It was decided somehow that they needed to go look at the kindling splitter right now, Bear and Cub together, in case he bought it and needed to load it. The place was out toward Cleary, in the opposite direction from their farm. It made no sense for them to take their wives home and come back.

“I’ll take Hester,” Dellarobia told Cub. “You go on with your Dad.”

“You think?” Cub asked. “He still seems pretty pissed off.”

“Just wear something bulletproof,” she advised. This was a fairly recent habit, talking this way in plain sight of Bear. The old man’s hearing was shot. All those years of power tools and a disdain for ear protection.

“Why don’t I take Preston?” Cub asked. “To keep things rated PG.”

“Sure, go for it, Preston. Man stuff!” she urged, pretending for the sake of others present that her son was that kind of kid. “Don’t you want to go with Dad and Pappaw to check out the wood splitter?”

Preston behaved as if she’d suggested he go watch a public hanging. He moved slowly toward the man-stuff truck, dragging his feet so dramatically they turned upside down, scraping the tops of his toes on the pavement.

“You’ll be fine,” Dellarobia told him, while his writhing sister wrestled against submission to her car seat. Hester required similar help getting into the passenger seat, seeming vaguely to disapprove of the shoulder belt, as if it were different from any other one. If baby- and in-law wrangling was woman stuff, somebody else could take a shift, Dellarobia thought, sighing as she turned the wheel hard, angling her station wagon out onto Highway 7. “That was something today,” she said to Hester. “That meeting. You must be proud of Cub. I know I am.”

Cordie fell asleep in her car seat almost instantly, as Dellarobia had known she would. The fit she’d just pitched was standard, the storm before the calm. Hester looked narrow-eyed and dreamy, like the sandman might be hitting on her too.

“You’ve got a job on your hands now, I guess,” Dellarobia proposed. “Looking after things up on that mountain. Turning it into an enterprise.”

Hester remained inscrutable, but that was Hester. The appearance of happiness to be avoided at all costs. Dellarobia remembered she had a different bone to pick, and had better pick it now before Cordie regained consciousness. Sensitive material. “So Cub says you saw me on the news a while back,” she said.

“Everybody and his dog saw you on the news a while back,” Hester replied.

“Right. Well, he said you saw something about me wanting to take my life.”

Hester looked awake now.

“Don’t worry,” Dellarobia hurried to say. “I just want to let you know that’s not true at all. I’ve had a lot of things going on these last couple months, there’s no doubt. But that wasn’t one of them. You can’t believe everything they put on TV.”

“It was you saying it,” Hester parried. “They showed you talking.”

“I know. The interviewer tricked me. They did stuff with the film, editing I guess. Okay? I’m just telling you.”

With a doubtful countenance, Hester said nothing.

“So you’re arguing? Wouldn’t I kind of be the expert?” Dellarobia started to raise her voice but checked it, glancing at Cordie in the rearview mirror. “Wouldn’t I be the expert,” she asked quietly, “on whether I intended to kill myself?”

“Maybe you wouldn’t,” Hester said, infuriating Dellarobia. The woman had issues with authority. After a silence Hester added, “I’m not just talking about the last couple months.”

“What in the heck is that supposed to mean?”

In silence they drove through outer residential Feathertown, where cement birdbaths had been emptied and overturned and tipped against their stands for the winter. Forlorn dogs lay gazing at their chains in small front yards. Dellarobia envisioned swerving into a tree, just to get a rise out of her mother-in-law. “Wouldn’t you just accept me as family,” she finally said, “after ten years? I mean, what would have convinced you I was going to stick around?”

“Wasn’t my business to be convinced.”

“Cub and I weren’t a match made in heaven, I’ll grant you. But people make do.”

“Wouldn’t I know it.”

Dellarobia chuckled. “You and Bear? You guys nursing a lot of regrets?”

Hester narrowed her eyes strangely. “You don’t know anything.”

“Okay, I don’t,” Dellarobia said, chastened. “Tell me something, and then I will.”

Hester did not oblige. They were now on Main Street, stuck waiting for a line of pedestrian Baptists a mile long to move out of the crosswalk in front of the church. Where were all those saved souls headed? There must have been an auxiliary parking lot.

“Well, I know this much. You and Bear didn’t get married for the same reason we did. You all celebrated your thirtieth a while back, and Cub’s not thirty. So you were sure-enough married before he came along.” Dellarobia only knew of their anniversary because it was in the bulletin at church, the full extent of their celebration.

“So we were,” Hester said. “So you were. Before Preston.”

“Yeah, but—” She saw a break in the Baptists coming up, but stole a quick glance at Hester’s face. “What, you’re saying you lost one too? Before Cub?”

They cleared the crosswalk at last, but then had to wait through Feathertown’s one stoplight. They were out near the Dairy Prince before Hester answered. “Didn’t lose one. Gave one up.”

“Whoah. You had a baby you gave up for adoption? Why in the world?”

“I had my reasons.”

“Well, gosh, Hester. Can I ask what they were?”

“Bear was away in the service.”

“That would have been hard. But still. Bear was coming back.” She tried to imagine a young Hester left on her own, waiting. Dellarobia put the dates together, and again they didn’t add up. “You all weren’t married yet, when Bear was in ’Nam.”

They drove past the house that famously kept its elaborate blaze of Christmas lights up all year. And then, conveniently located next door to it, the volunteer fire department.

“I was still debating about marrying him when he went off to the service. My folks said I’d better go on. He had the farm and the house. You know. He was all set up. I just didn’t . . .”