I step back behind an old ash tree in the neighbor’s yard, really hoping that nobody chooses this moment to gaze out the window at the foliage. At this point, though, I almost don’t care if Kincaid catches me. Knowing is all I care about.

Kincaid goes past the driveway to the wooded turnaround, into the trees. For a long two minutes, I can’t see him.

Then he crosses the lawn—no board, on foot—moving at a fast clip, skipping a couple steps as he lets himself in the front door, his shape visible through the glass panes of the sunporch for a moment before he moves deeper into the house.

I wait, but in what feels like no time, he’s back, going briskly down the steps, over to the tree cover where he stashed his board. He doesn’t emerge right away. I look around the other side of the tree, trying to get a better view. I think he’s just standing there, mostly hidden by woods, looking up at the house.

Then a silhouette moves past the first-floor windows of the house, onto the sunporch, drawn by the sound of the front door closing. It’s a woman, wearing gray—a sweatshirt, faded jeans. As she opens the storm door and screen, looking out, I see her short-cropped hair, pale brown, something that was maybe once a style, since ignored, allowed to lose shape and creep into her collar.

She stands with the screen door open a few feet, not wide enough for anyone to fit through, should they try. Waiting. From nowhere, I hear an echo of my own words from the other night on the trail—That you?

Finally, she steps back. I watch her progress through the house. Her silhouette appears at a front window—kitchen, probably, standing at the sink—where she continues to look out at the world for a time before receding from view.

Kincaid will skate back down the street now. There’s no way he could miss me coming from that direction, so I’ll confront him, ask if that’s his mom he did an end run around, and why. But he doesn’t come. That hint of him I could see through the trees is gone now. He left through the woods.

Nineteen

THEY’VE GOT DEACON POSEY, the little wannabe skater boy, on the rack this afternoon, stretched on his belly on top of the monkey bars with one guy holding his arms, another his legs. Moon warms up his drumsticks, ratatatat-ing on a seesaw, then runs under the monkey bars, pummeling Deacon from forehead to toes before skidding across the cedar chips on his knees, sticks crossed over his head. “Thank you and good night!”

Deacon howls, then giggles wildly when the other guys laugh.