“… and I get there, I drive there, and I should have known. Oh, Stanley, I should have, because I get there and she is sitting on the ground. I mean, what grown woman sits on the ground in a cemetery? She’s nuts. Not okay. Not someone you can trust. Not someone you should ever—no matter how driven to want to believe—But that’s the thing, I still want to believe, so I get out of the car, and she stands up, and we laugh a little, and we walk some, and I’m telling her, but she, being nuts, being Mabel, she seems, oh yeah, she seems to be following exactly what I’m saying, and she’s saying, although, now that I think about it, maybe she didn’t say it—it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because I’m talking to her, and she says, yes, he had the Sissy report, absolutely, and then … plunk, out of nowhere … she kissed me.”

Stanley lowered his gaze. He was wearing sandals today. They were heavy brown leather. He could see his big toe clearly, thanks to a ray of white light from the June sun. It was really kind of monstrous, the skin a perilous thickness, a lot of it cracked. He moved the toe. It seemed almost divorced from him, but it was his toe, he was moving it.

“She hadn’t even been drinking. But it wasn’t like kissing your sister—it was a kiss kiss.”

He seemed to have found a stopping point. Stanley gave him a few more seconds, in case it was just a pause.

“I can’t believe I let this happen. I … just, I just can’t. I’ve kissed Don Grady’s wife at night in a cemetery. And she’s so nuts, so crazy—she’ll probably tell him.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Really? You don’t think she will?”

“No. I don’t.”

Adam finally sat down. He looked at Stanley purposefully. He seemed to be checking for something.

“You’ve known her forever.”

“Yes, yes, I have.”

“You don’t think she’ll go to him with this.”

“No.”

“Because if she did …”

“She’s a discreet woman, actually.”

“Discreet?”

“I’d say so.”

Adam stood up again. “Well I—you seem so … certain.”

“She most likely chalks it up to a misunderstanding. Not much worth mentioning.”

“But how, how in the world, could she mistake my … my reason for wanting … to talk?”

“You were excited. You sounded excited. She took it to be—another—a different kind of excitement.” Stanley felt his own ebbing. The early-morning adrenaline, his too many cups of coffee, some of their effects had not yet dulled away. To calm himself the last bit more, he looked at the church windows, away from Adam. He had never looked at them before. They were quite beautiful.