He set his hand on her leg. She admired his fingers, how they were thick and strong, his wrists bony. But suddenly the warmth and pressure of his hand made her feel as though he were holding her down, keeping her in place. She felt carsick and had to look out the passenger window. Ordinarily, she’d appreciate the simple beauty of the fields of soybean and corn and the bur oaks that looked as lonely as scarecrows. The light was golden and new. But the beauty wasn’t simple anymore. Nothing was. If she’d never left East Troy and had continued living her old life, she would be able to show off Arthur like a prize she’d won at the fair. They could cheer on Raylee at the parade and attend the grave count like a real couple. She could imagine herself in Arthur’s life the way he was imagining it, but she had a harder time imagining how Arthur could fit into hers.

“I used to have this soccer coach named Jeremy,” Arthur said. “He would have loved the resort. He was from South Africa and fancied himself a real ladies’ man. He wore an ascot and white driving loafers. When I broke my ankle, he came to my house and gave me a collection of Somerset Maugham stories to keep me occupied while I recovered. He made a point of telling me to read the one about the tennis player who had an affair. He thought it was a good coming-of-age story.” He laughed to himself. “I was only fourteen years old.”

She’d spent a week with Arthur and talked with him about things she didn’t talk about with her closest friends at the resort, and still she hardly knew him. He came from a different world—a world of Somerset Maugham, tennis, and soccer coaches from South Africa. He’d eaten blood sausage at a country café in Spain, and he’d drunk Turkish coffee out of tiny cups in Greece. She grew up with 4-H, frozen custard, and the Top Forty countdown. Dinner was often corned beef hash out of a can.

Their differences seemed more apparent with every inch of pavement on Highway G that led her closer to the resort. He had the resources to travel and explore the world, and the confidence to do so alone. He’d traveled so much that he’d grown weary of it, while she’d moved just twenty minutes from home—even spending time on Lake Beulah, that much farther from the nucleus of the square and everything she’d always known, gave her a different perspective on her town. She felt like she could talk to him about almost anything, yet she didn’t know how to give voice to these feelings. She was hesitant to point out inadequacies he hadn’t yet observed.