the highway. The earth seemed to exhale mist as the day warmed and the brown-tipped grass of the pastures returned the morning’s rain to its source.
Adam radiated thwarted energy.
Later that day, I found him in the hall, standing next to the phone. He stared into space and rubbed his chest. “The waterfall that I told you about. It has stopped,” he said. “I called the ranger station there. It’s frozen. How could I not have thought of that?”
In bed that night, I switched off the light and I pulled him toward me. Wordlessly, as we had countless times, we touched. His hands were certain, his voice strong. But I woke in the middle of the night to find him naked, silhouetted at the bedroom window looking toward the stables.
“You loved the springs when we first got here. What was it you once told me about them? Millions of gallons a day, every day. Endless. You don’t have to wait for your waterfall to thaw. Go to the springs. Think of it as the reverse of the mountain. It’s moving water. You just go down instead of up.”
“Being underwater feels very different. But you’re right. I’ll go. Tomorrow.” He nodded and continued watching the stables.
Soon, I felt his warm, bruised energy spooning up behind me.
In the morning, Adam packed his scuba-diving gear in the back of the truck. Devil’s Springs had been developed as a private park by then, but they still allowed diving in the caves. He hadn’t dived that cave in years.
We kissed, a slow, soft kiss, then he was off. I noticed again how he smelled different lately, more tart. I waved good-bye, happy to think of him in the spring where we had taken our one cave dive together. Dust rose behind his truck as he waved and passed Manny’s little red dented car on the driveway.
Usually, he was gone four or five hours when he went diving. But he still was not back when the little girl with the leg brace came for her riding lesson in the afternoon.
The girl and her mother sat in the stable office waiting for Adam. I took some iced tea out to them.
“When do you expect him back?” the mother asked, wiping the arm of her chair. An impatient beauty, she seemed to think the world owed her something to compensate for the crippled daughter fate had given her.
“He should have been back by now,” I said.
She gave me a look that said she knew that kind of husband. I didn’t want to wait there with her. Usually, Adam called if he was running late. I assumed a flat tire, a last-minute errand.
After a few minutes, I heard the soft hiss of her car tires as she drove away.
Still Adam did not come home. In the slant of late-afternoon light, Manny closed the stables for the evening.
As I prepared our dinner, I imagined Adam stopping at the tack shop. I set the table. Spaghetti, the sauce made with my own canned tomatoes. A salad with the first lettuce of winter. I would give him until nine o’clock, I told myself, then I would eat.
My dinner tasted like cardboard. After a few bites, I put it in the refrigerator. I left his plate on the table, a fork and spoon beside it.
Midnight was too late for a stray errand or a broken fan belt. I tried to think who Adam might have stopped to visit. Sometimes, Ray came by for a beer at the end of the week. Adam played poker with Randy Warren and some Ocala horse ranchers every few weeks. A tattered list of typed names hung on the bulletin board next to the kitchen phone—people he played music with. I recognized most of the names. Adam had penciled in a few new names. One had been crossed out.
The flutter of anxiety in my chest became a stone. All night, I waited. First, I watched TV, then I turned the TV off and resorted to the silence of reading, so I would be certain to hear him arrive.
At the first blush of light in the windows, I put his unused dishes away and made a pot of coffee. I poured two cups and went out to the stables. My hand shook slightly as I set Adam’s steaming cup of coffee on his desk. I shivered in the dawn cold and drew my robe closer.
The horses eyed me politely, sniffing. Stretching their necks over the stall railing, they poked their