“Not much,” he answered. “Never been much of a reader.”

“Nothing wrong with that. Not everyone is,” Eleanor said. “When I was younger, just a girl, I had thoughts of becoming a writer. Books for children. But things took a different turn.” She looked across the room at the shelves of books—oddly out of place in the house of a farmer—and she smiled. “A lot of words,” she said. “But none of them are mine. It’s the only thing I’ll miss about this place when I finally find somebody to buy it—all those bookcases.”

She told the story in a light voice, though it had a nervous edge, leaving Noah to believe she was not accustomed to so much talking and wanted to avoid saying anything that would sound boastful. He knew he should be responding, but he did not, not beyond nodding and a smile made out of politeness. Yet, he liked her smile, remembering what Taylor Bowers had said about it, that it was the kind of smile you could see a long time after she gave it.

When the supper was finished, he made his compliments of the meal, spoke his appreciation, then stood to leave, saying it was time he found his way back to his campsite, the day still holding some light.

“I’ll drive you,” Eleanor told him.

“No need for that,” he said. “It’s not far, where I’m going.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she insisted, standing. “You’ve got to be bone tired. Where’s your camp?”

“At a little lake down the road,” he said.

He saw the flicker of shock on her face, in the blink of her eyes. She said in a small voice, “Oh …”

“It’s not far,” he said again. “You’ve got your husband’s grandmother to look after.”

“She’ll be fine by herself,” she said. “She’s just sitting there, anyway. Doesn’t know anything going on around her most of the time. I don’t think she’s said a dozen words in a week. I’ll drive you. There’s a pull-off on the road that’ll put you maybe two hundred yards from the lake.” She paused, offered a weak smile. “I know the lake well,” she added quietly. “It’s where my husband died.”

He did not speak, did not know what to say.

“Are you using that old shack?” she asked.

“No,” he answered awkwardly. “Didn’t know who to ask about it, and it don’t seem right using a place that belongs to somebody else.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “Use it. Lots of people have over the years—or they used to. My late husband did. He used to go there to stay the night, just to be by himself. I think everything there—the cooking utensils, the lamp, the cots, everything—was something Boyd put there. Use anything you need, anything at all.”

“I appreciate it,” Noah said.

“The man who built the lake—his name was Arch Wheeler—put up the shack so he’d have a place to stay in when he wanted to go fishing at night,” she added. “He died about six months after the lake filled up with water. They found him sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, facing the lake, like he was watching the sun go down and his life went down with it. They said there was a smile on his face, like he had seen something that made him so happy he couldn’t let go of it. It was just after they put the fish in, and he never got to fish in it at all. His son owns it now, but his son lives in Texas somewhere. Not far from Dallas, I think. Comes back here every three or four years. Doesn’t matter to him who fishes the lake, or uses the shack. Boyd’s daddy helped build it and Boyd used to look after it, so I guess that makes me the person who can give permission to use it.”