He went back outside, looked up and down the gently sloping terrain on both sides of the house. Three deer stood watching him from the top of the high pasture. The hawk was still gliding, now in a wide circle, making only small adjustments in the angle of its outstretched wings.

He called out Madeleine’s name, this time loudly, and cupped his ears for a reply. There was none. But as he was listening, something caught his eye—below the low pasture, through the trees, a glimpse of fuchsia by the back corner of the little barn.

There were only two fuchsia objects he could think of that belonged in their secluded end-of-the-road world: Madeleine’s nylon jacket and the seat of the new bicycle he’d bought her for her birthday —to replace the one lost in the fire that had destroyed their original barn.

As he strode down, ever more curious, through the pasture, he called her name once more—sure now that what he was looking at was in fact her jacket. But again there was no reply. He passed through the informal row of saplings that bordered the pasture, and as he entered the open mowed area surrounding the barn, he saw Madeleine sitting on the grass at the far corner of the building. She appeared to be intent on something just out of his line of sight.

“Madeleine, why didn’t you—” he began, his annoyance at her lack of response coming through clearly in his voice. Without looking at him, she raised one of her hands toward him in a gesture that meant he should either stop approaching or stop speaking.

When he stopped both, she motioned him forward. He came up behind her and peered around the corner of the barn. And there he saw them—the four chickens, sitting placidly in the grass, their heads lowered, their feet tucked under their breasts. The rooster sat on one side of Madeleine’s outstretched legs, and the three hens sat on the other side. As Gurney stared down at this odd tableau, he could hear the chickens making the same low, peaceful cooing sounds they made on their roost when they were ready for sleep.

Madeleine looked up at Gurney. “They need a little house and a safe fenced yard to run around in. So they can be out as much as they want in the air and be happy and safe. That’s all they want. So we have to do that for them.”

“Right.” The reminder of the construction project ahead irritated him. He looked down at the chickens on the grass. “How are you going to get them back in the barn?”

“It’s not a problem.” She smiled, more at the chickens than at him. “It’s not a problem,” she repeated in a whisper. “We’ll go into the barn soon. We just want to sit in the grass for a few more minutes.”