But anyway she herself started everything. She knew she was going to Mississippi in the fall, and she knew she wanted to do at least once with Leo Suther what she’d done three times with Billy Burrell. Tall, skin-tight Leo with his smooth cheeks and dark hair, his song-writing and harmonica-playing, his being mad at his lonesome father. We’re in it now, she thought. Nothing to do now except go to a picnic, laugh like a warrior girl, and wait for a bloody moon.

Leo stood waist-deep in the cool water of Empire Lake and took in the sheer climb of the Berkshires on the other side. Their slopes were thick with blue spruce, interrupted only by an occasional slab of granite in the sun. Up near the peaks the treeline ended, opening up to dots of brush, more rock, then a few narrow patches of earth. Above that, the sky was more blue than the lake, and as a curl of cloud moved by, Leo felt a little dizzy. He dove forward into the water and came up facing the grounds. Allie was helping her mother lay out the chicken salad sandwiches, potato chips, and Cokes on a picnic table under the trees. Leo side-kicked a few yards. He could see Christopher teetering over to where another family sat eating on a quilt.

At first Leo didn’t like the idea of the whole Donovan family—minus Chick-coming along. He had planned on just himself and Allie because he’d wanted to give her the roses at the lake when they were alone. But when Allie told him on her front porch she didn’t want to leave her mom with Chris all day, Leo led her to the car and gave her the long white box from Delores the Florist right then. Allie let out a little whimper when she opened it, then she French kissed him there under the sun in front of her cabin. Leo followed her into the house, and as soon as he saw Chick’s pretty wife smile up at him from her sandwich work at the kitchen table, as soon as he heard her praise the flowers and then him for bringing them, he figured today would fit two more in all right. They stopped at Trudy’s Grocery for Cokes and ice. Mrs. Donovan tried to give him some money, but Leo wouldn’t hear of it. It was his car, it was his treat.

On the drive through the national forest, Allie put on her new sunglasses to match his. She checked her face in the rearview mirror, then sat closer to him. Leo thought she looked older in them, more like a woman, and he glanced in the mirror at her mother. She held Christopher in her lap, the both of them looking out the open window at the woods going by. Chick’s wife was nice to look at with her long brown hair and that wide mouth she’d passed on to Allie, but her eyes always seemed to be in a squint like there was something bright and dangerous near her. It made her look tired. Anyway, she didn’t seem to notice, or mind, her daughter sitting this close to him.