On their last morning, she said she had another commonplace story to tell him. He listened impassively to the tale of Lucy Griggs and Cletus, and the two Gorgon women.

“There’s a victim theory,” he said. “I believe it, too. That little girl was a natural for a rape attack. Listen, some of my patients live in places dangerous to walk in at ten in the morning. No one’s ever bothered me. It’s partly because I don’t expect to be bothered.”

“You’ve got an answer for everything.”

“I try to understand these things.”

“How can you? After you’ve already decided what they are?”

“I try to understand you.”

She shuddered exaggeratedly. “Crated and mailed,” she said. “I don’t want to hear about it.”

He embraced her suddenly. “I try, but I don’t,” he said humbly. “Don’t be so mad at me—you can’t wander around through a lifetime leaving everything an open question. Look at you! Don’t you think you tried to find a system when you were hanging around the Reds?”

“It wasn’t that,” she muttered, her head resting against his shoulder. “Something else…”

“You can’t ask people not to have a viewpoint—to simply look, the way you do. One of these days, you’ll have to come to some conclusions—you’ll have to be thickheaded and convinced, just like the rest of us.”

She hardly heard him, but she was no longer angry. She thought of Uncle Greg who had no answers for earthly matters, who believed in God’s heaven.

“You must make judgments,” Mike said. “How can a person live without them?”

They packed and made sure the fire was out. Mike went to pay the couple who ran the little cabin community. On their long descent to the warmer regions, Mike spoke accusingly and restlessly about her leaving California. She was simply being ruled by impulse. Her life wasn’t bad out here. Now that the war was over, things would be getting better, more opportunities, she might think of going to school. Had she ever thought of becoming a nurse? Or a laboratory technician? She was very observant—she’d be good at that, lab work. He could help—

“No. I’m going.”

“It’s because you’re so young.”

“That must be it.”

Melvin helped her with Theda’s table and the boxes of books. He had a friend with a pickup truck. Melvin had a year to go on his six-year hitch. What would he do after that?