Or maybe what had followed her to bed was the soft voice of Noah, saying he had enjoyed the supper. Quiet Noah, making more words with his body than his mouth.

She rolled her body into a sitting position on the side of the bed and listened. The only sound was from outside, from birds and the cow and the drone of an airplane that had the annoying sound of a wasp. Cole Berry, she guessed. Cole had the only airplane in the county. Flew it for his own pleasure on clear days. In autumn, he would take passengers with him for a small charge, making slow circles over trees that had the look of red and orange and yellow embers from a fire slow-burning across the mountains.

Once, after the war, she had taken a ride in Cole Berry’s airplane and had marveled at the colors below her. She remembered Cole shouting at her, “That’s why God keeps a look on things from up here. Got a prettier view.”

She slipped from the bed, took the robe she had draped over the back of a chair in front of her dresser and put it on, then moved into the hallway separating her bedroom from the bedroom where Beatrice slept. The door to the room was open, causing her to pause in surprise. The door had never been open in the morning. She stepped quickly to the doorway and looked inside the room. The old woman was not in her bed.

She hurried into the bedroom, took a quick look at the sides of the bed, thinking Beatrice could have fallen, but did not see her. She turned, went back into the hallway, then to the bathroom. Still did not see the old woman.

She called out, “Granny.” Listened. No answer.

A flutter of fear struck her. She rushed down the hallway to the living room, then into the kitchen, calling, “Granny. Where are you?”

The old woman was not in the house.

She ran outside, hurried to the barn, calling in a loud voice. The cow stood at the barnyard fence. Made a deep lowing sound from her raised head.

The old woman was not in the barn, or anywhere around it, and Eleanor thought of her own grandfather, how he had been in old age, his mind wandering aimlessly, how he had followed his mind, taking off without warning, disappearing into the woods of the mountains that were as much a part of him as his own heartbeat. Once, he was missing for two days and a search party of men had taken their dogs and tried to track him, but even in his mindless old age, he had been a better woodsman than any of them. When they finally found him, he was huddled in a gouged-out break of land where a large tree had fallen, covered in limbs that he had pulled over himself, hiding like Indians would hide, he would say later. From stories told about it, her grandfather had fought mightily against being rescued, even bringing blood to one of the rescuers.