And Spencer home that last time two Novembers ago, silent and restless around the house and yard as if he no longer knew how to relax around people. The day Leah found him sitting one knee crossed over the other on a stump of firewood behind the garden shed, when she came from the garden to hang the fork she’d been using to dig the Irish potatoes for dinner the next day, Spencer wearing only the trousers from his uniform and an open-necked white shirt of his father’s, the pants already worn and patched but nothing like the wornout home-dyed stuff she’d see on men in the years to come. He was smoking a short thin cigar wrapped in black leaf, leaning back so the stump tilted under him and blowing the smoke out into the quiescent golden air of late fall, and she saw he was waiting for her and he said, “Hey girl, how you been?” and took the fork from her and hung it on the nail. She told him she’d been fine and asked about him, but he only stepped to her and took her by the upper arms and held her with her back against the shed wall and leaned and kissed her, his mouth soft, pliable against hers, lips easy against her and she held her mouth still against his kiss not stiff or remote but as if just waiting until he figured out he was doing the wrong thing. He lifted his lips from hers and grazed against her cheek, the soft ends of his mustache slipping along the folds of her nose as if they belonged there and the moment his mouth was gone from hers she wanted it back and she reached her mouth up to find his, her mouth open once she covered his and he groaned against her as his body slipped forward and pressed over the length of her and she moved a little against him. He drank at her mouth as his hands came off her shoulders across where her throat spread to her breastbone and down to hold her breasts through the cotton shirtwaist, the weak sun coming into her eyes spangling over his shoulder and the air sweet as lying down and she closed her eyes as a sound came rising up from deep below her lungs and sliding from her mouth into his and he stopped, his hands falling from her as he reared back his head and looked at her, his eyes wide with pride and sadness, longing gone hollow as if he stood outside himself watching not just himself but the both of them and he placed his hands on the shed and pushed away from her, pushed his body back to stand over his own feet and not against her anymore and he said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry Leah. I’m so sorry.” Stood like that looking at her and her looking back at him for a long moment and she not saying anything and when he saw she would not and seemed to know all that was running through her he turned away, his eyes at the last terrible and sad, and he went to bend by the stump and pick up the gone-out cigar and walked down along the garden to the back gate and out into the lane. She stood where she was, her legs trembling and her mind hot with not being able to think, watching after where he’d gone and after a moment she could smell faint the smoke floating back, a sieve of scent from him already gone and she looked at her hands, still smeared with clay from picking out the potatoes and rubbed them against the front of the apron over her skirt and then wound her fingers tight together and wrung them, watching the edges of the joints turn a pale whiteblue against the pressure, and out loud she said “Stupid” and walked back out to the garden to lift up the basket of potatoes and go to the kitchen.