When, pray tell, has any little girl ever found anything good in a cabin in the woods? Who inhabits such places? Cannibalistic gingerbread fetishists, cross-dressing wolves, recently eaten grandmothers, polyamorous dwarves in the market for a cleaning lady, loamy, malevolent erl-kings, acorn-toothed vegetation gods, vine-spitting green men, hungry old ladies with iron teeth and mortars and pestles parked askew in the driveway, headless, deathless, deal-cutting, green-skinned knights & aging final girls & witches & hags & crones & chain saw enthusiasts & hillbilly horrors & bad scientists & cult leaders & the possessed, by demons or drugs or dreams.

And here I was with no cape nor girdle nor fat tasty brother to protect me. Alone and unguarded, like the stupidest woodsman or princess.

I knocked again.

Luke opened the door. He looked as though he had been expecting me.

“No rota today?” I said, as sweetly as I could manage. If I closed my eyes, I could still see the rind of Serena’s hip.

“In fact, no,” he said. “I have an appointment today. I came to tell you, but …” He trailed off and spread his hands. Up close, his cleanliness was distracting. I had only ever seen him sweaty, covered in soil. Now he looked exposed, as though his last protective barrier had been painfully scrubbed away.

He even wore a watch. I noticed because he looked at it. I was waiting for him to say something more about what had just happened, to chastise me or confide in me or commiserate with me, but he did not. “Actually, I’ve found something that might interest you,” he said. “I still have a minute, if you want to come in.”

I wanted to come in.

From the inside, Luke’s cottage looked a little like a tree house that had fallen out of its tree. It was modest: a single bed covered in a thin pink blanket, a kitchenette, and a low bureau crowned with four toothy towers of books. A table and two chairs were positioned by the window. On the table was a vase of wilting black-eyed Susans.

“Can I offer you something?” he asked, oddly formal now. “Lemonade?”

“Okay,” I said. I wandered over to the bureau and drew my fingers across the titles of his books. Some of them I recognized from my father’s bookshelves: The Heart of the Buddha, Catch-22, Siddhartha, The Rings of Saturn. Not Lolita. Lolita would really be too much, here.

He set a glass on the table. “I put in a sprig of our lavender,” he said. “And here,” he said. He handed me a photo album bound in red leather. He smiled at me with half his mouth.