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ofChicago. When even before he knew, he knew.

He didn't tell Lloyd Bowman how it felt; he didn't have to. "You know, when his theorem rang the cherries, Pythagoras gave one hundred oxen to the Muse," Bowman said. "Nothing sweeter, is there? Don't answer - it lasts better if you don't spend it talking."

Graham grew more impatient the closer he got to home and to Molly. InMiamihe had to go out on the apron to board Aunt Lula , the old DC-3 that flew toMarathon.

He liked DC-3's. He liked everything today.

Aunt Lula was built when Graham was five years old and her wings were always dirty with a film of oil that blew back from the engines. He had great confidence in her. He ran to her as though she had landed in a jungle clearing to rescue him.

Islamorada's lights were coming on as the island passed under the wing. Graham could still see whitecaps on the Atlantic side. In minutes they were descending toMarathon.

It was like the first time he came toMarathon. He had come aboard Aunt Lula that time too, and often afterward he went to the airfield at dusk to watch her coming in, slow and steady, flaps down, fire flickering out her exhausts and all the passengers safe behind their lighted windows.

The takeoffs were good to watch as well, but when the old airplane made her great arc to the north it left him sad and empty and the air was acrid with good-byes. He learned to watch only the landings and hellos.

That was before Molly.

With a final grunt, the airplane swung onto the apron. Graham saw Molly and Willy standing behind the fence, under the floodlights.

Willy was solidly planted in front of her. He'd stay there until Graham joined them. Only then would he wander along, examining whatever interested him. Graham liked him for that.

Molly was the same height as Graham, five feet ten inches. A level kiss in public carries a pleasant jolt, possibly because level kisses usually are exchanged in bed.

Willy offered to carry his suitcase. Graham gave him the suit bag instead.

Riding home to Sugarloaf Key, Molly driving, Graham remembered the things picked out by the headlights, imagined the rest.

When he opened the car door in the yard, he could hear the sea. Willy went into the house, holding the suit bag on top of his head, the bottom flapping against the backs of his legs.

Graham stood in the yard absently brushing mosquitoes away from his face.

Molly put her hand on his cheek. "What you ought to do is come on in the house before you get eaten up."

He nodded. His eyes were wet.

She waited a moment longer, tucked her head and peered up at him, wiggling her eyebrows. "Tanqueray martinis, steaks, hugging and stuff. Right this way... and the light bill and the water bill and lengthy conversations with my child," she added out of the side of her mouth.

Chapter 53

Graham and Molly wanted very much for it to be the same again between them, to go on as they had before.

When they saw that it was not the same, the unspoken knowledge lived with them like unwanted company in the house. The mutual assurances they tried to exchange in the dark and in the day passed through some refraction that made them miss the mark.

Molly had never looked better to him. From a painful distance, he admired her unconscious grace.

She tried to be good to him, but she had been toOregonand she had raised the dead.

Willy felt it and he was cool to Graham, maddeningly polite.

A letter came from Crawford. Molly brought it in the mail and did not mention it.

It contained a picture of theShermanfamily, printed from movie film. Not everything had burned, Crawford's note explained. A search of the fields around the house had turned this picture up, along with a few other things the explosion had blown far from the fire.

"These people were probably on his itinerary," Crawford wrote. "Safe now. Thought you'd like to know."

Graham showed it to Molly.

"See? That's why," he said. "That's why it was worth it."

"I know," she said. "I understand that, really I do."

The bluefish were running under the moon. Molly packed suppers and they fished and they built fires, and none of it was any good.

Grandpa and Mamamma sent Willy a picture of his pony and he tacked it to the wall in his room.

The fifth day home was the last day before Graham and Molly would go back to work