I’d sat in the car by myself that first night, and some nights after. But mostly, he knew when to expect me, or he saw me go by his kitchen window. He seemed to like to give me time to smoke a cigarette and have a drink before he walked out through the backyard and into the woods after me.

I leaned on a pine tree on my way into the car, and my hand was sticky with sap. I sat rubbing it, smoking, waiting. I felt too restless to read, and it was dim in the forest.

When he came, Baby Jane saw me rubbing my hand, and reached for it.

“You need alcohol,” he said. “That’s the only thing that’ll get it out.” That was the night I asked him his real name.

He raised his eyes and gave me a look that said I’d never know. I thought he looked different each time I saw him, and I blamed the failing light of fall, the heavy tree shadow, the early dark.

“Baby Jane is my real name,” he said, and smiled. I thought his eyes were a blue I’d never seen.

I tried to touch his cheekbone, and he flinched.

I thought I would break the seats inside that old car if I could just put my hands on the sides of his face and look at him.

“Can we go inside?” I asked him.

“No,” he said.

“Do you live with someone?” I asked.

“No.”

I felt small.

But then he asked, “Do you?”

I hesitated. No one ever asked me. My mouth went dry. “Just my mom,” I said, and he nodded.

“I have to go,” he said after that, his eyes flat. But he waited. He sat there waiting for me to say the last thing. I didn’t want him to go. I didn’t want it to be over yet.

“How did you know who I was?” I asked.

“I pay attention.”

He got out. He disappeared between the pine trees, and his shoes didn’t make a sound. I could have followed him, but I sat still, breathing hard, my heart knocking in my chest, thinking I’d ruined something, that I’d broken the spell. And then I didn’t see him again for three days.

At home, I woke up to a stranger in the yard. My mother and the baby slept hard, in her closed room with the red curtains drawn. They might have been up half the night. I never knew. My mother had never been an early riser.

I heard the truck, and I heard hammering, and I saw him on the TV surveillance, a big guy, putting a sign in the yard. Sometimes men came through for maintenance, to take care of a downed tree or clear other storm damage on the trails. But this was right in our yard.

I went to the porch, barefoot, cold, and lit a cigarette. “Can I help you?” I called to him.

He was over fifty, with a moustache. His truck had a logo on the side I couldn’t quite read from there. He stepped forward and handed me a flyer .