The last sentence lingered there. Her eyes froze as if shocked by its sound. “I’m sorry,” she said in a chastened voice. “That was a terrible thing to say.”

The apology wasn’t for me. She held herself tighter, as if afraid of what was inside. I let it drop. “Henry—would it be possible to see him?”

Interrupted from guilt, she looked pensive. “I’d just like him to know I was here,” I said.

She nodded slowly. “He’s on the patio.”

Henry Cantwell sat on a bench wearing a thin sweater, staring across the rear grounds at a secluded stand of pines. He was utterly still. His stillness bothered me; it mimed too well the sad, endless patience of those very old who have nothing more to expect. He looked like an old man on a park bench, who shuffled to his mailbox at the same time every day and combed the paper for coupons to clip, painstakingly, and take to cheap groceries to save a quarter on tea. I crossed the patio and stood next to him.

I couldn’t tell if he had heard me. His face was ravaged, his eyes bleary and unspeakably tired.

“’Lo, Henry,” I said casually.

He moved over on the bench without answering. I sat down. We watched the grounds in silence. A squirrel rooted at the base of a pine tree, found something, and disappeared up the other side of the tree.

“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “She’s here, then … no chance even to talk …”

I lit a cigarette. I took one deep drag and watched it burn in my hand. “It was Aeschylus who said, ‘In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.’”

He turned to me. “Do you believe that, Adam?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps it was something to say.”

He seemed to ponder that. Then he shook his head, wonderingly. “Jason should be here, and instead it’s you.”

“I don’t mind. I’m thirsty, though.”

He marshaled himself with effort and stood to get me something. I let him.

He returned with a Bushmills on ice.

“Thanks.”

He sat down again. “It’s still peaceful back here,” I said.

He nodded. “Twenty-eight years—my family’s had it for seventy. Not many people last that long in one place.”

“Maybe in the South.”

He thought. “Maybe here. But it’s changing.”

I held the cool, icy glass in my hand. Sun fell through the pines on dark swatches of lawn.

“The funeral’s tomorrow,” he said.

“I know.”

We watched together. The squirrel reappeared, scrambling down the tree onto the lawn. Henry’s gaze seemed to follow it. “I’ve always wondered, Adam, why Roland never taught you to hunt.”

I smoked the cigarette. “I suppose I was afraid I’d like it too much.”