Now the crows were quiet and from her bedroom Allie could hear the faint hum of the refrigerator, the dripping of rainwater off the roof outside. She lay on her bed and tried to read The Naked and the Dead, but it wasn’t a night for soldiers at all. After the finger examination, Allie had watched Christopher take apart a Tinker Toy on the floor while her mother and Dr. Trudeau talked a good fifteen minutes in the office. Allie didn’t have to guess about what, either. As soon as they got back home, Tess called her sister in Boston and got the number she was looking for. Allie picked up the newspaper and acted like she wasn’t listening when her mother made the appointment for the day after tomorrow: Wednesday, August 18, at 2:00.

Two days from Leo Suther’s birthday. That’s how she’d been regarding him the past few days, she noticed. Not as Leo, but as the full name she knew him by in Mr. Jewett’s class before they actually met in the kitchen of Beatrice’s UFO Show. A kid’s name, like all the rest. Not that she thought he was like Gerry Poitras and Logan Wright, or AnnaMaria Slavitt, Nancy Titcomb, and Billy Burrell, because she didn’t, and he wasn’t. She just couldn’t afford to think of him as sweet Leo right now. Her mother had told her once that loving someone is sometimes letting them take a big crap in your lap. Her mom didn’t talk that way often. Usually when her painting wasn’t going too well, Allie noticed. But boy, she had shown some mother’s love today, letting her daughter blubber out her bad news right on top of hearing Dad’s going to make it. Allie wanted to see him right this minute, though she knew her mom was right, that he probably needed a couple more days’ rest before the whole family squeezed in around him in that cubicle. And for the fifteenth time she heard again what Leo had said this morning on the other side of her bedroom door, his voice so thoughtful and alert as he said sure thing to her mom’s requesting the favor of kicking him out. Allie had wanted to open her door right then, but not enough. Obviously, not enough.

25

His sleep had been one long thirst and Tuesday was half gone when Leo got up, pulled on cut-off shorts, and walked barefoot down Saunders Hill Road to the river. He had to walk only half as far as usual because the water was high in the trees on both banks. He squatted and splashed his face, then he cupped his hands and drank water the color of dead leaves. When he was full he splashed himself again. The birds were chirping up a storm, but the river was quiet. The bigger it got, the less noise it made, and Leo thought of Dwight’s brother Olin. He remembered Jim saying how they left town. Then he remembered the bourbon, and his stomach seemed to float out and away from him and his mouth filled with spit. He took a few deep breaths and the nausea went away.