Of course not.

And even if Braz had managed to slip the needle in, wouldn’t they both just walk away from him? That didn’t mean they didn’t know something or that they hadn’t been there when punches were thrown. And they could well have been the friends seen pulling the puncher away.

I swam out to the boat mooring that marked a tangle of old tree roots left behind on the bottom when this pond was dredged. Bass liked to lurk down there, and it was one of Daddy’s favorite fishing spots. Nobody was out fishing today, though. I had the place completely to myself.

The late-afternoon sun edged down behind the pines, casting long shadows across the pond. Floating on my back, gazing up into the sky, I watched the fluffy clouds above me go from snowy white to gold and pale, pale pink with streaks of deep blue in the crevices.

Drifting lazily on the still water, I let myself think about Kidd Chapin and gradually realized—the way you realize that a sprained ankle or sore knee has finally stopped hurting even when you put your full weight on it—that I was, at long last, completely over him, even though this breakup had hurt more than any time since Jeff Creech dumped me back in college. I no longer missed Kidd himself, but I sure did miss being in love, missed having my pulse quicken at the thought of someone, missed looking forward to seeing, kissing, being held. All the same, I had spent the whole summer learning to live without all that, and if I never had it again, at least I’d had it once.

(“More than once,” came the preacher’s stern reminder.)

(“More than twice,” leered the pragmatist.)

The gold-and-pink clouds above me deepened to orange and purple and I was beginning to think about food when something big landed in the water off the pier fifty feet behind me with an enormous splash. I was so startled that it was as if a featherbed had been yanked out from under me, and I sank beneath the surface to come up spluttering as I saw someone swimming toward me.

“Jesus, Dwight!” I said when he pulled up close enough to hear. “I thought you were an alligator or something.”

“Alligator?” Treading water, he grinned at me. “There’s no alligators for a hundred miles.”

“All the same, you should’ve hollered or given me some warning.”

“I really did scare you? Sorry, shug, but I did call. You must have been a million miles away.”

“Just running through the backwoods of memory. Clearing out some old underbrush.”

“Say again?”

“Never mind. What’re you doing here?”

“I thought maybe I’d get up with Eric and Stevie, but they’d already left. Maidie and Isabel both said you’d asked them to come swim this afternoon, so I figured you wouldn’t mind if I came in their place. I stopped by Mama’s, picked up a bathing suit, and here I am. Didn’t mean to scare you, though.”