Cathy was rarely in her grandparents’ room alone, and when she got there, out of breath from taking the stairs two at a time, she stood for a moment, feeling like an intruder. Christina’s old Jaeger wrapper was flung over a chair, and Gramp’s red leather slippers were by their bed. The folder was under a pile of letters from Europe and all over the place, and when she had found it, Cathy went to the windows for a long look at the mountain. The foreground was a mist of red maple in flower and frail greens among the gray trunks, and above it all the mountain was dark blue against a pale blue sky where some wispy clouds were turning gold in the setting sun.

“It’s there,” she whispered, “always.”

A jay flew across and into the pines, giving a loud scream.

Joel, who had been miraculously absent from her heart for a whole half hour, was there again like some burden. How could she bring him and Willard together? For surely, she thought, they are wrong and Willard is not for the old. It’s for us to go tramp in and look for arbutus—she hugged herself at the very thought. Tomorrow … yes … she would go with Joel into the woods. There, they would be safe. There, they could find everything they had lost these days … surely … surely … and Willard is forever, she thought, but we are now, just like the arbutus that only comes once a year and must be celebrated.

“Oh, Joel,” she breathed. Dear Joel, who might have tried to eat the skunk cabbage. Dear Joel, as innocent and wild as a deer. Love flooded her eyes. Her heart was beating too fast. How could she run away from love?

CHRISTINA’S JOURNAL—May 14

Now that spring has come, it’s hard to keep at this journal. Perhaps it served its purpose. I have been glancing back, quite astonished at how faithfully I managed to write at least once a week. It is the record of, in some ways, the happiest winter I can remember. It seems like years, not months, ago that Ellen and I took off into the woods on that memorable walk … and now Jane is gone, and Old Pete, who watched us go and come back, is knocked out for good, I fear. He is determined to come home to his shack, to his treasures that look so desolate as the snow melts—an ancient rotting canoe, God knows what trash, rusting and dying.