Rachel is very much smiling at him, bewitched a little by this maybe-reformed man. He has not suggested a class, a therapist, a vitamin, an exercise routine daily, a book of verse appearing chapter by chapter on her phone, a spiritual practice even, instead of gin. Her heart is, just a very little, thumping in horse hoofbeats. She is restless, not scared. Not much.

“As the barman is missing,” Reynard says, “I suggest we take a walk.”

It’s a faint line, but it’s a line. You may sit in a bar, as a married person, alone. You may have drinks, and then it is natural to turn in conversation to your drinking neighbors, particularly if you recognize them. To walk, Rachel thinks, and instinctively they seem to be approaching the woods of the wedding site, is something else. It is not adultery, of course it isn’t. In some cultures she would be stoned to death for such a thing, laughing openly with a man who is not her husband, no matter how reformed or good with children. She’s not in that culture, though; she’s in San Francisco, right at the entrance to Bottle Grove. He has not touched her, not even on the shoulder, or a little push. Those are amateur moves, Reynard knows, reckless, savage even. Too bold. He does not touch her because it is clear, the damp air on his face and flickering lips, that he will do so in the future.

Martin’s missed them entirely. His eyes have time for nothing but the woman he’s dragging into the bar. Padgett looks great, for the most part. Her hair is cut expensively, surely one of those places where they give you wine while you wait. She has not gained or lost significant weight over the last three years. She is wearing, Martin does not care what she is wearing, his hands so sweaty on both her shoulders now. Stanford comes in then almost at a gallop, his arms laden with purple wet towels. “Where were you?” he asks Martin. “Where did you go?”

“He saw me across the street,” Padgett says, and Stanford sees her for the first time and drops the soaked towels in surprise. They fall like a corpse, plop, the ghastly sound of successful suicide.

“No, no, no,” Stanford says to her. “Do you know what kind of work I’ve done on this man since you—no, absolutely not.”

“I need everybody,” Martin says to him, “out of the bar.”

“No,” Stanford says, like your mother says and that’s final, but Martin glares him toward the door, both hands still on Padgett.