“That’s for me to live with and for you it’s that you could’ve been different. I hope it eats at you. I hope you wake up crying for me. Because you won’t ever see me again. And you can’t rectify anything and Raf can’t be my friend ’cause you can’t edit or change what’s over.”

He wouldn’t let me walk in with him at Logan, or even park the car. He yanked his bag—a canvas carpenter’s tote—from the back seat and swung into daylight. He said nothing. I watched him join the hectic current of traffic at the passenger drop-off. I saw that his clothes were too frail for even this milder northern day, that the back of his unlined jacket still had a powdering of construction dust. His Levi’s puckered where his knee poked through, and there was red Texas mud frozen to his boot heel. The wind roughed his hair and it flared for a second before he was gone through the terminal doors.

The last step in my setting up a work space at the inn was plugging in Raymond’s gift computer. Its small screen flushed amber as the machine powered up.

“If you’re going to stay long, you should sublease your Boston place,” Dottie said.

I slotted in a disk, as I’d learned to do, and popped some keys.

“That’s cute,” Dottie said.

“Well, it works. Would you like it? You may have it,” I said.

“The inn has its own, for reservations and all. I keep it stored away off season,” Dottie said. She puttered off to get the mail.

“I could never work on this one,” I said.

I retrieved, read, and deleted the long poem I had written on the road. There was nothing in there of Raymond or Mississippi or Raf or the storm that had seemed to follow me; nothing of driving or dreaming or hoping or falling down or phone calls or missing anybody.

Around six, Mario came with a double armload of fresh flowers for Dottie. He was dressed in a black suit, starched shirt, and a massive scarf looped around his throat three times.

“Isn’t he striking?” Dottie said. She wore a fake fur over her winter-white sweater dress.

“He’s gorgeous,” I said.

“I’m think of poor Zerlina in Don Giovanni,” Mario said. “ ‘You may yet be making fun of me.’ ”

“Never. We wouldn’t,” Dottie said.

“So then, we go,” he said.

“Get her home by twelve,” I said. “And don’t try to hand me the flat tire on the freeway routine.”

“She should no try to be funny, because it’s not,” Mario said.

“Listen to your father, Paige,” said Dottie.