There was a much-forwarded letter waiting for her from her father.

“My idiot girl,” it read, “where the hell are you? I’m supposed, they tell me, to know such things. Did you really marry that gink? Margo and I are going to Massachusetts for the fall and winter. She’s writing a book about the history of turquoise jewelry, and is very good and disciplined and puts me to shame. I’ve done some good work and should be cheered up by a firm gallery offer for November, but am not. The Indians get me down. They all look half starved and yet keep fat horses. I’ve developed an absolute terror of rattlesnakes. Margo found one, an infant, under a bucket yesterday, and since then I’ve been trying to devise a method of walking without touching the ground. I long for a more intimate landscape, so off we go, to the Cape or Salem or someplace. But I will write even if you are stubborn and won’t. Did you ever look up St. Vincent, my old pal? Love, you little rat.”

It was nearly the longest letter she’d ever gotten from him and she carried it around in her hand until it was time to go to work. She’d answer it one of these days. If she could think of something really funny to write about.

That night, late, she took a short walk along the shell road. When she came back, Joe was leaning against the door of his little room next to the garage. He was smoking a cigarette, the light from the ember grazing his narrow mouth. He kissed her, leaning forward to do so, without touching her. She started to go into his room. He put an arm in front of her so that she couldn’t pass. She backed away instantly. He seized her hand and crushed the cigarette beneath his shoe. His skin was damp. “You’re married,” he said almost inaudibly. She pulled her hand away and went toward the steps. Sigrid, a stolid sleeper, suddenly moaned in the bedroom above, and Annie felt a shock as though something made of stone had lamented. “Wait!” Joe caught hold of her skirt.

They undressed in the dark. She lay on his cot. He said, “I’ve never—before.” She was afraid for him, she was afraid for herself. He stood above her, shifting from bare foot to bare foot. “You don’t have to,” she whispered. “I’ve got to,” he said desperately. “I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

“I don’t know,” he cried softly and fell down by her side. He didn’t touch her. In the end, he lay across her, and by a sad, humiliating, brief motion of his hips, stained her belly. He cried softly, “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

“Nothing,” she said, and held him tightly.

“Yes, yes. I’ve heard about it all,” he said indistinctly into her neck. “It’s been like some terrible thing I’ve had to do, like being shot, like being taken out into a field and shot. And see, see? I can’t, I can’t.”