Annie frowned. His grin vanished as he realized he had imitated her mom. The flicker of an indigo bunting gave reason for him to turn away. She didn’t know what to make of him, at once so private and so goofy. He seemed happy all the time, though she suspected it was a happiness riding like a rodeo cowboy upon a huge bull of unhappiness. It never threw him. He rode it whooping, spinning, and grinning, the strain of it only rarely coming through. In this he was heroic. She admired him. She loved how energetic he always was, his silly laugh, his wry, reticent mouth, his long-fingered, almost feminine hands, like weak-winged birds, fluttering out and drawing back. She loved his lean face, its sharp lines avid and deeply curious, though his eyes were a little foggy—distant and dreamy. This, she felt, was as much to protect you as him: On those rare occasions they cleared, they took you right to the heart of his privacy, which was as painful for you as it was for him. But he hardly ever looked her in the eyes. Shyness perhaps, but she also sensed he didn’t completely trust her. It drove her crazy that she couldn’t quite figure out what he thought of her.

“Would you keep me in a cage?” he said.

“What?”

“Would you file my teeth and charge people to watch me eat rats in your basement?”

She didn’t like this—Lew was getting weird enough—and didn’t respond.

More seriously he said, “I don’t think Ruth really wants me in her house.”

“Why do you think that?”

He shrugged. “Would you love your parents no matter what?”

Annie wondered if someone had said something to him about her dad.

“I guess.”

“Do you always have to forgive your family and friends everything no matter what they do?”

“Why are you saying this?”

He hesitated, his attention caught by a dragonfly, making its signature, flourishing away. “Because I’ve done really bad things.”

“What bad things?”

“Will you still be my friend after I tell you?”

“Yeah.”

He smiled, glancing slyly at her. “You’re just saying that because you want to know what I did.”

“No, then.”

“Then I can’t tell you.”

“I know what you’re doing,” she said. “I’m not going to beg you.”

He shucked the seeds from a stem of wild grass, looking out at a fallow field of sunflowers and brassy Spanish needles, the shade oak at its center turning russet.

“What did you do?” she said. “You can tell me. I’ll still be your friend, I swear.”

“On the lives of your unborn children?”

“Yes—no. I can’t do that.”

“Then I can’t tell you.”

Pushing into his path, she put her hands around his neck and made as if she were strangling him. “Tell me. Tell me. Tell me.”