Following this, Juliana avoided the Wild Goose. She did not telephone Ned Spires, she made no effort to contact him. And soon, then, she stopped drinking, or rather began the stages of not-drinking, which she envisioned as stone steps in a hill badly worn from many feet preceding hers, but Juliana too would ascend it, in time.

7.

But now, Blue Moon Café. At dusk, that heartbreak time.

Blue Moon, blue neon. She won’t stay long.

Taking pleasure in the anticipation. Just club soda, thanks!

Taking pleasure in slow-driving along Front Street. Passing darkened storefronts in this small town on the Delaware River that has become familiar and comforting to Juliana, like home.

Not home, not quite yet. But soon.

Much has changed in Juliana’s life since the Wild Goose Tavern. Three years since Ned Spires. Shame and desperation, bad memories steeped in vodka.

Now Juliana no longer drinks. Certainly not vodka, which is lethal.

Not even beer, with Patrick.

Unknowing, innocently, Patrick has urged her. C’mon, Julie! Just a sip, it’s just beer.

But now, since she has become pregnant, Patrick no longer urges her to drink. Instead, he fusses over the food Juliana eats, watches over her almost too carefully.

It has been just a month. Already Juliana feels changes in her body, she is certain she isn’t imagining … Fascinating, though in a way frightening, for isn’t this her body?

Exactly as she’d imagined, Patrick is in awe of her and of the pregnancy.

Pregnant women are the most beautiful women.

I am the happiest man alive.

Soon Juliana will be thirty years old. By which time she and Patrick will be married.

A good man, a kindly man, reliable, intelligent—knowing little of Juliana’s former, secret life before she’d met him.

Why is Patrick not more curious, Juliana wonders.

To Juliana, curious and suspicious are near synonymous.

In this lack of curiosity, this trustfulness, Patrick somewhat resembles Gordon Kechel.

Once a drinker, always a drinker whether drinking or not—Juliana understands this principle but has never considered herself a drinker in any clinical sense. Not an alcoholic.

Ned Spires had been an alcoholic. Not Juliana.

Life-saving to Juliana, she’d managed to escape the man. He’d pleaded with her to stay with him, to marry him, he’d divorce his wife of twenty-five years and marry her, but Juliana understood this was folly, she’d escaped with her life.

As Juliana is a good, steady driver, in control of her vehicle, so (she tells herself) she is in control of her drinking.

She has yet to visit the Blue Moon. Months living in this town, aware of the Blue Moon, which she passes frequently and which exerts no particular pull on her, except at night when the blue neon sign glimmers in the window and her heart is quickened to the point of pain.

So deeply moved sometimes, she has to brake her car, park at a curb until the powerful emotion has passed.