“Do you think her mother believed it?”

“Believed what?”

“That story you fed her,” I said.

“Of course not. She’s a mother,” Carter answered.

I have never remembered the movie we saw, and even in my dream I knew nothing about it. We were at the theater, holding hands, and then we were walking at the base of the Belleayre ski lift, where we had been with Harry Burger’s nieces—Amy with me and a girl named Rene Wallace with Carter. Rene worked as a chambermaid at the Greenleaf Lodge. She and Carter had been dating since the first week of the summer season.

I did not know what happened to Carter and Rene. We were all walking together, and suddenly, they were no longer with us, and I said to Amy, “Maybe I should find them.”

“They’re all right,” she said. “They just want some time alone. Are you afraid of being with me?”

“Of course not. I just wondered—”

“Bobo, it’s all right,” she insisted softly.

We walked past the gate leading to the ski lift. There was a sharp chill in the air, like the late-autumn nights in Georgia. I thought I heard the call of an owl somewhere from below us. Far off, I could see the feathered rim of the mountains and the murky purple of the horizon under the moon. We passed a hemlock and Amy took my hand and pulled me into its shadows. She said, “I’m cold. Will you hold me for a minute?”

She moved to me and I embraced her. She curled her arms around my waist and rested her face on my chest. I could smell the delicate scent of flowers in her black-gold hair. Her breasts were soft against me.

“This is nice,” she whispered. “You’re warm.”

“You, too,” I said.

After a moment, she asked, “Do you have a girlfriend back home?”

I knew it was a test. Carter had told Amy about Carolyn, as he had told me about Adam. Carter loved the entanglements of romance.

“There’s a girl I dated when we were in school,” I answered.

“What’s her name?”

“Carolyn.”

“Oh. Do you write to her?”

“Some. Yes, some.”

“You must get lonely, being so far away from home.”

“A little,” I confessed. I added, “It’s not as bad as it was.”

“Do you think I would like your home?”

“I doubt it. It’s just a farm.”

“I’ve never been to a farm,” she said. “Not a real one.”

“What about you? Do you have a boyfriend?”

She lifted her face to me. “I don’t know,” she replied.

I tried to be flippant, as I thought Carter would be. “Did you forget?”

A tiny smile, almost a shadow, moved on her lips. “We had a fight before I left.”

“Why?”

“He’s spoiled. He thinks he can get anything he wants simply because he has money.”