“Hey,” she said, smiling, when he hurried out. “Hop in. It’s really close, where we’re going.” The top was down. The sun was still up.

He buckled his seat belt, suddenly shy. He felt like he was on a high school date—excited and anxious, almost sweating, certainly uncertain. His eyes fell on the Jeep’s door. In the little pocket there he saw a cherry ChapStick and a pack of Trident spearmint gum, along with a package of tissues. The cherry ChapStick also reminded him of high school; his first girlfriend, Tricia Sanders, had been a prodigious user.

Joy turned down a narrow road across from a large yellow farmhouse. Anthony had been up and down this road many times by now, but he hadn’t noticed the house or the road. Not long after, she pulled into a parking lot, where there was a wooden sign reading CLAY HEAD TRAIL.

“A hike?” he said doubtfully. He wasn’t dressed for hiking—he was wearing sneakers without socks, and he’d put a long-sleeved plaid shirt, unbuttoned, over his usual gray T-shirt.

“Just a tiny one,” she said. “Not even a hike. A small walk.” She slung a backpack over her shoulders and pointed east. “The ocean is right over there. But you won’t know it until we’re right up on it. These trails are twisty. We get a lot of migratory songbirds out here. And if we’re lucky, we’ll see a yellow-crowned night heron. They’ve got these plumes that come out of the back of their head, makes them look like balding men.”

He said, “I hear the night herons are much cooler than the day herons,” and then held his breath until she laughed. This modest joke had been a risk—in the past six months, he’d given up on both laughing himself and encouraging laughter in others. But she laughed, and he exhaled.

It wasn’t a long walk, nor was it arduous in any way: Joy had told the truth (another point in her favor). About a third of a mile in, they came to a fork. Joy hesitated. “Sea level?” she asked. “Or up?”

“Up,” he said, immediately regretting it—he was prone to vertigo. The trail twisted and turned some more, and now they were headed up, up, up, until at last they stood on top of a bluff overlooking the ocean. Joy indicated a labyrinth of trails winding away from the water. “You can wander on these paths forever,” she said. “It’s called ‘the maze.’” She pointed. “And if you look all the way down there—see? It’s the North Lighthouse, which you can also get to by following Corn Neck Road to the end and then parking and walking along the rocks. This”—she stomped her foot—“is all clay. That’s where the trail gets its name. Maggie used to make little clay figures when we came up here.” She seemed to be lost for a moment in a parental reverie, so Anthony remained quiet and enjoyed the view. He avoided looking straight down, because of the vertigo.