Allie leaned down to kiss him. His forehead was wet with sweat, and in his lap was a dumbbell. “Does Mama know?”

“Took me two hours to talk her into getting the damn thing. How were tips?”

“Awful.” Allie stepped over his leg cast and sat down beside him. She watched him push the small dumbbell over his head, lower it, then do it again nine more times. His glasses slid down his nose and he was breathing hard. She rested the orange flyer on his leg cast. Christopher had drawn long crayon lines from the hip of the cast to the foot, like a rainbow river. Chick unfolded the flyer. “Who is she?”

“Leo’s mother. He named his band for her, I guess.”

“His band?”

“And he’s going on a tour with them.”

Allie’s mother stepped out onto the porch. “We saved you some watermelon.”

“How do you feel about this, Allie?” her father said. “This tour thing, for how long?”

Allie shrugged, and as soon as she did, the skin of her chin trembled. She sat back and looked out over the hill and across the dark river at the national forest beyond Heywood. All the trees looked brown, purple, and maroon, the sky above them a shade of steel. In a few minutes her mother would turn on the porch light, which would attract flying bugs. Allie knew her father’s eyes were on her and for the fiftieth time since he’d been home from the hospital she felt her belly and throat and face stiffen up with the words pregnant—Boston—procedure—Leo. Especially him. Oh, especially Leo.

“Is this woman’s band supposed to be any good?” Allie’s mother said.

“It’s Leo’s, hon. And tomorrow night you’re gonna load me into your car and take me to it.”

Thursday night, they’d called it a day an hour after midnight, and even though Leo didn’t fall asleep for another hour after that, here he was at 6:00 Friday morning awake again, his lips feeling slightly numb. He could hear the birds down at the river and in the trees close to the house, and he thought of waking Ryder on the couch to ask about the lips, was it normal? But then he figured if a man played his harps for over almost two days straight, it probably was. He pulled on his shorts and sneakers, slipped on a T-shirt, and walked softly down the hall. Pink and tangerine light came through the parlor window. Ryder’s cowboy boots were on the floor and Leo could hear his short sleeping breaths from the couch. The whole house smelled like Jim’s Lucky Strikes.