“Seems to me it doesn’t have to matter much. To you and me.”

“Is that what you think?” She did not wait for answer or argument from him but threw open the door and stepped out and walked around in front of the car and down toward the river, a floating solid form of white dress and blond hair in the sparse moonlight. He sat in the car and watched her hunker before the broad silent river, her arms around her drawn-up knees, the dress pulled tight over her curled body. He felt very still, warm and comfortable with the liquor and also as if he were in another world altogether from any he’d ever known. And thought that what he would do was tiptoe his way as quiet as he could through this whole place to learn what he might and then load his dogs and head right back to New Hampshire and live quiet. Be a dog-man. Maybe see those two old women time to time. Maybe not. Maybe go to school. Maybe not. All he wanted right now was some slice of old solid earth to put his feet down on. And recalled the afternoon just passed when the quail rose up in the evening out of the creek bottom in their breathless wonder. And felt that moment was the end of something. Just what it was he could not say and he wasn’t sure if the sadness was real or just the liquor. As if the fruit jar could hold sadness that the world did not contain.

He got out of the car and walked down and knelt beside Daphne, not too close. He wanted to say something to her but would not wait to rehearse it and so was still not sure of the words as he knelt but she turned to him quick and reached out and put her hand on his knee and asked him, “Tell me Foster. Do you think I’m crazy?”

And he rocked a little under her touch and said, “Well. It’s hard to say. I’ve only known you a couple hours. But you don’t seem dangerous.”

And she laughed then, the laugh a splendid thing as if she opened her mouth and moonlight billowed soft out of it into the air to drift over him and beyond, on over the water where it fell apart under the cicada drone. And he wondered then if she was a little bit crazy.

She said, “You know what I thought? When Uncle Lex told me about you and why I came to wake you up? You want to know what I was thinking?” Her hand still on his knee, as if she were balancing herself. Or just wanted to touch him.

“What’s that?”