David still sometimes felt that Diana had gone too far beyond him for him ever to stand with her as he had once stood, her twin. That self-knowledge which had made her left-handed had also freed her to love Constance, had given her the direction to become a doctor, sure that her life was her life, while his seemed fixed by accident, shaped by other people, but those differences assumed less importance now. As he got to know his sister again, who she was rather than what she had accomplished engaged him. And she was very recognizably his sister, old. She needed more courage than he did because she was basically shyer, because she was proud. Pride had always been a defence in her rather than a fault. Perhaps his amiability was in him, too. Their temperaments had balanced when they were young. Why shouldn’t they now?

‘I am not as young as I feel right now,’ David said to himself. Being old made that possible.

He looked up at the barren hides of the mountains. Though they were very different from the lushy green mountains he was used to, they were mountains all the same, and he felt at home with their defining presence.

He came to the grocery store and did not go in. He wanted to walk the town first. He discovered the shopping mall with its expensive shops, its art gallery, its banks, like a chunk of suburbia tacked on to this little desert town for the money-spending tourists. He was glad to turn back away from the new condominiums beyond the mall and find himself again in the more authentic street. He looked in at a bar, a large U shape with high stools where several locals in dusty work clothes were having a morning beer. Around the corner he found a country hardware store and then a little library.

Constance would read to him. He went in. Seating space seemed designed for children, and he was glad to think that not everyone in the valley was over sixty-five. Somewhere there must be ordinary houses, a school. He browsed through the small adult collection, not quite as glutted with mysteries, science fiction and romance as he’d feared it would be. There was even a shelf of poetry.

Might poems be more of a pleasure to Constance? David picked up a volume of Auden. Then he found a collection of Eudora Welty’s short stories. If he could find a good biography, maybe Diana would sometimes join them, but perhaps not a literary biography. He would ask her first. She needed the time to herself.

Back in the grocery store, David peered at the various offerings of Mexican food. Would it all be too hot for their ageing digestions? He made a note of what meats were available. The prices seemed reasonable until he remembered they were in American dollars. He picked up the chicken Diana thought might be good for dinner.