Every few twists in the road, we passed a house of one of the families that lived on the mountain. They were set back from the road and made of wood and stone. We could usually hear the family’s rooster as we approached, sometimes a goat in the yard. At each house, a person, usually a woman, would come to the door to watch us pass. If she saw me first, she would frown. If she saw Emmanuel first, she would smile and bow her head.

Emmanuel called to each, “Bonjou, madam.” Sometimes, a woman would call back, “Monsieur Emmanuel.” But every single one recognized me and called me by my new name, though I had never seen any of them before: Madame Chase, yon fanm ameriken.

“They know us here,” I said.

“I come here nearly every day. I have bragged about you so often they know you by my words.” He laughed. “Before I left for America, I used to come here to study.”

“You would bring your books here?”

“Sometimes I was studying books. But mostly, I was studying the plants.”

“You will get used to this walk,” Emmanuel said, taking my hand in his. “You will make it every day with me, once my office is set up again. We will learn this mountain together.”

“You have a lot of faith in me.”

“It is not faith,” he said. “I know you.”

We then walked in silence, and I could pretend for a moment that I was the person he imagined. To get to the water, you had to climb uphill till the backs of your legs began to burn and your knees felt as if they would shake, and your skirts, as they moved around your ankles, felt like a burden. I tucked the ends into the waist of my dress, running them through my legs, which delighted Emmanuel. But I felt annoyance at the walk and the heat that he had not prepared me for. We had left in the afternoon, because he had wished to talk with his father first and we had wanted to miss the highest heat of the day. But the heat had lingered, and even the woods all around us felt oppressive.

I did not trust his admiration for me. The only person who had ever watched my movements as closely as he did was my mother. And she had watched not with pride, but with a kind of patient assessing. She was waiting for me to make a mistake, and he did not believe a mistake was possible. Yet.

My mother’s scrutiny was a burden. But this other way of looking, this besottedness, was just as damning. My mother expected great things and constant improvement. He seemed to believe in a perfection that existed apart from my actual self.