Every day Annie expected Lew to reappear, which filled her with an intense and constant ambivalence: She wanted to know he was safe, desperately, but his obsession with Baby terrified her. A few times, frightened by how numbed she had become with grief for him, she had gone to the sinkhole. There she had felt him in the dappled light, the breathing trees, had imagined him emerging out of the water, sun and shadow giving form to his transparent nakedness. No, not naked but nude, as on the day he had cast her into the deep water so she would know that nothing lay between loving and killing, his cold limbs as hard as marble, his heart the stone heart of youth.

Most nights, between sleeping and waking, she half dreamed him returning to her bed, smelling of the forest. He would come like the morning at the moment the sun begins to lever the night away, birds singing out of the day’s widening. In that place he was whole and sane. But some nights, waiting for him, something else would slip through, from the west, sliding beneath the sheets, rising above her, a serpent with the face of a lion, ruined wings of bone and skin. Tearing open her neck, it would draw out the pale sinew of her soul. This she knew, in that twilit place, was Raj.

She hadn’t had any contact with Raj since his last letter, which had made her so mad and upset. At herself. What he had told her was true: She had no right to expect that kind of intimacy from him.

Unable to concentrate on her typing, she started to stuff envelopes when she heard a knock at the back door. It was probably Nora, since it was midmorning, but when the knock came again, she knew it wasn’t, since Nora would have tried the door and come in.

She opened it. There, leaning casually against the jamb, stood Raj.

“Oh, there you are,” he exclaimed, as if he had just lost track of her for a second.

She could hardly speak, she felt so confused and upset. Getting hold of herself, finally, she said, “And there you are,” and embraced him.

“Gosh, the natives are very friendly,” he said. “Me here to bring you peace, firewater, and substandard weaponry. In return I ask only for your land and your women.”

“When did you get back?”

“About an hour ago.”

“How long are you in town?”

Widening his eyes, he puffed out his cheeks. “Don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I came to look for Lew. I don’t understand why they can’t find him. And I wanted to see you and…Anonymous.”

“Baby’s with Mom,” she said. “I’ll make you some tea.”

He followed her upstairs into the cramped kitchen. She put on the kettle and remained at the stove as he leaned against the fridge.

“So there’s no news about Lew?”