empties out between Labor Day and hunting season, and cell phone coverage stops dead forty miles out of Presque Isle. If you break a leg walking in the woods… or get lost…”
“Honey, I don’t do woods. When I walk—if I walk—I’ll stick to the road.” He took a closer look at her and didn’t care for what he saw. It wasn’t just the furrowed brow; her eyes had picked up a suspicious sheen. “If you need me to stay, I’ll stay. Just say the word.”
“Would you really?”
“Try me.” Praying she wouldn’t.
She was looking down at her sneakers. Now she raised her head and gave it a shake. “No. I understand this is important to you. So do Stacey and Bran. I heard what he said when he kissed you goodbye.”
Brandon, their twelve-year-old, had said, “Bring back a big one, Dad.”
“I want you to call me every day, Mister. No later than five, even if you’re really rolling. Your cell won’t work, but the landline does. We get a bill for it every month, and I called this morning just to be sure. Not only did it ring, I got your pop’s old answering machine message. Gave me a little bit of a chill. Like a voice from the grave.”
“I bet.” Drew’s father had been dead for ten years. They had kept the cabin, using it a few times themselves, then renting it out to hunting parties until Old Bill, the caretaker, died. After that they stopped bothering. One group of hunters hadn’t paid in full and another group had pretty well trashed the place. It hardly seemed worth the hassle.
“You should record a new message.”
“I will.”
“And fair warning, Drew—if I don’t hear from you, I’ll come up.”
“Wouldn’t be a good idea, honey. Those last fifteen miles on Shithouse Road would tear the exhaust right out from under the Volvo. Probably the transmission, too.”
“Don’t care. Because… I’m just going to say this, okay? When stuff goes wrong with one of the short stories, you can put it aside. There’s a week or two of moping around the house, then you’re yourself again. Village on the Hill was a whole different thing, and the next year was very scary for me and the kids.”
“This one is—”
“Different, I know, you’ve said so half a dozen times, and I believe you, even though the only thing I know about it is that it’s not a bunch of randy teachers having key parties in Updike country. Just…” She took him by the forearms, looking up at him earnestly. “If it starts to go wrong, if you start to lose the words like you did with Village, come home. Do you understand me? Come home.”
“I promise.”
“Now kiss me like you mean it.”
He did, gently parting her lips with his tongue and sliding one hand into the back pocket of her jeans. When he pulled back from her, Lucy was flushed. “Yes,” she said. “Like that.”
He got into the Suburban and had made it to the foot of the driveway when Lucy shouted “Wait! Wait!” and came running after him. She was going to tell him she’d changed her mind, she wanted him to stay and try writing the book in his upstairs office, he was sure of it, and he had to battle a desire to step on the gas and go powering down Sycamore Street without looking in the rearview mirror. Instead, he stopped with the Suburban’s back end in the street and rolled down the window.
“Paper!” she said. She was out of breath and her hair was in her eyes. She pooched out her lower lip and blew it back. “Do you have paper? Because I doubt like hell if there’s any up there.”
He grinned and touched her cheek. “Two reams. Think that’ll be enough?”
“Unless you’re planning to write The Lord of the Rings, it should be.” She gave him a level gaze. The furrow had left her brow, at least for the time being. “Go on, Drew. Get out of here and bring back a big one.”
5
As he turned onto the I-295 entrance ramp where he’d once upon a time seen a man changing a flat tire, Drew felt a lightening. His real life—kids, running errands, chores around the house, picking up Stacey and Brandon from their after-school activities—was behind him. He would come back to it in two weeks, three at the outside, and he supposed he would still have the bulk of the book to write amid the clanging round of