had grown so brave they trotted right up to the
windows to have a look inside.  Finally, twelve rosebushes were planted
beside the arbor where the wisteria had once grown.

During the move, Connor had found Stephen's black coat in the attic.

When he brought it to the carriage house, Robin buttoned each button
carefully, smoothed out the wrinkles, then hung the coat in the hall
closet.  There had never been any question that she'd ever want anyone
else, even Stuart and Kay had stopped trying to fix her up.  But Connor
still could not understand how his mother had accepted what had
happened.  He took loss personally, he fought it so hard that in medical
school his friends had called him the ox behind his back, he just
couldn't give up the burden of his patients.  There were times when he
didn't see his own apartment for weeks on end, when he stayed at a
bedside long after a last breath had been taken.

And so, when he discovered the disk in the attic, there beneath the
black coat in the bottom of a box, he felt a wild sort of hope.  He'd
kept his find to himself, then went off to the library at noon.  After
he'd printed out the map, he rushed back to the carriage house, certain
that his mother would be overjoyed.  But when he presented Robin with
the map, she refused to take it.  She led Connor outside, into the
garden where the roses would grow, so that his sister wouldn't overhear,
and told him it would be best to throw the map away.

"Why?"  Connor had said.  "Don't you want to find him?  Isn't that what
you want?"

"What I want?"  Robin had been surprised.  "What does that have to do
with it?"

Connor had stalked away, confused, and Robin had followed him.

She'd put her arms around him and told him to do whatever he wanted with
the information he'd found, and that was what he was doing now.

When he got to Cromley he bought a backpack and some cans of food, as
well as some overpriced oranges and apples.  It was the last week of
April, warm enough to wear jeans and a sweatshirt, but as Connor drove
farther north he could see there was still snow in the mountains.

He stopped and had his lunch sitting behind the wheel.  Peeling an
orange, he felt a wave of homesickness, not for Boston but for the
island.  He usually went back four or five times a year, and he always
visited during the first week of August, for his sister's birthday.

Last summer, when she turned nine, they'd had a party at Stuart and
Kay's, since the heat was brutal and the little cottage Stuart and Kay
had bought near the beach, after selling their old house, was always
breezy and cool.  Connor had given his sister a charm bracelet, and she
loved it so much she hugged him and swore she would never take it off,
not even if she lived to be a hundred.  Roy had just arrived with the
cake, and he'd tried hard not to laugh at this vow.  He'd been a much
better father to this little girl than he'd ever been to Connor.  She
stayed with him every other weekend, and on Wednesday nights he drove
her to ballet lessons.  They'd gone to Disney World together twice and
were already planning another trip.  When she ran to him to show off her
bracelet, Roy had put the birthday cake down on the picnic table in
order to give each charm his full attention.

After that party, Connor had gone off by himself.  He'd had coffee at
Fred's Diner, then walked back through the town green and along Cemetery
Road, which now had sidewalks and streetlights and wasn't nearly as dark
as it used to be.  When he got to Mansfield Terrace, he went to stand
outside the Alteros' house, although they'd been gone for years.  They
had moved to North Carolina the summer afterJenny was killed, and
occasionally Robin got postcards from Michelle, brief cheerful notes
without any substance.  The year after they'd moved, Connor had received
a postcard as well.  Having a tewible time Wish you were here had been
scrawled on the card, but the postmark was fuzzy and he was never
certain whether or not Lydia had sent it.  Lately, he found himself
wishing that he could see her, maybe because of his impending marriage.
But the truth of it was, he and Lydia could have been in the same room
and not known each other, they'd be searching for people who no longer
existed.

If they ever shook hands they'd have to pretend they knew each other,
they'd be puzzled and then embarrassed by all they might have expected.

Now, as he traveled north, searching for the trapper his uncle had told
him about, Connor kept one eye on the twisting dirt roads and the other
on his map.  An hour after lunch he found the place, a wooden house with
a wide porch, a small barn, and a fenced-in kennel for the two dogs,
which barked like crazy when Connor drove up.  He got out of his car and
waved when the old man came out to see what the ruckus was about.  His
nephew had up and moved to Detroit, where he'd worked in a factory and
bragged about his great benefits until the place went and closed down on
him.  The old man's wife had died and he was living on his army pension.
He'd had a huge dish put up so he could get TV stations he couldn't even
believe existed: movies all night, talk shows where people said things
the old man wouldn't have even confessed to a priest.

"Hey," Connor called to him, "do you mind some company?"

The trapper waved him over and Connor walked past the barking dogs and
up onto the porch, then followed the old man inside, where there was a
pot of coffee already made.  They talked about the weather, something
Connor was completely comfortable with, considering the family he came
from, and the difference between the rutted dirt roads the trapper was
used to and the traffic in Boston, which could send any sane person
around the bend.  When it came up that Connor was a doctor, the trapper
showed him two lumps on his wrist, which were probably benign tumors,
although Connor suggested he make himself an appointment at the hospital
in Cromley to have them looked at.  At last, Connor asked about the man
they had found years back.  The old man put down his coffee cup and
rubbed at his face.

"You don't remember?"  Connor said.

The trapper smiled, and Connor made a note to himself to suggest a visit
to the dentist as well.

"I remember it every day," the trapper said.  He was now so old that ten
years gone often seemed quite a bit closer than the day before.  "I wish
we'd never caught him.  Or we should have left him there.  Maybe he
would have bled to death and maybe he wouldn't have, but I never felt
right about sending him back to people when he'd never learned to defend
himself from them."

He agreed to take Connor into the woods, but it would be slow going, and
they'd have to put it offuntil morning.  Connor spent the night on the
couch where the dogs usually slept, and at dawn his cramped muscles woke
him.  They set off early and still didn't get close until after a lunch
of crackers and cheese.  The trees were so thick and so tall Connor
actually felt dizzy, it seemed a sin to speak in a place as deep and
green as this.

"This is probably the spot where we found him," the trapper said, but in
fact he was certain of the place.  He'd come here quite often.  He
always had a gun with him, but he rarely went after anything these days,
just like those old men he used to scorn, who swore that deer could cry.

"Are there still wolves around?"  Connor asked.  Now that he was here,
he wasn't sure what he wanted the answer to be.

"Nobody sees them unless they want to be seen," the trapper said.

He pulled offhis gloves, slowly because of the lumps on his wrist, and
reached into his jacket pocket for some chewing tobacco.  "We had some
fellow here from the National Park Service who reported back to
Washington there wasn't a wolf left in Michigan, and just that morning
I'd seen tracks, so you tell me who the fools are."

If there were birds in these woods, they weren't singing now.  The
ground was still covered by a few inches of snow, although the ferns
were already unfolding.  The trapper picked some fiddleheads that he'd
cook with butter for supper.

"Do you ever see him?"  Connor asked.

The trapper looked up and considered the patch of blue sky through the
branches above them.

"Would I tell if I had?"  he said.

Connor smiled and listened carefully.  He held one hand above his eyes
and gazed north.  Up on the ridgetop nothing moved, at least not
anything he could see.  That was just as well.  In no time the sky would
be growing dark, and it was a long way back home.

the end.