She shook her head. “I didn’t say. But he was at Laird’s two nights ago. Looking for you. All I could tell him was you hadn’t been in.”

“I guess that’s right.”

“You hadn’t. I don’t know what you were hiding from but it didn’t need to be me.”

He looked at her. “Estus Terry knows where to find me otherwise.”

She stepped forward then and ran a finger over a point on his chest where a deerfly bite had crusted, her finger taking away the crust and then daubed again in the slim rivulet of blood that seeped, lifting the finger to her mouth and cleaning it between her lips. “I guess,” she said, “he’d tried to find you. I guess that’s why he came to talk to me. I can’t see any other reason for it, can you?” Her eyes open on him now, great blank reflections empty of everything but himself.

“Whatever Terry told you about that Frenchman, he knew better. Terry’s got no reason to be frightened of me.”

“Oh Jamie.” She sighed. Then looked around the clearing, at the house, the barn, the stand of hemlocks and tamaracks as if sweeping for an answer or merely confirming what she already knew. She said, “He’s asked me to go off with him.”

Imbecilic, seeing himself so, his mouth stretched grotesque around the words, “Estus Terry?” As if his brain was determined to keep with the old order, the other conversation, not to move forward the step she had already taken. And her look of naked pity as if viewing a spine-broken chipmunk, some creature she could not help but love.

She shook her head and said, “No.”

“I know,” he cried out. “I know.”

She was silent, her head in a small shake, not to refute him but to make clear some way he could not know, could not understand. A gesture beyond her control. He saw all this.

“Fuck. It’s that fucker Sloane you’re talking about isn’t it?”

“Edgar,” she said.

“What?” He hadn’t moved, was breathless.

“His name’s Edgar.” She looked away then, as if giving away something she’d not intended. He thought there might be a balance there, some teetering point he might nudge or slip into motion or challenge or change.

He stepped back away from her and stood running one toe in a circle in the sand and needle-trash and again realized he was naked and crossed his arms over his chest and said, “So what’re you going to do?”

“What do you think, Jamie?” Her face tilted back at him.

He shook his head. “I knew I wouldn’t of asked.” Paused and added, “You look like you’re afraid of me.”

“I been afraid of you since I first ever saw you.”

“You and me,” he said, “I thought we were kind of partnered up.”

It was hot in the clearing there before the house. A sheen of sweat over her face. Her eyes flared, wet. “We had some times,” she said.