“I’ve got some other things to see to. Maybe I’ll come back later.”

“We’ll be here.”

Greer turned the truck around and drove away. Once he was out of sight, he pulled to the side of the causeway, got out, placed a hand against the fender for balance, and threw up onto the gravel. There wasn’t much to come up, just water and some yolky-looking blobs. For a couple of minutes he remained in that position; when he decided there was nothing more, he retrieved his canteen from the cab, rinsed his mouth, poured some water into his palm, and splashed his face. The aloneness of it—that was the worst part. Not so much the pain as carrying the pain. He wondered what would happen. Would the world dissolve around him, receding like a dream, until he had no memory of it, or would it be the opposite—all the things and people of his life rising up before him in vivid benediction until, like a man gazing into the sun on a too-bright day, he was forced to look away?

He tipped his face to the sky. The stars were subdued, veiled by a moist sea air that made them seem to waver. He brought his thoughts to bear upon a single star, as he had learned to do, and closed his eyes. Amy, can you hear me?

Silence. Then: Yes, Lucius.

Amy, I’m sorry. But I think that I am dying.

* * *

47

A spring afternoon: Peter was working in the garden. Rain had worked through in the night, but now the sky was clear. Stripped to his shirtsleeves, he jabbed his hoe into the soft dirt. Months of eating from the canning jars while they watched the snow fall; how good it would be, he thought, to have fresh vegetables again.

“I brought you something.”

Amy had snuck up behind him. Smiling, she held out a glass of water. Peter took it and sipped. It was ice cold against his teeth.

“Why don’t you come inside? It’s getting late.”

So it was. The house lay long in shadow, the last rays of light peeking over the ridge.

“There’s a lot to be done,” he said.

“There always is. You can get back to work tomorrow.”

They ate their supper on the sofa, the old dog nosing around their feet. While Amy washed up, Peter set a fire. The wood caught with crackling quickness. The rich contentment of a certain hour: beneath a heavy blanket, they watched the flames leap up.

“Would you like me to read to you?”

Peter said he thought that would be nice. Amy left him briefly and returned with a thick, brittle volume. Settling back on the sofa, she opened the book, cleared her throat, and began.

“David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens. Chapter One. I Am Born.”

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

How wonderful, to be read to. To be carried from this world and into another, borne away on words. And Amy’s voice, as she told the story: that was the loveliest part. It flowed through him like a benign electric current. He could have listened to her forever, their bodies close together, his mind in two places simultaneously, both within the world of the story, with its wonderful rain of sensations, and here, with Amy, in the house in which they lived and always had, as if sleep and wakefulness were not adjacent states with firm boundaries but part of a continuum.

At length he realized that the story had stopped. Had he dozed off? Nor was he on the sofa any longer; in some manner, unaware, he had made his way upstairs. The room was dark, the air cold above his face. Amy was sleeping beside him. What was the hour? And what was this feeling he had—the sense that something was not right? He drew the blankets aside and went to the window. A lazy half-moon had risen, partially lighting the landscape. Was that movement, there, at the edge of the garden?

It was a man. He was dressed in a dark suit; gazing upward at the window, he stood with his hands behind his back, in a posture of patient observation. Moonlight slanted across him, sharpening the angles of his face. Peter experienced not alarm but a feeling of recognition, as if he had been waiting for this nighttime visitor. Perhaps a minute passed, Peter watching the man in the yard, the man in the yard watching him. Then, with a courteous tip of his chin, the stranger turned away and walked off into the darkness.

“Peter, what is it?”

He turned from the window. Amy was sitting up in bed.

“There was somebody out there,” he said.

“Somebody? Who?”