Leo took his C harp and went back outside to sit on the front step. The sky was bright but gray, and the air felt too dry to rain. A squirrel paused at the trunk of a pine to look Leo over. It sniffed the air, twitched its tail, then turned and skittered up the trunk until Leo couldn’t see it anymore. He wondered what Allie was doing right now and he kept seeing her face as she cried there in the rain gully behind Spoon Hill, her blonde hair sticking to her wet cheeks, her eyes never leaving his, though he must have looked very blurry. He raised the harmonica to his lips and sucked out a quick tremolo. Jim would be home in a couple of hours. Leo didn’t want to be by himself until then. He thought how strange time is. Two days ago Allie’s tears left him feeling zero. Yesterday on the roof, if he felt anything at all, it was anger. He would remember how Allie stood in her living room and shouted out how she had done everything on her own, for her, and he’d swing the hammer so hard he left moons in the shingles. But today all he felt was sorry, sorry Allie didn’t trust him or love him enough to take him to Boston with her in the first place, to let him have as big a part in the whole day as he deserved. And he knew that was it. That’s what left him feeling so kicked in the chest, as much as losing the baby and with it the plan of him and Allie being a family within the year: it was Allie counting him out.

Leo lowered his harp, raised it back to his lips, then lowered it again. Which means she was half right when she screamed I’m a hypocrite. He stood and went inside to the parlor where he picked up the phone. He waited half a minute for his heart to slow down, then he dialed the Donovans’ number. But he got the loud drone-pause-drone of a busy signal. He listened to it for a long time before he hung up.