She heard him before she saw him. Thock. Then a pause and the sound came again. Then she came through the trees. He was sideways, his back to her, dressed just in trousers, barefoot and bare-chested. He had a bucket of golf balls and a driver and was driving the balls one at a time in a high sailing arc out of sight into the puckerbrush behind the barn. He didn’t play golf but bought buckets of balls from the caddies at the Maplewood and time to time would come out with an old driver he’d found somewhere and send the balls one after another into the woods until the bucket was empty. She stood back and watched him. The twist in his back as he drove the ball and his arms followed through with the driver up over his head was a beautiful thing. His body not the boy she’d met five years ago, not so much changed as confirmed, wired muscles taut and lean. His bones and limbs fine as if carved from wood. He would, she guessed, look much the same in twenty years, thirty years. She put the shirt on and as he leaned toward the bucket she stepped from the trees into the small opening of sunlight where he saw her and paused a moment and then set the ball on the tee and drove it off into the woods, watching it go from sight, his head tilted back. Then dropped the club by the bucket and walked to the steps and took up cigarettes and lighted one and smoked, the smoke dribbling from his nose.

“The fuck you been.”

She made a small shrug. “I made it back in one piece.”

“Be hard to tell you wasn’t.”

“What’s that mean?”

He spit tobacco flecks off his lips. “Don’t be pissy at me. You tell me you’ll find your own way home and then come crawling in the middle of the day. What do you figure I’d think?”

“Think what you like.”

“That’s it? Think what I like?”

“Jesus, Jamie.” She shook her head. “Some of us went to a party out toward Whitefield. Some Canadians there playing fiddle music. Reels and jigs and such I hadn’t heard in years. People dancing like they meant it. I had fun was all. I didn’t have to do a thing but have fun.”

“And you couldn’t’ve done that with me?”

“Listen,” she said. “I’m sorry about saying that last night. Sometimes I just feel like I’m all cornered up. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want to corner anybody anywhere.”

“Don’t do that. I didn’t even know about that party until after work and things were winding down at Laird’s and Godchaux was the one had heard about it and brought it up so we all went. That’s all. I don’t know if you’d have liked it or not. That kind of music. But the people were all drinking your whiskey so you’d probably have liked it just fine. But you weren’t there and I wasn’t about to hold things up trying to hunt you down at three-thirty in the morning.”