Jason paid him in cash; no background checks, no requests to furnish proof of who he was, no taxes to file, no way for Connie or Ed to figure out where he’d gone, not that they were looking. When Michael wasn’t plowing driveways or checking on his clients’ empty houses, he was studying.

When summer came around he asked Jason not to have him work in Wellfleet, convinced that Connie or Ed would spy him pruning a hedge or edging a lawn. Come September, once he knew the Gordons were back in Milwaukee, he’d slip away and spend a secret night in their Wellfleet house listening to Ed’s LPs. Ed loved Dylan and the Eagles and all the stuff you’d expect a middle-aged, guitar-playing, sandal-wearing guy like Ed to listen to, but he also had a thing for blues and jazz. It was through Ed that Michael learned about heavy-hitters like Charles Mingus, Art Blakey, and Coleman Hawkins, but he also had albums by obscure musicians like Roswell Rudd, Jeanne Lee, and Alan Shorter. Michael didn’t always love Ed’s music, but he gave it a try, just like he’d read whatever books Connie had read. He studied the lines she’d underlined and paid attention to the notes she wrote in the margins. He wished he could talk to them, but getting that close to them, listening to their music, reading their books—that was as close as he could get to having a sort of conversation.

His overnight visits eventually stopped, like a childhood habit he’d outgrown. Still, he looked after the house whenever he could, the way he was watching over it that cold February afternoon.

He often worked in the barn, where he could use what Ed called his “medieval torture devices,” an amazing collection of the kinds of rusty tools that had been passed down to him: a miter vise, a creeper, a Stanley plane—even a special hacksaw used to dehorn goats and calves.