The highway stretched out before Louise but she was no longer restless. She didn’t have any desire to walk the road looking for a good time or trouble. She folded her hands in her lap and willed her past to return to her. She remembered Mrs. Finger but could not recall the daughter’s name. That was good, she found herself thinking, she didn’t want to know. She thought of riding with Baptiste, the whip of her hair, the pale sky lining the high Mission Mountains and fusing with heaven. But the memory of Baptiste was as elusive as he had been. The nuns had tried to lock Baptiste in the storage room because he had refused to speak English, Louise remembered. She shifted her gaze to the field dazzled green in early spring, tufts of black-eyed Susans, Indian paintbrush flamed the low hills. When the nuns had come to release him, he was gone. The nuns had tapped on the walls and the floors, believing he had found a hiding place. But Louise knew Baptiste had possessed something they had prayed for. He could not be bound by walls or locks. The nuns could not release Baptiste because he’d always been free.

She tried to recount the days she had lost but it was like trying to clasp water in the pocket of a closing hand. She wanted to revive the story she had heard, but only Baptiste could have told her the story. It had been Baptiste’s voice, clear and low that had spoken to her, but when had he told her this story? She pressed the heat of her palms to her eyelids and spoke his name, believing he had loved her once, and she had loved him. She recalled the hollow of Baptiste’s neck, the shape of his hands fluttering around her when he had told her stories. She heard the ripple of pond water, the wind graze the cattails. Her grandmother had taught her to remember the dead with respect, to forgive.

She took a deep breath. Home was quiet. She felt suddenly chilled and she pulled the blanket more tightly around her. She was going to stand, she told herself. She was going to make her way back into the house without her grandmother’s assistance.