When he turned back to give Demeter his work gloves, the two women were in each other’s arms, holding on tight and dry-eyed, each looking fiercely over the other’s shoulder. Hank felt like he shouldn’t be there, like he wasn’t there: they had no awareness of him. He dropped the gloves, loaded up his arms with wood and tried not to look at the women. Duncan had wronged him, but all he could hate his friend for was that Duncan had been loved. He was on his third armload when they finally let go.

“What would I do without you both?” Kay asked.

Hank thought it might have been better if they’d never met. He said so after Kay went in the house. Demeter looked at him, fine hair down around her shoulders, jacket sleeves hanging loose, hiking boots sticking out below her dress.

“Duncan still would have dived alone,” she said. Her nose had started to run, and she held her wrist against it. “Some other woman would’ve turned his head, and his heart would have done what it did.” She shook her head. “Duncan just ran out of luck,” she said. “He would have done it with or without us.”

Then she turned from him, picked up the work gloves and put them on. They unloaded the wood slowly, like they were underwater, in silence except for the sharp drop of split logs. As they stacked the pile higher, he could hear Demeter’s low voice singing in his head: four lean hounds crouched low and smiling, my heart fell dead before.

NATIVE SANDSTONE

THERE WAS NO house yet, just a wellhead where the house would be, under an overturned box to keep the sand out. Clay was building the house, and it would be one to live in for a long time, so they were trying to get everything right. From the passenger seat, Susan watched him wedge the box between the green metal stakes that kept it in place. He climbed into the car and threw the water sample into the backseat.

“Now,” he said, and he sat with his hand on the ignition.

“The sandstone,” Susan said. She checked her watch, hoping they wouldn’t interrupt Albert’s dinner.

“Right.”

Clay backed the station wagon out onto the flattened grass of the road, past the bare area where the well-digging rig had pulled up all the vegetation. Susan got out and dragged the barbed-wire gate aside, and shook the dust out of her sandals before pulling her feet back in after her.

“So, you’ll ask Albert,” she said. They drove out on the empty two-lane highway. “You always know what to say to him.”

“What’s to know?” Clay said.