After that, almost every evening is like that. A good meal and Evona laughing and Bell plays a Joni Mitchell song for them and then they eat peach ice cream or lemon cookies and at some point in the night Asher finds himself looking at Evona the way he never looked at Lydia. Sometimes Evona sings while Bell plays. Asher likes it best when Evona sings Mama Cass songs. Other times they all talk on the porch while Justin lies on the ground with Shady, watching the stars.

Some nights Evona can’t come out of her room for supper and later he can hear her softly crying.

Some nights he feels paralyzed by fear: fear they’ll be found; fear he will never find Luke; fear that he will find him.

Some nights it’s easy to forget that Tennessee even exists.

Some nights Asher thinks Key West is the whole world and that the people who are sitting there with him eating pie or watching the night are the only ones left.

Some nights he thinks they are just a dream God is having.

Sometimes he thinks there may not be a God at all. This is perhaps the most frightening thing of all for him.

Other times Asher looks at the blue-black sky and imagines Zelda watching the stars, thinking about him and Justin, and he can hardly stand it. He thinks about the way Lydia would never go out and look at the night sky but how she is probably awfully lonesome now.

He hates thinking of Lydia being lonesome, even if he has to battle hating her. It seems to him she’s afraid of everything in the world and doesn’t know what to do about it.

Some nights he thinks Tennessee is just a dream he had one time, with green hills and cows chewing their cuds and cicadas screaming in the hot night.

13

13

The three of them ride their bicycles down the narrow streets, zigzagging beneath the tunnel of tree limbs lush with leaves and purple flowers. They ride past the graveyard where the tombstones glow in the gray shadows, then ride faster once they near the ocean and catch its salted scent.

Evona leads the way, turning down one street and then another, sometimes standing on her pedals while she sings.

(My Dixie darling, listen to the song I sing)

Sometimes daring Asher to race her, sometimes coasting along quiet. Asher likes to watch her when she is feeling everything in a big way. She is either happy in a big way or sad in a big way. Asher is like that, too, but no one knows that except him. That’s the difference between himself and Evona: she hides nothing and he reveals hardly anything. That’s the way he has always survived. Sometimes even hiding the truth from himself.