“I’d walked the last couple of miles from the bus stop,” he said, “and I hid across the street. They all had that lean, WASPy look. Curtis and I were both dark like our mother.” The shuttered farm stand whipped by on their left. “While I watched, a landscape crew pulled up at the house and wheeled a mower off the back of the truck. Four kids in the family, and they hired somebody to cut their grass.”

He turned into the drive. The house loomed, not even a light over the front door to welcome them. “I found another hiding place where I could watch them in their backyard. I stayed until it got dark.” He killed the engine but made no move to get out of the car. “I felt like I was watching a TV show. It was his wife’s birthday. There were balloons and presents, this big glass-top table set with flowers and candles. Steaks on the grill. I was so damned hungry, and none of them looked like they had a care in the world. He had his arm around his wife most of the evening. He gave her some kind of necklace as a present. I couldn’t see what it looked like, but from the way she acted, I figured it cost a lot more than five hundred dollars.”

Her heart welled with pity for him. And something more. Something she wouldn’t consider.

“The sickest part is that I kept going back. Maybe a dozen times over the years. It was easier after I got a car. Sometimes I’d see them, sometimes not.” He curled his fingers over the top of the steering wheel. “One Sunday I followed them to church and sat in the back where I could watch them.”

“You hated them, and you wanted to be part of them,” she said. “That’s why you bought this house.”

His hand came off the steering wheel, and his mouth twisted. “A stupid decision. It was a bad time for me. I shouldn’t have done it.”

Now she understood why he refused to change anything in the house. Consciously or unconsciously, he wanted to live inside the museum of their lives.

He got out of the car and came around to help her. Even though she was feeling steadier, she was grateful for his hand as he led her through the front door and into the bedroom.

He understood without her telling him how much she needed to wash away the men’s filth. He helped her undress. Turned on the water.

When she was in the shower, he pulled off his clothes and got in with her. But there was nothing sexual in the tender way he washed her, dried her, tended to the cuts on her feet. Not once did he remind her of what she’d said to him at the bar or criticize her for wandering off the way she had.