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  say in that deep, rumbly bass voice.

  “No, ma’am. I guess I’m not.”

  She sighed deeply. It sounded like she was playacting

  some irritation she didn’t entirely feel.

  She sat beside me on the edge of the porch, and the

  dogs settled around us. One in between, one on the other

  side of her. For a few minutes we all stared out into the

  woods and didn’t say a word.

  She’d gotten dressed while I was running to the store,

  thankfully, and was now wearing denim overalls over a

  red plaid flannel shirt. Heavy work boots that laced up

  at the ankle.

  “I keep forgetting to ask you their names,” I said after

  a time.

  I felt alarm rise in her, even though I’m not sure how

  a person can feel a thing like that. But I did feel it. I’m

  just not sure by what means.

  “Whose names?”

  “The dogs. I still don’t know their names.”

  The fear seemed to settle out of her. Drain away. I

  wondered if she had thought I was asking about Wanda

  Jean and Freddie.

  “The boy is Rembrandt and the girl is Vermeer.”

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  “Rembrandt like the painter?”

  “Actually they’re both painters.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Like me.”

  “You paint?”

  “No,” I said. “No, I didn’t mean that. Just … Lucas

  Painter. That’s me.”

  She said nothing, so after a few seconds I glanced

  over at the side of her face. She did not seem impressed

  by my small note of coincidence with the dogs. I think

  she would have liked it better if I had been an artist. But

  I wasn’t. And I’m still not. And that’s just the way it is.

  “Look,” she said. “I know why you’re not leaving.”

  “You do?”

  “I think I do. I think you think if you leave me alone,

  I’ll do something stupid.”

  “Um…,” I began. And did not finish. Probably wisely.

  “I’m not making you any promises about the rest of

  my life, kid. But if you go home today … I’ll still be here

  when you get here tomorrow for your run.”

  “How do I know that for a fact?”

  “Because, for all my faults—and if you ask around,

  you’ll hear they’re legion—I never look somebody in the

  face and tell them a damn lie. And besides, I already took

  every pill I had in the house.”

  My eyes went immediately to her pickup. Her old

  blue truck. She must’ve seen them go.

  “You think any local doctor’s going to write me a

  prescription or any local pharmacist’s going to fill it? After what just happened?”

  I wasn’t sure, so I continued to sit.

  “Look,” she said. “Kid. Believe me or don’t. It’s

  up to you. But there’s a better reason why you can’t sit

  here on my porch for the rest of your life. Because you

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  can’t control other people. You can’t be responsible for

  somebody else. Not if it’s a fully grown adult human,

  you can’t. Sooner or later you have to go home, and you

  know it.”

  I sighed. Pulled to my feet.

  I stood facing her and the dogs. She cut her gaze away

  from me, and it struck me that she was ashamed. She hadn’t

  meant for anyone to know as much about what she’d just

  done as I knew. She hadn’t meant to let anybody in so

  close, to make so many observations.

  “Well,” I said. “Goodbye, Vermeer. Goodbye,

  Rembrandt. Goodbye, Mrs. Dinsmore.”

  She gave me a little wave, her eyes still angled away.

  “Here’s a question,” I said, while I continued not to

  leave. “Your daughter said you saw me running off with

  the dogs every morning. All along.”

  “I did,” she said. Quietly.

  “Why didn’t you stop me? Why didn’t you say, ‘Hey

  kid, those are my dogs—leave ’em alone!’ That’s what most people would’ve done.”

  “It was nice for them to have somebody to run with.

  They’re young dogs. They need that.”

  “But you trusted me to bring them back?”

  “I trusted them to come back. They know where they live.”

  “Right,” I said. “Got it. Well … bye.”

  I couldn’t think of any more reasons to stall, so I turned

  to walk away. I got about ten steps, then was seized with

  a thought. A weirdly disturbing thought.

  I stopped. Turned back. The three of them had not

  moved.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, walking closer.

  “Now what?”

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  “You saw me out the window. With the dogs. For a

  couple of weeks.”

  “What about it?”

  “And you figured out that I liked them.”

  “Yeah. What of it?”

  “You figured I would take care of them if you couldn’t.”

  This time, no answer from her.

  “So here I am thinking I saved your life, but I’m the

  reason you tried to take it in the first place. If I’d just

  stayed away, none of the rest of this would have happened.”

  We stood there in silence for a painful length of time.

  Well, I stood. She sat. The dogs lay.

  “Listen, kid,” she said at last. “Here’s a lesson for you

  in the fact that you’re not the center of the universe. You

  don’t run the world. I make my own choices. You can’t

  keep me here, and you can’t make me leave. You don’t

  control as much as you think you do. I’m not trying to

  be cruel. Just the opposite. You’ll have a much happier

  life if you get a strong bead on what’s your responsibility

  and what isn’t. Now go home and have a good summer

  and stop worrying about me.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I went home.

  But I did not stop worrying about Zoe Dinsmore.

  * * *

  “I actually do think I heard about that,” Connor said.

  “Now that you tell me all those details.”

  Then he passed me the basketball.

  We were playing a game of H-O-R-S-E in his back-

  yard. In the driveway, right where the concrete went wide

  in front of the two-car garage. His dad had mounted a

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  hoop over the garage doors. Years earlier. Connor couldn’t

  have cared less about it. He never wanted to use it. I’d

  had to practically drag him out here.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, and then began

  to dribble.

  He tried to block my drive to the hoop, but I turned

  my back to him and did a spin move and left him in the

  dust. My spin moves always left him in the dust. For a

  compact little guy, he was surprisingly heavy on his feet.

  I leapt into the air and dunked the ball with both hands.

  “R,” I said.

  Connor had no part of the word HORSE. Only I had

  three letters of it. Only I had any letters at all.

  Maybe this was why Connor never wanted to shoot

  hoops with me. Odd that the thought hadn’t occurred

  to me sooner.


  “Time,” he said. He made the time-out gesture, the

  T, with his two hands.

  I dribbled in place while he leaned on his knees and

  panted.

  “So why didn’t you tell me?” I asked again.

  “I didn’t know,” he said.

  “You just said you heard about it.”

  “Now that you tell me all the details, yeah. I’ve heard

  a couple of the details before. But nobody ever said ‘Zoe

  Dinsmore’ in front of me, so how was I to even possibly

  know it had anything to do with your thing?”

  “It’s not my thing,” I said, and dribbled over closer to him.

  At least, I really wanted it not to be my thing. But I

  was pushing back against a strong—and growing—sense

  that it was.

  “It’s the thing you were trying to find out about.”

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  “Right,” I said. “That’s true. So what did you hear?”

  He leaned back against his garage door. Looked up

  and squinted into the strong afternoon sun, then looked

  down at his feet to give his eyes a break.

  “A few years ago I remember a lady saying something

  to my mom about two kids who died. She didn’t say how

  they died, but it sounded like they were on their way to

  school. She just said something like, ‘Sure, Pauline, we

  all want to think our kids are safe. But what about those

  two poor little souls who never showed up to school that

  day?’ Those weren’t the exact words, of course. It was a

  long time ago. But you get the idea.”

  “Yeah,” I said. And just stood for a minute. Maybe

  longer. “So, come on. Let’s finish the game.”

  “I forfeit this game,” he said.

  He walked across his yard and sat under the big oak

  tree, leaning his back against the trunk. Right where

  we’d found that bird’s nest back when we were six or

  seven. With three tiny blue eggs that had tumbled out

  of it when it fell. It was just a thing that came flooding

  back into my brain as he sat.

  I put the ball down and joined him under the tree.

  I should have considered the fact that he would tire

  out faster than I would if I pushed him to play basketball.

  I had been out in the woods running lately. He had been

  up in his room worrying.

  “So you think that’s why she tried to kill herself?”

  he asked.

  It was such a blunt statement. So much more direct

  than anything I had ever said about it, even in my head.

  It felt like a knife, just hanging there in the air between

  us, warning me to be careful not to cut myself on it.

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  “I don’t know,” I said. “I have no idea why somebody

  would do a thing like that. I mean, it was seventeen years

  ago, the bus thing. Kind of a weirdly delayed reaction,

  don’t you think?”

  “I don’t think you really get over a thing like that,

  though.”

  “Maybe not. But still.”

  “Maybe she got tired of the fact that it wasn’t going

  away.”

  “I don’t know,” I said again. And then I really thought

  about it. About making a decision like that. And I was just

  bowled over by how much I couldn’t imagine it. “I can’t

  even … I mean … how can a person even do a thing like that? I mean, you’re in bed. And you’re alive. And you

  have this handful of pills, and suddenly you make this

  decision that now you’re not going to be alive anymore?

  I can’t even stretch my brain around it.”

  “You don’t know if it was sudden,” he said.

  “It doesn’t matter how fast or slow it was. It was her life.

  I mean, a person’s life. It’s all you’ve got. It’s everything.

  Without it, you’re … well, you’re not. You’re literally not anything. You’re not even … I just can’t understand

  a thing like that at all.”

  “Well…,” he began. And I could tell an opposing

  viewpoint was coming, though I couldn’t imagine where

  he would find one. “We all think about it.”

  “Well, but…” Then it hit me. Kind of belatedly like

  that. “Wait, what?” I whipped my head sideways to look

  at him. Possibly for the first time that day. I usually didn’t look too directly at Connor. It seemed to make him

  nervous. So I had learned to use a series of near misses.

  “You think about it?”

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  “No,” he said.

  “You just said you did.”

  “No. I said everybody does.”

  “But I don’t. And you’re part of everybody.”

  “I’m going in,” he said.

  He pushed to his feet, and I followed him.

  I followed him into the house. Through the back door.

  Into the mud room, where we wiped our feet carefully

  on a scratchy mat before stepping onto the Persian runner

  carpet in the dimly lit hallway. Past the kitchen and up

  the stairs to his bedroom.

  “But—” I began.

  He whipped his head around and stopped me with a

  finger to his lips.

  I followed him into his room, and closed the door

  behind us.

  “So, seriously, Connor. Anything you want to tell me?”

  “No. It was nothing. I was just talking. I wish you’d

  drop it.”

  “How can I drop it? You’re my best friend, and you

  just said you think about it.”

  “Not seriously, though. Not … I just think weird

  thoughts sometimes. Don’t you ever think about weird

  things like that?”

  “I think about weird things,” I said. “But not like that.”

  Then neither one of us knew what to say.

  I knew he was done with our visit and wanted to be

  alone. But I wasn’t leaving yet. I didn’t even feel close.

  He flopped onto his back on the bed and I just stood

  there, feeling clumsy and awkward. And thinking about

  what Zoe Dinsmore had said. About how I’m not the

  center of the universe and I don’t control things as much

  as I think I do.

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  “So…,” I said. Kind of testing the water. “Just one

  question. And then I promise I’ll go home and get out

  of your hair.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “That would be good.”

  It was the closest he’d ever come to saying he didn’t

  want me around, and it made my face burn. But I talked

  right through it.

  “Are you okay?”

  He sat up and looked directly into my face. Which

  was weirdly rare, to put it mildly. Then he looked down

  at his bedspread.

  “How would I even know that, Lucas? I have no idea

  if how I feel is what other people would call okay. I’m

  just the way I’ve always been.”

  It was such a blazingly honest—unguardedly honest—

  answer. It was so direct and so true that even though it

  didn’t put my mind at ease, I really had no choice but to

  thank him for it and go home alone.

  Now I had two people I was worried about. But it

  was even worse than that. When I was worr
ied about

  Zoe Dinsmore, I could go talk to Connor. But when I

  was worried about Connor, where could I go?

  I pondered the question all the way home, and got

  exactly nowhere.

  Well. I got home. But I got no closer to an answer

  regarding what was weighing on my mind.

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  CHAPTER SIX

  Asking for a Friend

  When I got out to the cabin the following morning, the

  lady was outside, hanging up her wash on a clothesline.

  And the dogs wouldn’t go running with me. They would

  only come along when she was inside the cabin. They

  weren’t about to give up the chance to be close to her.

  She glanced halfway over her shoulder as I walked

  up behind her.

  “Oh,” she said. “You again.”

  She didn’t really make it sound as bad as those words

  could have been.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me.”

  “Well, make yourself useful. Grab the other end of

  that bedsheet.”

  The wet laundry was piled in a basket, which was sit-

  ting on the dirt at her feet. I wondered if she had a wash-

  ing machine. I didn’t think she did. I had been all over

  the property and hadn’t seen any such thing. I figured I

  would know if she had one. Then I wondered how hard

  it must be to wash a bedsheet by hand.

  She lifted it out of the basket and began to unfurl it,

  and I took it by one corner and stepped away until it was

  pretty well stretched out.

  “Give it a good shake with me,” she said.

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  So we did that.

  The dogs were wagging all around us, weaving in and

  out. Brushing under the wet sheet, which I figured was

  probably not ideal for something that was freshly clean.

  They seemed over-the-moon ecstatic to have both of us

  out and moving around at the same time. Some kind of

  doggie jackpot.

  “Fold about four inches of that corner over the line,”

  she said, and handed me a clothespin. “So it won’t come

  down again.”

  We pinned it up, and I stepped back to see if it would

  hold. When it did, I really had no idea what to do next.

  So I just stood there and watched her work. Watched

  her hang socks one at a time. Then, when it came to her

  unmentionables, I had to avert my eyes.

  “What would you do if you had a friend…,” I began.

  I waited to see if she was listening. She seemed to be.

  “Who you thought maybe wanted to…” But it was hard

  to go on.

  “To what?” she spat after a time. “Just say what you’re thinking, kid.”