After school, I entered the empty house, did the chores, fixed a snack. I tried working on an essay for history. I couldn’t concentrate. In my closet hung several dresses. I never wore dresses. I remembered Mrs. Trent in her seedy outfit at the concert, I remembered Gran saying my clothes wouldn’t fit Ezra but they would fit Mrs. Trent.

Taking the dresses off their hangers, I folded them into a neat pile. I pulled clothes from my drawers, too.

Padding downstairs, I placed the clothing for Mrs. Trent on the kitchen table and searched for Bayley, or Caleb, any living thing would do. But the animals had curled up together by the stove. It would have been cruel to move them. Outside, Shep sat alert in the back pasture. At four months he was almost as big as the yearling sheep.

I stoked the fire and carried the pile of clothes down the hall to Ezra’s room.

Light spilled through the open doorway. The room was bright now, the curtain pulled wide open. Yellow shafts of sun slanted in, dappling the floor, warming the bed.

I opened the top drawer in the dresser and found the scraps of things Mrs. Trent had collected since coming to stay with us. There were her letters, in blue airmail envelopes, two stamps fixed in each corner.

One by one I put the clothes from my closet and my drawers into Mrs. Trent’s dresser.

I stood before Ezra’s bed, touched my hand to his quilt, remembered Shep peeing there.

Brushing back the sides of my hair, I sighed and sat down on the bed’s edge. In every corner the room reflected Ezra. I saw him immersed in a book. Bounding after the puppy. Cross-legged on the floor. Banging on the Christmas tins.

I lay down, carefully fitting my body to the peaks and valleys Ezra had left in the mattress. I turned softly, buried my face in his pillow. I could smell Ezra’s hair.

One of his curls clung to the pillow case. I picked it up between my thumb and my finger, played it over my cheeks, over my lips, down my neck. Closing my eyes, I imagined Ezra, beside me, up on his elbow, talking, tucking my hair behind my ear. I imagined touching his face, certain of the way it would feel under my fingertips. In my mind I traced the crags around his eyes, touched the cresent scar.

I stayed there a long time, filling myself with Ezra.

Gran, Mrs. Trent, and Ezra arrived home shortly after dinner, looking tired.

“Well?” I asked, panting. I’d been in the back pasture when they pulled in.

“Mostly a runaround,” Gran said.

Mrs. Trent added. “They know where we are. They will be in touch. We reached no decision. I hope you can extend your hospitality a little longer.”