Isaac looked down. His wide-set eyes had such long eyelashes, which made him seem sweet even now. He nudged a squash with his foot. “I’ll see you on Valentine’s Day. Let’s do two p.m.” He named a coffee shop on the west side of town. “You’ll want to come. By February, you will.”

We stood in silence by the compost heap. A pair of candy-red scarlet tanagers landed on the leaning fence. They weren’t even rare; I just loved them. I wrapped my arms around myself, because my heart, like the two-inch rock protruding above the flat field, was exploding with lightning.

I couldn’t restrain myself. “See those beautiful birds?” I said to Isaac. But he didn’t turn.

Bay yelled down to us from the back porch. “Train’s leaving,” he shouted.

“Back to Babylon!” Sara said, loading Isaac up with pemmican wrapped in waxed cloth that I recognized was made from the pale blue fabric of my old Peter Pan blouse.

Isaac and I didn’t hug goodbye—it wouldn’t have made sense. We were acting like we barely knew each other, of course. But he shook my hand. Then he leaned in to my ear. “The film won’t be ruined unless you unspool it,” he said.

I watched the car pull out, and I could feel a part of myself stretching, like a fishing wire, connecting me to the car that had now vanished into the forest, to Isaac, to my mother, whom I could almost see in the kitchen, opening the statement from her new bank account, wondering if I’d come home. The fishing wire grew taut and snapped.

When Isaac left, the morning was warm, almost clammy. But midafternoon a green wind began to blow, and soon small, hard Dippin’ Dots snow was flurrying in the dark places of the woods. First the snow melted, then it stuck. That was it, the greenery was done for—“You’re done for!” I laughed to the deciduous trees—in two days the woods would be yellow.

CHAPTER 23

Isaac was gone, and the snow fell, and the family prepared for the action, to which I was not invited. Sara took down the September plaque and put up the October one.

I should have thrown the broken camera in the lake, but instead I wrapped it in a piece of canvas and buried it behind the storage house, near the parked school bus. I wondered how long the film would last underground, whether it might outlast me.

We took out the winter-weight sweaters and traded them around. I saw my sweater from last year, hand-knit wool with a high neck, go to Gemini, and I tried not to covet it. Instead I accepted a faux-Nordic sweater style in an acrylic blend from Dillard’s.