She sat in the sun until she heard the sound of the Ford leaving, perhaps half an hour. She sat watching the river run by. She guessed she would be nostalgic for this place but sitting waiting she would not think of it, just sat watching the water. She waited until she could no longer hear the car and then waited ten minutes more before she stood and walked up to the house. She did not know how she was to get where she was going. She’d refused to make a plan until the moment unfurled because until it happened she’d not been able to say for sure what she would do. Then the moment came and she told him it was too late for that, the words coming out of her almost as random choice. She failed to trust Edgar Sloane as much as she’d wanted Jamie to believe. She was absolutely without belief in love. She had eight, maybe ten years to trade upon, was what she believed, and what occurred during that time would set the course for the rest of her life, one way or another. It had not been so much a career singing she’d implied when she spoke of taking the risk. And Jamie. Jamie would not be alone long. Beyond his looks plenty of girls would peel out of their skins for that taint of danger he carried, that spread out from him like a sun-basking snake. She did not fear him and did not know why she’d told him that. Because she knew it was the one threat he could not counter. It was true that she did not know him, as true as how she felt of herself. She did not trust anything, least of all herself.

At the house she dressed and brushed out her hair and considered the closet and took out only a small valise that held another pair of high-buttoned boots and one of slippers and three dresses and a single gown and changes of underclothing and then a small box of earrings and bracelets and her one single strand of baby pearls that had once been her mother’s or perhaps her grandmother’s. She was not discarding but being practical. This time of day there would be plenty of traffic on the meager highway running from Crawford Notch up into Bethlehem and she had no doubt of catching a ride. With the summer vacationers the odds were against being picked up by anyone she knew but she did not want to appear a burden to anyone or make memories. Just a girl with a grip trying to get to work.