blankets where they lay before the vent and blew the smell of him into the room.
“It gets noisy here, sometimes,” she said.
“Noisy?”
“Yes. Walking sounds where no one’s walking. Smells too. Cooking smells where no one’s cooking. Bathroom smells where no one’s been for hours.”
“You might have that toilet gasket checked.”
“I might have my gasket checked, you mean.”
“Didn’t say that. The mind gets . . . active when you’re on your own, that’s all. It can get to be a tricky son of a gun.”
His big hand lay on the table beside his mug, palm-down. Her own hand might cover half of it. She remembered standing on his porch that day in October as he held the stormdoor open but would not ask her in, nothing in his eyes to say he needed her or even knew her name, a gray-faced man whose heart had been torn out. The very worst thing, the unspeakable thing. He didn’t know then that the sheriff was looking for Danny. And neither did she.
Gordon turned the mug, and watching the turning said, “I guess you know all about those girls by now. Those two girls that went into the river.”
“Yes. You were the first person I thought of. I wondered if you’d seen it on the news, or if anyone would tell you. I . . .” She didn’t finish. Didn’t know how to finish.
“I drove on up to Rochester, night before last, to the hospital,” he said.
She watched him.
“I thought I wanted to see her,” he said, “but when I got there I realized what I really wanted to see was her father. Sutter. Wanted to see his face, what it looked like now.”
“And did you?”
“I did.” He nodded slowly. “He’s a sick man. He doesn’t hardly look like the same man.” He stared into the mug. “I guess I wanted to know did he have any better understanding now. Did he understand any better why I said the things I said to him. Back then.”
She waited. “And did he?”
He tilted his mug and frowned. “It just isn’t the same situation. What happened to his daughter, he’ll get over that. He’ll just pay more attention to every part of her life from here on out. Or as much of it as he gets to see. He won’t carry this thing that I carry around with me every day and every hour, these”—his hand circled in a buffing motion to the right of his temple—“thoughts that go through my head, these . . . ideas.”
He lowered the hand and looked at her from under his eyebrows, and a coldness poured into her.
He turned back to the window. The fire was burning down, the smoke thinner now and calmer.
“Is that why you—” she began, and faltered. “Is that why you came out here? Because of those two girls?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” He turned back to her. “I saw your boy this morning. Marky.”
“You did?”
“At the garage. I had to take the van in. I hadn’t seen him in a while, I guess. For a second there I thought it was the other one. And then I remembered that that boy was long gone, and—”
He stopped. She was blotting up her tears with the handkerchief he’d given her earlier, outside, when she’d first turned and seen him standing there. The thin cloth damp now and no longer smelling so strongly of him as it did that first time.
“Ah, damn it,” he said. “Don’t listen to me.” Shifting his weight in the old chair. Patting the tabletop with his fingers. “I never should of come out here like this, out of the blue like this. I must be crazy.”
“Don’t say that. Please don’t say that. I don’t know why you came but you came. You came, Gordon, and I’m so . . . I’m so grateful.”
He turned once more to the window, and so did she. The fire had burned down out of view. A weaker cloud of smoke rising into the dusk. The light had dimmed in the kitchen too; soon she’d have to go pick up Marky.
“I sure didn’t come out here to talk about any of this,” he said. His shoulders raised with a deep breath and lowered again. He did not look at her. “I drove up to Rochester two nights ago and I saw your boy this morning and I guess that’s what put it in my head to see did you need any help out here.” She was nodding, yes, wiping at