“Do you ever think about the war, Noah?” she said, leaning forward over the table.

The question surprised him. “Sometimes,” he answered.

“I do,” she said. “I think about it a lot, or I wonder about it. I think it must have been something that everybody who had to fight in it will never be able to put aside.”

“Maybe not,” he said.

“I came here a few times after Boyd died,” she said quietly, “thinking I might be able to have some sense of him, of what made him take his own life, but nothing ever happened. Nothing. I had no sense of him at all, and then I got to thinking it was because the man I married was not the man who came back to me after the war.”

She paused, turned her face to gaze out of the door. “He had a kind of—of meanness about him when he came back, especially if he’d been drinking, and that’s something he seldom did before the army. I don’t know what it was, or what caused it, but it was there.” She paused again, offered a small smile that had a quiver in it. “Oh, he could be sweet when he wanted to be. Like the bookcases in the house. That was sweet. He didn’t have to do that, but he did.” She turned her face back to Noah. “There just weren’t enough bookcases to make the difference, I suppose. But I guess I should have known that from the start. My sisters told me. My sisters said I was jumping into a marriage that would be shaky at best, and I have to admit they were right. Everybody talks about the good and bad of marriage, like it was something lived on a seesaw, but they forget to tell you that sometimes the bad of it weighs more than the good of it and the seesaw stays in one place.” She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, shook her head. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m just feeling sorry for myself. I did have good moments with Boyd, especially at the beginning.”

Outside, cicadas began to sing. A whippoorwill made its first call. A frog gave a sound like an objection to the bird. The soup of night began to thicken. Noah stood to light the kerosene lamp on the table, then sat again.

“Do you mind if I talk about the war?” she said.

“No,” he replied after a moment of hesitation.

“I’ve never really talked about it very much at all. To Boyd, some, but not very much. He told me not to do it. He said people didn’t like remembering it.”

“It’s all right,” he said.

“Did you ever kill anyone?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess. I was never close enough to know if it was me or somebody else that made the shot.”

“But you saw soldiers fall?”

“Yes.”

Eleanor let her fingers touch the handle of the coffee cup. She gazed at it, and Noah knew she was weighing a thought that bothered her.