“My problem?” Pick huffed. “Well, since you asked, my problem is that I have this entire park to look after, all two-hundred-odd acres of it, and I have to do it by myself! Now, you might say, ‘But that’s your job, Pick, so what are you complaining about?’ Well, that’s true enough, isn’t it? But time was I had a little help from a certain young lady who lived in this house. Now what was her name again? I forget, it’s been so long since I’ve seen her.”

“Oh, please!” Nest moaned.

“Sure, it’s easy for you to go off to your big school and your other life, but words like ‘commitment’ and ‘responsibility’ mean something to some of us.” He stamped hard on the picnic table. “I thought the least you could do was to spend some time with me this weekend, this one solitary weekend in the whole of this autumn that you’ve chosen to come home! But no, I haven’t seen you for five minutes, have I? And now, today, what do you do? Go off with that Heppler boy instead of looking for me! I could have gone to the graves with you, you know. I would have liked to go, as a matter of fact. Your grandmother was my friend, too, and I don’t forget my friends …” He trailed off meaningfully.

“Unlike some people,” she finished for him.

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

“Oh, not for a minute.” She sighed. “Robert came by to apologize for his behavior last spring at the funeral.”

“Oh, that. Criminy.” Pick knew right away. They might fight like cats and dogs, but they confided in each other anyway.

“So I had to spend a little time with him, and I didn’t think it would hurt if we walked over to the cemetery. I was saving the rest of the day to work with you, all right? Now stop complaining.”

He held up his twiggy hands. “Too late. Way too late.” “To stop complaining?”

“No! To do any work!”

She hunched down so that her face was close to his. It was a little like facing down a beetle. “What are you talking about? It isn’t even noon. I don’t have to go back until tonight. Why is it too late?”

He folded his stick arms across his narrow chest, scrunched up his face, and looked off into the park. She always wondered how he could make his features move like that when they were made out of wood, but since he had a tendency to regard such questions as some sort of invasion of his personal life, she’d never had the courage to ask. She waited patiently as he sighed and fussed and jittered about.

“There’s someone here to see you,” he announced finally.

“Who?”

“Well, I think you had better see for yourself.”

She studied him a moment. He refused to meet her eyes, and a cold feeling seeped through her. “Someone from before?” she asked quietly. “From when my father …?”