He spoke slow. “I guess I know what it was to me. I’m not sure I can tell you what that is though. What words.”

She nodded.

He went on. “The question it seems, is what it was to you. That’s how it seems.”

“How can I know what it was?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess you either do or you don’t. And I guess if you don’t then it isn’t.”

She cocked her head at him. “It was your first time wasn’t it.”

He looked at her awhile. Then said, “Why are you so worried about what I might think about whatever you might have done before with anybody else?”

“Do you think that’s what it is?”

“Well. It doesn’t seem like you trust me.”

“I don’t trust much of anything.”

“What I’ve found, there’s not much to trust. Not much that stays.”

“So why do you trust me?”

He grinned at her. “Didn’t say I did.”

“What about those words you can’t say?”

“I don’t know. I’m not even sure what they are.”

“Yes you are. You know exactly what they are. You just don’t want to say them for fear you’d be wrong.”

“I’m not sure it’s worry about being wrong so much as wanting to get things right.”

She smiled at him then. “That’s a pretty thing to say.”

He looked at her again for some time. Then said, “You’re the last thing I expected when I came down here. The last thing on my mind. The last thing I thought to find.”

“It can be funny how that works.”

“I guess so. Some ways it makes sense.”

“It’s funny. The first thing I thought when I heard about you was that this was someone I had to find out. Someone who was here for me.”

He was very serious then. “It’s complicated. There’s business between your uncle—your great-uncle—and myself that’s just starting to get worked out. And I don’t know where it will lead but already I can tell you some of it’s not so nice. There’s no reason to think it will get better as it goes. If it goes any further. He could clam up on me anytime I think. Although I don’t guess he will. He’s going slow with it, bits and dabs, but what I think is that’s more to let each piece sink in all the way with me before we go on. Anyway, I don’t know what’s going to happen with it all. And I don’t know how much he’d want you involved in it.”

“You’re afraid I might mess it up for you and him, my being around?”

“No. I don’t see it as a problem. If anything, it seemed to me he took some delight over me this morning, teasing me about you. But serious too. It seems to me he cares for you.”

“He’s got a soft spot for me, somehow.”

“Thing is, what he’s telling me, it’s not exactly making us close, him and me.”