All alone, I brought the throw rope to climb the old-growth trees that stood around the stream in the next holler over, where the ground was so steep that no logger had ever come. Queen had told me that where the branches were too sparse, I could throw first a lead line with a beanbag on the end, then a length of sturdy rope, and finish with a friction knot, and in this way I could climb from canopy to canopy, not touching the ground for hours. I clung to the cool sturdy trunks of oaks and hickories, and tested my weight on the branches. Below I saw the body of a crashed plane, the burned-out structures of an old silver mine. A robin’s nest with the open-beaked chicks. I saw a mother bear with two tumbling babies.

I saw Bay everywhere, but he no longer paid attention to me. I’d lost my mother, Isaac, Queen, and now I was losing Bay. I thought about how everyone who might have loved me ended up disappointed. It’s all right, I tried to tell myself. Life is very long. There’s time for many waves of splitting and reconciliation—this is only the beginning with Bay, only the beginning! But I also felt that I was running out of people to lose.

On the night of the harvest festival, I saw Bay dancing with Sara. She’d made herself a crown of wildflowers on long stems.

I rocked on the porch till I felt seasick. I stared at Bay and Sara, her flower-fairy hair. I remembered last year when we’d centrifuged the honey and met down by the forest.

At a break Sara came over to me. Laughing, she said, “He asked me! He’s my brother, and he’s your brother. Stop sulking.”

“It’s all right,” I managed. But he wasn’t mine to give or withhold.

It’s all right, I told myself. My mind, pulled along by my body, was a weak dog chained around the chest and shoulders.

* * *

The momentum of spring was over, and the year, a spun-up string, now began to untwist. I did not speak to Bay. I barely spoke at all. I didn’t look up at the sky, and I didn’t walk on my own through the forest, and I didn’t eat glowing little plums till I burst. I sat with the sheep, stroked their warm horns. I was trying to lean into my numbness, like leaning into the wind, letting it hold me.

Into this unwinding sad summer came the uninvited guest.

After lunch one day, as we lay about on the porch, dozing, Gemini rode up on one of the dappled horses. He sprang from the saddle, and we watched him run into the house. A few minutes later, we could hear the dogs’ hoarse clamor. I thought it must be Queen or Isaac, and hope speared through me.