he see that I missed? Did Roy’s death sever some physical tie for him? Did it matter that the mold for his present state was gone, returned to the earth?
“Evelyn, I’ve been thinking about this for months. I wanted to give you . . .” His voice cracked. He took a deep, gulping breath. “Give you myself. Again. I hoped I could just hang out with him. Couple of long fishing trips. And each time I’d grow a little older-looking. A natural process. Nothing to explain.” He ignored the tears running down his face. “It never, ever occurred to me that he might be dead. I just want everything to go on as it is. With us. For you and for the girls. That’s all I want.”
My own deflated hope was a suffocating weight on my chest. All I could do was take his hand. “Let’s go home.”
A few moments later, we passed a battered old station wagon as we turned out onto the main road. The elderly woman at the wheel did a double-take. The bald man beside her turned in his seat, his eyes locked on Adam.
Adam appeared not to notice. He sighed deeply again and gripped the steering wheel. “It never occurred to me . . .”
I touched his leg, and he pressed his lips together. There was nothing more to say. The air in the cab of the truck seemed clotted, unbreathable. I rolled my window down. We drove on in silence. Adam, staring ahead, vibrated beside me. Under the noise of the engine and the open window, I thought I heard something darker, a deep, low drone.
Soon he drove off the highway and took us higher into the hills, up progressively narrower tree-lined roads until there were no more homes. When he stopped, the road was a single-lane, weedy rock path.
His face was closed, private. “I’m going to stretch my legs a little.” He got out of the truck and walked away.
Quickly, the back of his blue plaid shirt disappeared into the underbrush. I stepped out of the truck cab into the cooler air. Everything was suddenly unnaturally quiet. The birds had stopped singing. Two deer bolted out of the woods from Adam’s direction, galloped across the road in front of the truck, then lunged uphill.
A roar billowed behind them: Adam’s voice, sharp as his cry at Jennie’s coffin. A rumbling boulder of rage. The skin on my arms and face tingled, my pulse kicked. I covered my ears and fought my own urge to run.
In the silence that followed, I slumped against the side of the truck not sure what would happen next. Soon, the birds resumed their chatter, and I climbed back into the truck. I nodded off, and when I woke from my nap, the shadows of late afternoon stretched across the road. My neck and shoulders ached from being scrunched up against the passenger door. My disappointment returned in a surge and I looked around for Adam. I tried to remember exactly where he had walked into the woods, but the trees all looked alike. It would be dark soon. His thunderous, jagged cry echoed in me. I shivered. He’d once said the mountains answered his call. What could the response to such a call be? What if he was hurt, trapped under some boulder dislodged by his voice?
I flung my door open, ready to dash into the forest to look for him when I saw the rhythmic swing of his sleeve.
Seconds later, Adam emerged, his face lighter, his gait looser. He circled the truck and stopped at the open door on my side. “For your patience.” He held up a few inches of ginseng root. His eyes were as resolute and calm as when, years before, he’d stood in the bedroom bare-chested, offering the gift of himself as Addie.
I smiled at the man and the body I’d now loved for so many years.
“Evelyn, I can still do this. It doesn’t have to be Roy. I could find someone else. You could help me. You could choose the man. We’d have to figure out some way for me to get close to him.”
My pulse pounded in my ears. I had to strain to hear him. I tried to imagine him with a completely new face, not Roy’s. A strange older man, someone else’s face looking at me every morning. The fresh stories, new lies. A sudden dense fatigue overcame me. I felt my age.
“No!” I said. “No, Adam.” My words shocked