this hard.”
“Your mother you mean?”
Kate nodded. “She’s always been fond of him. It wasn’t always easy for her up here, but Harry was one of the good things.”
For a second we just sat there, looking at one another. I felt her thumb brush over the top of my hand—the smallest gesture, light as air.
“Goddamnit, Jordan.”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Am I all alone out here? Are you really that rusty?” She signed impatiently at my blank look. “That was when you were supposed to try something.”
“Just then? I thought we were supposed to wait.”
“We were, Jordan. I never said how long.” She shook her head, though I thought she was about to laugh. “Another moment lost,” she groaned.
“This is complicated,” I said.
“Yes and no.” Kate rose, releasing my hand to come around behind me, where she knelt on her haunches and put her arms around my chest, her chin resting in the hollow of my shoulder. It hurt a little, and I think that’s what she had in mind. “You lovely, lonely man,” she said, close to my ear. “You really are this place. Harry knows it, I know it, my folks know it. Everyone knows it but you.” Then she pressed her cheek to mine—a bright quick burst of Kate—and was gone.
* * *
THE PART OF ME
THAT’S MISSING
* * *
SEVEN
Joe
I awoke knowing it would be a last morning: not the last morning, but a morning of final things.
I have always been a deep sleeper. My nights are long and restful, dependable as a hammer. The usual gripes of men my age—the acid reflux, pinched plumbing, and insomniac dread that send us prowling the halls to mull over every missed field goal, botched kiss, and embarrassing pratfall of our lives—have yet to affect me, and though I know the day can’t be far off, that one of these nights the boom will fall, for now I sleep the sleep of the dreamless dead. According to Lucy I don’t even snore. I just kind of snuffle every once in a while into the pillow, like a good golden retriever.
So I awoke that morning as always, 5:10 on the dot without an alarm to tell me so, just the feel of the turning world doing its work and my mind as empty as a bucket, and the first thought that came to me as I lay under the blankets in the chilly room was the fact that Harry had not died, because somebody would have come to tell me if he had; and then this other notion, a strange one: this idea of final things.
Lucy was already up and about; I heard the shower running, then the groan of the old pipes as she turned the water off. Lucy wasn’t one to dawdle in the bathroom, and it wouldn’t do for her to find me still in bed. I rose and dressed quickly for the day. Khakis and an old denim shirt frayed at the collar and wrists, a Synchilla vest that Kate had given me for Christmas, wool socks and Birkenstocks, which I’d trade for boots when things got rolling; on my belt, a Buck knife and one of those all-in-one tools in a leather holster, the only gizmos I carried. Once we were closed down for the season, I’d planned to do something about those groaning pipes, maybe even rip down the bathroom once and for all and make it nice, with some new fixtures and tile. I’m a man, a hole in the ground is pretty much all I need, but redoing the john was just the sort of project I enjoyed, and it would have made a nice present for Lucy. But those plans were now moot—a relief, in a way, and also strangely depressing. Outside the sky was paling, not black to gray but easing into a kind of mellow tan color, meaning a clear day ahead, and hot: the last real day of summer.
I was standing at the window when Lucy entered the room, wearing a bathrobe and squeezing the water from her hair into a towel.
“So,” she said, and looked at me expectantly. “A quiet night?”
“Looks like Harry may get his wish. I think we would have heard if anything had happened.”
“I thought so too.” She sat down heavily on the bed and looked at her feet. “God, I hardly slept at all.”
From the look in her eyes I knew that she was thinking about her own father, who had passed four years before. By then my in-laws,