I walk through the tamarisk to the fence, the echoes of Inger’s voice playing over the memory of the two women in the silty river, the water pushing us downstream. Inger’s eyes closing when she sang, “Loved me so naughty made me weak in the knees.” A breeze is blowing, warm and from the west, and the moon is big on the horizon over the bluffs. I think of Jo in the water, holding on against the current as sand slipped away downriver, bound for the Pacific. I know Jo wants for me what she thinks I would want for her, but I imagined a second life for her only because I didn’t believe in it. I never believed I could give her up.

When I return, Inger leans in the door of the screenhouse watching me, knee cocked, and I wonder where her calm comes from.

“You have to walk out there, just to the fence,” I tell her.

“Come with me,” Inger says.

I have to clear my throat to speak again. “You should go alone.”

Inger smiles to herself and pulls on her sandals. I watch her walk to the fence, the wind blowing her skirt between her legs until she pushes it away and it billows off to the side. She leans on the fence and looks up at the moon for a long while. Finally she walks back through the weeds and puts her arms around me where I’m still standing in the door. She rests her head against my chest again and I can feel my heart beating against her cheek.

“Jo’ll be all right,” she says.

“She will,” I say.

Inger nods, not looking up. She stays with me a minute longer, then moves past me into the screenhouse to bed.

At 4 A.M. I wake and not a single truck goes by on the highway. I wait in the silence while my eyes adjust, and Jo turns over in her unzipped bag and sighs, eyes closed. I brush her hair from her face and she mumbles something I can’t understand. Then she raises herself on her elbow with a gasp and looks toward the river. “Inger!” she calls out softly. “Inger!” She clutches my arm and her eyes are wide.

“She’s here,” I say. “She’s asleep.”

“Oh,” she says, looking around the room. Her breathing slows. “I thought the water was rising,” she says. “I thought Inger was out in the river and I wasn’t watching.” She turns to look at the sleeping bag by the door, Inger’s braid snaking out of it in the moonlight, and she says, “It’s all right. It’s okay.” She slides back down into bed, still mostly asleep. I stroke her dried and drying hair until she turns away from me.