At the end of the lane, which is almost half a mile from the cabin, she stops. I always park my car there, in an impromptu kind of lean-to garage, except on the rare occasions when I go into town to stock up on necessities I can’t provide for myself. Then, if it’s possible, I drive it right up to the cabin, balancing precariously in the narrow ruts, creeping along to avoid toppling into the encroaching ditches at the sides. After I’ve unloaded on those days, I return the car to the bottom of the lane. Several times in the winter I’ve been stuck when it has refused to start, and I’ve learned to get along without supplies I thought, at first, I needed. Eventually I’ve dug out and gone to a neighbour’s for help in getting the car going again. The people around here don’t ask questions, not any more. The man on the next farm comes and jumps the battery and goes home again, and I give him a few dollars each time it happens. In the first while I was here, that happened several times, both because I didn’t know how to stock up properly, and had to keep returning to town, and because I didn’t take good care of the car. I didn’t realize how important it would be. Vital, like the vegetables. It’s an old thing now, but the mileage is still low because the only place I go is town, which is seven miles away, and that not often. Because I’m on a back country road, the driving can be treacherous, if not impossible, which is another reason I’ve learned to be organized before the snow falls.

I see Katie looking through the windows of my car, searching, I guess, for some hint about me, but there is nothing in it. She herself has a small car, and I like the way she gets into it. They look awkward, those little things, and she is fairly tall, but she tucks herself in gracefully, swiftly, altogether accustomed to its size and to her own. I notice, too, that she is a confident driver, reversing and driving away as if the car were an added limb of her body, and the narrow gravel road utterly familiar. I must say, physically I approve of the girl; it is her appearance in my life that is disturbing.