“No.” I turned to him and smiled. “I just have it on my iPod.”

“Smart-ass.” He handed me a glass of wine. “She’s one of my very favorites, but most people haven’t heard of her, and when they do hear her music, they always assume—”

“That she’s Norah Jones.”

“Exactly,” he said, then took a sip of his wine and watched me sketch the pool.

We were silent for a long while, listening to Melody sing of love and pain, and when I finished the pool, Hutch said, “and then during the nights they went to meetings and bars.”

“It’s almost impossible to imagine.”

He placed his hand on top of mine. “Full of righteous anger, I think maybe one of the first things they would have done after the bus was spend time all together planning. I see them sitting in smoky honky-tonks, listening to jazz or bluegrass music, drinking warm bourbon …”

I lifted the charcoal again, and my hand moved across the paper. A booth appeared and then the people, both colored and white, leaning toward one another, faceless and nameless.

Our wine was finished and the rain now mixed with wind, clamoring against the windows with force. I stopped drawing for a moment, listening. Hutch’s finger trailed down my arm until he reached my hand, taking the pencil, winding his fingers through mine as if he were slowly sewing us together again and then again.

He stood and pulled me up also. The afternoon sun was obliterated by a dusk created of rain and cloud. Together we sat on the long couch, my head resting on his shoulder. Without words spoken or excuses made, we stretched out, our legs winding together as roots of one. My flip-flops fell to the floor and I looked down at him, my hair falling, brushing against his face. His hand came up and wrapped around my neck, pulling me down, and then farther down to what I thought would be his mouth, his lips, his warmth; but instead he settled my head onto his shoulder, where he ran his hand through my hair.

“Sleep,” he said. “I know it’s been a long time since you’ve done that well. Sleep now.”

“I didn’t tell you that,” I murmured into his neck.

“You didn’t have to.”

I exhaled and couldn’t discern where my body and skin began and his ended.

The shaking and pounding were the sounds of thunder, and I awoke from the deepest sleep I’d known in years; the kind of sleep that I don’t come out of easily. I gripped Hutch’s shirt, orienting myself, and then looked at him, smiling.

“What time is it?”

“Midnight … ,” he whispered.

“Wow. I’ve been asleep for hours … I’m so sorry. I probably would’ve slept a hundred years except for the thunder.”

“Ellie, that’s not thunder. Someone is at the door.”