“Gosh, I don’t know. If I knew that, I’d be a magician.” Eddie thought it over some more. “I’d be God.”

The porch was brick, hadn’t been swept yet, and crumbs of mortar lay on it. The interior of the house behind them gave forth a strong fragrance of sawn wood, the smells of paint and putty. He saw that Karen had cupped her eyes with her hands and was crying again.

Eddie moved closer and put an arm around her. She moved her face against his jacket. “I didn’t even get to say good-by to her,” she wept. “I didn’t get to tell her . . . not even once . . . how I felt about living there all those years. And at the end she hated me. She hated me because I brought Skip and you to her house.” She choked over her words, and Eddie stroked her hair softly. “When I first met Skip and talked to him about the money, I just thought it was a kind of joke.”

Eddie was amazed at her idea. “Skip never thought money was a joke.”

She cried for a while against his coat, wiping tears away with the back of her hand. Then she said, “You’re different from Skip, Eddie. I’ll bet you don’t even know it, but you’re entirely different. There’s a kind of . . . gentleness about you, and Skip doesn’t have it. Not a bit of it.”

“Ah, Skip’s okay, I guess,” Eddie said uncomfortably.

“No, there’s something lacking. I used to think he was tough, awfully brave, and that what was inside him was strength. But tonight I saw that wasn’t it at all. Inside, Skip is—is kind of hollow. Not in a physical way. I don’t quite know how to put it.”

Eddie recalled something from the past. “When we were in high school I heard the principal raising hell with Skip once and he told Skip that he was immature. Something in him wasn’t growing up along with the rest of him. That’s all that’s wrong with Skip; he just isn’t all grown up yet,” Eddie said.

“He’s never going to grow up.” She waited then as if thinking, then said suddenly, “Let’s not go back for him!”

The treasonous thought was to Eddie like ice water thrown over his body. He began to protest.

“Well, we won’t argue about it,” she said quickly. She pulled herself closer, as if sheltering from a wind. “I don’t want to argue with you. I like you. If anything separated us I’d just die.”

She was awfully young and afraid—Eddie had sense enough to know this, to suspect that her clinging was based on the circumstances of the moment. But he could not help but respond to her softness, her nearness. All at once she lifted her face to his, and their lips met and clung.