"You still have plenty of guardian angels."

"I don't think anybody in this town remembers that I'm a Nolina."

"No, you're wrong about that, they do remember. I think people are sorry. And they love you. Look at your refrigerator."

He gave me an odd, embittered look. How could he not know this was true? "Refrigerators don't preserve love," he said.

"The hell they don't. Yours does. The women in this town bake you casseroles and pies like the world was going to end."

He made a slight sound by breathing out of his nose. He seemed strangely like a child.

"They probably can't forgive themselves for the past," I said. "Mother died before they could get everything straightened out. And then you kind of took your phone off the hook, emotionwise."

He looked away from me again. "We aren't from here, we came from the outside. That is our myth and every person in Grace believes it, because they want to. They don't want to see a Nolina when they look at me. They want a man they can trust with their children's ear infections. And I am that man. If you change the present enough, history will bend to accommodate it."

"No. I'm pretty sure you're wrong about that. What's true is true, no matter how many ways you deny it."

He closed his eyes for a while. I'd never seen him frail or impaired. All the time I'd been his daughter, he'd never been sick.

"How long are you going to stay in bed?" I asked softly, in case he was falling asleep.

"I'm exhausted."

"I know. But after you rest, you might want to get up for a while. I can warm up some soup."

He didn't open his eyes. "Do you think Hallie is coming back?"

"I don't know what to think. We have to think yes, don't we?"

"You're the advocate of ordained truth. Are you telling me now that we can will Hallie back to safety?"

"No. I don't guess we can. We just have to wait."

It was the first honest conversation we'd had about Hallie. It took us both by surprise. We were quiet for a long time then, but I knew he wasn't sleeping. I could see his eyes working back and forth under his eyelids, as if he were reading his own thoughts. I wondered what his thoughts looked like, in his clear moments and in his confusion. I very much wished to know him.

"Pop?"

He slowly opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling.

"Did you really see me bury the baby?"

He looked at me.

"Why didn't we ever talk?"

He sighed. "You get beyond a point."

"You could have just given me a hug or something."

He turned away from me. His short, gray hair stood up in whorls on the back of his head. He said, "It's Friday, isn't it? Mrs. Nunez's lab work is due back today. Can you pull her chart?"

"Okay, sleep now," I said, reaching over to pat his shoulder. "But after a while I want you to get up and get dressed. Today or tomorrow, whenever you're feeling up to it."

"I feel fine."

"Okay. When you're feeling better, I want you to take me to the place where I buried it. I can remember a lot of that night. Cleaning up the bathroom, and that old black sweater of Mother's, some things like that. But I can't remember the place."

He didn't promise. I think he'd forgotten again who I was. We were comically out of synchrony-a family vaudeville routine. Whatever one of us found, the other lost.

I received a letter from the school board. It was early April, a long time after I'd stopped my hopeful excursions to the Post Office box and had given the key back to Emelina, so this letter appeared on my table among the breakfast dishes while I was at school. I saw it the minute I walked in, but tried to ignore it for the longest time. I carefully went around to the other side of the table and dropped a heavy pile of tests and began to grade them, trying not to see it. "A predator is a big guy that eats little guys," wrote Raymo. "A herbivore is your wussy vegetarian. In other words, lunch meat." She'd wedged it between the coffee cup and a bottle of aspirin. Did she think it would be bad news? I gave in and tore it open.

I can't really say what sort of news it was. Surprising news. It was notification that my contract was going to be renewed for the next year. The term wasn't over, but the school board recognized my circumstances as unusual and wanted to give me ample notice; they were eager for me to return in the fall. My temporary teaching certificate could easily be extended, especially if I had intentions of working toward certification. It was a personal letter written on behalf of the entire board and signed by someone I knew of but had never met, a Mr. Leacock. His letter cited my popularity with the students and commended me for my "innovative presentation" and "spirited development of a relevant curriculum." It didn't mention contraception or Mrs. Josephine Nash or the ozone layer. I wondered how much they really knew; it made me nervous. I kept looking sideways at that word "spirited." After knocking myself out to be accepted, I'd finally flown off the handle in a seditious direction, and won a gold star. "We are all aware of the difficulties of engaging teenagers in a vital course of academic instruction," wrote Mr. Leacock. Someone apparently felt I'd succeeded in this endeavor. I was going to be named something like teacher of the year. Teachers and kids all voted, secret ballot.