By the time I reached the park all my thoughts had collapsed to a pinprick. I felt something similar to hopelessness. It was the feeling of being alone with my memories. No one now could confirm the truth, so everything I could say would be tantamount to a lie.

For now I sat in the space between what happened and what I would say about it. I reclined on a park bench.

Isaac would drive all night. I thought about the reasons people do that. To make up after an argument with a faraway lover. To make it to someone’s deathbed. It was so urgent. I wished we could live all the time with the rules suspended like this: the way I’d always felt, on the farm.

In the park that night I was in no danger. Some crusties approached me, maybe in search of dope money. From behind I might have looked like any short-haired girl. But I turned and bared my teeth and they scuttled back into the dark. I couldn’t think about what I’d done—any of it. There was lots to distract me—icy street lamp light fanning through landscaped trees, the wet bronze statue, the smooth noises of the cars, the fake world I had forgotten. Dawn began to raise the sky. My skin was clammy with dew. The first pigeons flopped down from their hiding places. An early jogger in a glowing yellow vest swerved around the bench, to take the wide way around. A few dog walkers came out, with their bumbling little mutts. Our white dogs would have eaten these dogs.

The sun hadn’t even come out when I spotted Isaac crossing the street from his car.

He was not the same. His neck was wider, his shoulders full. He had stubble on his cheeks.

“There she is,” Isaac said. “The girl who needs no help from nobody.”

I thought of his giving Bay money, his kissing me in the hayloft, his inviting me home. I said nothing.

“Christ, Berie,” he said. “What is this dress you’re wearing? You need a shower.”

“I don’t.”

He gave me a long look, sweet and pitiful. I stared at the ground. “You’re right,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

“And I’m sorry I left you hanging last Valentine’s Day,” I said. “I really tried to come meet you.”

“Valentine’s Day?” he said. “You came to Durham?”

“No,” I said, “When you were going to meet me in Asheville . . .”

“Oh, right. No, I never came. You were so mean when I left, remember?”

But I remembered his saying he’d come whether or not I wanted him to. I remembered his saying, You’ll want to come. By February, you will. I needed someone to have that faith in me.

I said what people would come to expect me to say: “I wasn’t really myself.”