Here, the road was not so muddy. Someone had obviously taken the time to regrade the earth and put down gravel. It was the kind of thing her father would never do: smooth out a road to make life easier.

She came to a bumpy, breathless stop in front of the Walker house.

Matthew was carrying a huge bale of hay over to the cattle pen. He saw her and dropped the bale and came toward her. He wore an oversized hockey sweater and shorts and rubber boots. “Len?” She loved how he had renamed her, made her into someone else, someone only he knew. “Are you okay?”

“I missed you,” she said. Stupid. They had barely been apart. “I wish … we need time together.”

“I’ll come over to see you tomorrow night,” he said, taking her in his arms. It was where she wanted to be.

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“I’ll sneak over to see you.” He said it with such conviction that she didn’t know what to say. “Tomorrow night.”

“You can’t.”

“At midnight. Sneak out to meet me.”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“You guys have an outhouse, right? So it’s no big deal to go out. And do they ever look up in the loft for you in the middle of the night?”

She could dress warmly and go out and just not come back for a while. They could steal an hour together, maybe more. Alone.

If she said no right now, it would prove that Leni could live a sensible life, with the kind of love that no one would ever compare to heroin and she would never cry herself to sleep.

“Please? I need to see you.”

“Leni!”

She heard her father’s voice yelling at her. She pushed Matthew away, but too late. Her father had seen them together and now he was striding toward them, while Mama ran along behind him.

“What the hell are you doing over here?” Dad said.

“I—I—” She couldn’t answer. Stupidstupidstupid. She shouldn’t have come here.

“I thought I told you to stay away from my Lenora,” Dad said. He grabbed Leni by the bicep, yanked her to his side.

Leni bit down hard, so she wouldn’t make a sound. She didn’t want Matthew to know her dad had hurt her.

“Leni,” Matthew said, frowning.

“Stay back,” she said. “Please.”

“Come on, Leni,” Dad said, pulling her away.

Leni stumbled along beside her father, crashing into him and pulling away on the uneven ground. If she got too far, he wrenched her back to his side. Mama hurried along beside, walking with Leni’s bicycle.

Back in their yard, Leni yanked free and almost fell, scrambled across the muddy grass, faced him. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” she cried.

“Ernt,” Mama said, trying to sound reasonable. “They’re just friends—”

Dad turned to Mama. “So you knew about them?”