She held out both her hands. Her fingers felt tiny in his own; her palms were moist with childlike heat. He had to hold tightly as she leaned back, giving him nearly all her weight, to position herself in a crouch, suspending her body out over the ditch like a piano swinging from a crane. Where had she learned to do this? Who else had held her hands this way?

When she was done he turned around so she could pull her pants back up.

“You don’t have to be afraid, honey.”

Amy said nothing; she made no motion to return to the Tahoe. Around them, the fields were empty, the air absolutely still, as if caught between breaths. Wolgast could feel it, the emptiness of the fields, the thousands of miles they spread in every direction. He heard the front door of the Tahoe open and slam closed; Doyle, going off to take a leak himself. Far off to the south, he heard a distant echo of thunder rolling away and, in the clear aural space behind it, a new sound—a kind of tinkling, like bells.

“We can be friends if you want,” he ventured. “Would that be okay?”

She was a strange girl, he thought again; why hadn’t she cried? Because she hadn’t, not since the zoo, and she’d never asked for her mother, or said she wanted to go home, or even back to the convent. Where was home for her? Memphis, maybe, but he had the feeling it wasn’t. No place was. Whatever had happened to the girl had taken the idea of home away.

Then, “I’m not afraid. We can go back to the car if you want.”

For a moment she just looked at him, in that evaluating way of hers. His ears had adjusted to the silence, and he was certain now that it was music he was hearing, the sound distorted by distance. Somewhere, down the road they were driving on, somebody was playing music.

“I’m Brad.” The name felt bland and heavy in his mouth.

She nodded.

“The other man? He’s Phil.”

“I know who you are. I heard you talking.” She shifted her weight. “You thought I wasn’t listening, but I was.”

A spooky kid. And smart, too. He could hear it in her voice, see it in the way she was sizing him up with her eyes, using the silence to appraise him, to draw him out. He felt as if he were speaking with somebody much older, though not exactly. He couldn’t put his finger on what the difference was.

“What’s in Colorado? That’s where we’re going, I heard you say it.”

Wolgast wasn’t sure how much to say. “Well, there’s a doctor there. He’s going to look at you. Like a checkup.”

“I’m not sick.”