An hour later Allie rang in a man’s check for a hamburger and a glass of milk. She gave him his change, then picked up one of the flyers off the counter. In the middle of the page was a hand drawing of a guitar, and on either side of it was drawn an oversized harmonica with short straight lines shooting off it like magic rays.

KATIE FAYE’S BAND!! REAL BLUES MUSIC AT THE THOMPSON GREEN GAZEBO THIS FRIDAY NIGHT, 7:00 NO RAIN DATES

At the bottom right corner was a phone number to call for more information: Leo’s.

Allie’s hands shook as she folded the flyer into the front pocket of her UFO Show skirt and went to set up the booths for the dinner crowd. The diner slowly filled with people. The jukebox began playing nonstop. And gosh, who could the rest of his band be? Two more waitresses came on duty and the third showed up five minutes before the end of Allie’s shift. At 8:00 Allie untied her apron and threw it in the canvas hamper out back. Sid stood at the smoking grill, sweating, working fast. Tuesday a doctor had told him his left ear drum was broken, and Allie had seen him take at least six aspirin today already. He didn’t look up at her as she punched out. In fact, he hadn’t talked to her once since he stepped in to help Monday afternoon.

She drove the flatbed down Paper Boulevard, through the covered bridge and onto the river road. The rain had stopped and the air blew by her open window cool as autumn. The sky was a glorious purple and yellow, and out over the mountains the sun had left a rim of light the color of blood. Allie thought again of Leo as she steered the flatbed up Spoon Hill and stepped on the gas. She kept seeing his face, the way it looked at Beatrice’s Monday afternoon just after he hit Sid and just before he walked out; he was breathing hard, his curly hair had fallen down over his forehead, and his cheeks were spotted red in some places, pale in others. But it was his eyes that kept pulling her back: they were naked; everything was open from them to her. He had actually gone there with a ton of flowers to tell whoever was in the diner how she’d aborted their baby, but that face of his, so stunned and hurt and bewildered, it just didn’t match what he’d done at all.

Her father was on the porch when she parked the truck. The darkening sky was gorgeous, sun shower day or not, and just before she got to the porch a hundred starlings flew over the cabin and halfway down the hill, where they banked south and disappeared into the trees along the drive.

“That’s what your mother should paint.”

“What?”

“You in a white dress against that sunset with those birds.”