When he was done for the day he called his mother again as she had asked him to do, and what she had anticipated had occurred: his father had come home and had gone to bed. She didn’t want to leave him alone; when he woke up, he would be hungry. She asked Joe if he wanted her to make dinner for him, and he said that had not been the idea. She asked if he was angry, and he told her no. She wanted to know if he was all right. He sounded as if something was wrong.

He said he was fine and would call her before the end of the week. He told her that Karen and Steffie could be coming down and he might ask her to look after Steffie—he didn’t know. It confused her. He said that he might be back in Manitou himself by Saturday; but that was not what he had tried to say originally, and he knew it. He let it go. Before he said goodbye he asked her to tell his father that it was going well—he would understand.

The sky was darkening again as Leland came out of the stationery store from which he had called. The logical thing, he supposed, was to go back to Norma’s, but he did not want to do that. He was not ready to talk to her. He got in the big shiny car he had left parked at a fire hydrant—no ticket. MacIver had not had the summons bug when he had driven this car. There was nothing funny about it or about anything related to MacIver anymore; but something seemed to have happened in the course of this day, and Leland felt loose, giddy, and disjointed. Not the least of it was the cold, working on the backs of his hands. He had scratched his left hand until it had opened up. There were two small spots of dried blood now, surrounded by a swath of white cracked skin.

He drove from the foot of Bay Slope around the bay and across downtown toward the Point—one of the places MacIver and Norma had visited the night before MacIver had died. Leland had not forgotten. He had no business there; he was getting lost. He had done it after the war when he had needed it; he had done it in Manitou when he had been living alone. The logical thing was to call Karen, but he would tell her what had happened only to have to repeat it to Norma later.

The traffic thinned as he came out on the other side of the city. The Point was public land, parks and a long, curving drive past the marshland that had been reclaimed for the International Airport, and then around to the north and along the sea. The shore was rocky and during the days the parking lots were crowded with fishermen’s cars; in the spring and summer nights the lots were filled with the cars of lovers. There were jokes about that. Once, while they had had the LaSalle, he and Karen had come down: once had been plenty. He had wound up with his feet sticking out the open window and the top of his head jammed against the armrest of the opposite door.