Page 17

"Kieran."

"I said take your time."

I go upstairs to pack. The third step from the top tells on me the way Nell promised, loud and long. Something in my chest does a small unreasonable lurch at the sound, because this morning I slept straight through it. My thighs ache on the climb. It's a good ache, a deep one, in the muscles I don't use unless someone gives me a reason.

The bed is exactly as I left it. The quilt is shoved down to the foot and my pillow still holds a dent. The other pillow holds one too.

I stand in the doorway looking at it and have to remind myself that I'm furious.

The photograph on the dresser is standing upright.

I'd forgotten that. Last night he laid it face down, and I laughed so hard I had to put my hand over my mouth. Now Nell is back on her ladder, glaring at the camera with her sleeves pushed up. He turned her around before he left.

I think about that for a moment. About a man who was out of a woman's bed and gone by five-thirty and still took the time to set a picture right.

I pick the frame up and put it in the top of my duffel between two sweaters, because I'm not leaving her alone in this house today.

"Sorry I'm not leaving you here," I tell her. "You'd have hit someone with a ladder."

I zip the bag. I carry it down, and on the way out I take the skillet.

"Is that necessary?" Ethan asks from the porch, where he's standing among the broken glass with his hands on his hips.

"It's mine now."

"It's very heavy."

"I'm very strong."

"I've noticed." The words are out before he can stop them. He winces and then, in spite of himself, looks me up and down once, quickly. "Sorry. I'm trying."

"You're doing terribly."

"I know," he says, with great cheer, and takes the duffel out of my hand.

I follow his cruiser down the hill in my own car with the skillet buckled into the passenger seat. The orchard drifts by on both sides, row after row going gold and bronze in the thinning frost. I watch his taillights through the windshield and think about the exact weight of his hand over mine.

By the time we reach the bottom of the lane I've given up pretending I'm not thinking about it.

Bloomfield is waking up. The green is a mess of half-dismantled tents and rolled-out extension cords. People are already moving between the booths with coffee in their hands, setting up for the second day. Ethan's cruiser goes slowly around the edge of the common. Heads turn as it passes. A man hauling a hay bale waves. A woman setting out pies waves.

At the far corner, in a lawn chair beside a stack of folded blankets, sits a woman in a knitted pumpkin hat with a stem on top. I watch her see his cruiser, and then my car right behind it, and then my face through the glass.

Dolores slowly raises both hands to her mouth.

I drive on with my eyes fixed forward and my face on fire.

His house is four streets off the green, on a street of old maples that have dropped nearly everything they own onto the sidewalk. It's a two-story house the gray of weathered driftwood, with a deep porch, a swing hanging from the rafters on thick chains, and a front door painted a faded green.

There's a small pink bike on the lawn with white tassels on the handlebars and a basket on the front holding a plastic shovel and a flashlight. A bucket of sidewalk chalk sits beside it. The front walk has been drawn on in large, confident, wavy lines that spell out something I can't read from here.

Ethan parks the cruiser at the curb and gets out. I pull in behind him and turn off the engine. For a moment I just sit with my hands on the wheel.

I look at the bike. I look at the pumpkins on the rail, each with its own expression.

He's at my window before I've opened it.

"Carolina." His face has changed again. It isn't the cool, flat look from this morning or the clear one in the kitchen. "Before we go in, I need to tell you something."