She smiled again, hugged her arms to her abdomen, looked at him as though searching to find something hidden in his face. “Maybe it’s because you made me start talking again,” she said, “and when I started talking to other people, I started listening to myself. The men around here can say all they want to about you having a gift for fishing. I think you’ve got a gift for making people take a look at themselves. That’s why I’d like to be a teacher. I’d like to be able to do that, too. Maybe I will, one day. Maybe I’ll leave this place and go back to college and become a teacher.” She looked away, at the lake, then turned her face back to him. “Maybe,” she said.

She uncrossed her arms and stepped to him and reached to take his hands from the armrests of the chair.

“I want to do something I shouldn’t do, and I know it,” she said softly. “I want to hug you.”

He did not move, did not speak.

She tugged at him gently and he stood.

She folded her arms around him. He let his hands go to her back in a loose embrace. Her body rested easily against him, her face fitting the curve of his neck, her shoulders nestled into his chest.

“I’m going back to Ada’s house early in the morning, and I don’t think I’ll see you before you leave,” she whispered. “But I hope you come back someday.”

Still, he did not speak.

She released her embrace, moved back from him, near the cot. Took his hands. Her eyes held on his face for a moment; then she lifted his hands and looked at them, pulled them to her face, touched her face against them. She sat on the cot, still holding his hands. The hard striking of a bloodrush trembled across her chest; her throat filled with moisture. She released his hands and turned her body to lie on the cot, her head against the pillow. He sat on the cot’s edge.

“Will you hold me?” she asked.

He moved to lie down against her, slipped his arm around the pillow, cradling her head. She lifted her face to him, kissed him softly on his lips, held the touch to feel his breath in her mouth.

“Will you come back, Noah?” she asked again in whisper.

He did not answer.

“Will you remember me?” she said.

He dipped his head in a nod.

She smiled, turned on the cot, letting her back curl against his chest. He could smell a faint vanilla scent of cologne from her neck, a sweet, warm scent. In time, he could hear sleep come to her breathing and soon he, too, slept.

When he awoke, she was gone.

On the table inside the shack, he found the photograph of the two of them.

TWENTY-SIX

He sat at the table and tried to count the money, but got confused over it. Three thousand dollars he guessed, though he was unsure if he had come up with the figure by counting or had it in his mind from the letter. The man named Garland had said he was owed three thousand dollars, and it seemed close to that amount. Whatever the total was, it was more money than Noah had ever seen at one time.