Her father is only waiting. He is waiting for everything to be safe. Then he will open the door.

LAKEPORT, IDAHO

1953–1970

Zeno

The bus drops him at the Texaco. Mrs. Boydstun stands outside smoking a cigarette and leaning against her Buick.

“So skinny. You get my letters?”

“You sent some?”

“First of the month, rain or shine.”

“What’d they say?”

She shrugs. “New stoplight. Stibnite mine closed.”

Her hair is neat and her eyes are bright but when she walks toward the diner he notices something off: one leg is a half second slower than it should be.

“It’s nothing,” she says. “My dad had the same. Look: your dog died. I gave her to Charlie Goss in New Meadows. He said she went easy.”

Athena drowsing by the library fire. He’s too exhausted to cry. “She was old.”

“She was.”

They sit in a booth and order eggs and Mrs. Boydstun lights a second cigarette. The waitress wears lunettes on a chain around her neck. Her apron is shockingly white. She says, “They brainwash you? They’re saying some of you boys went and became turncoats.”

Mrs. Boydstun taps her cigarette into the ashtray. “Just bring the coffee, Helen.”

Knives of sunlight flash off the lake. Boats motor back and forth, unzipping the water. At the service station a shirtless man with a deep tan watches an attendant pump gas into his Cadillac. Impossible that such things have been going on all these months.

Mrs. Boydstun watches him. He understands that people will want to hear something, but not the truth: they’ll want a story of perseverance and pluck, good overcoming evil, a homecoming song about a hero who brought light into dark places. Beside him the waitress is clearing a table: three of the plates still have food on them.

Mrs. Boydstun says, “You kill anybody over there?”

“No.”

“Not a one?”

The eggs come sunny-side up. He pierces one with the tines of his fork and the yolk bleeds out, glistening obscenely.

“That’s good,” she says. “That’s for the best.”

The house is the same: the ceramic children, a Jesus suffering on every wall. The same mulberry curtains, the same junipers beneath which Athena crawled on the coldest nights. Mrs. Boydstun pours a drink.

“Cribbage, honey?”

“I think I’ll lie down.”

“Of course. You take your time.”