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  We walked again. Up to the cabin.

  She stepped up onto the porch and turned to face me. I just stood, looking down at the dirt, one hand on each of the dogs’ heads.

  “And why do you think that?”

  “Because you help me.”

  “Can’t really stay just for somebody else,” she said.

  “No, I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean stay just for me.”

  “Well, what did you mean, then?”

  “I meant . . . you have things about you . . . I just think . . . I don’t know how to say what I think. I guess I think people can learn things from you. You know. So I hate to think about going back to . . . without you.”

  “You might be the minority opinion on that,” she said. “But I’ll take your thoughts under consideration.”

  The old me would have retreated. Not questioned her. But I was having to learn to step up. Being around Zoe Dinsmore was forcing me to be a slightly new Lucas. To be more somehow, like the sun in her painting.

  “What exactly does that mean?” I asked, still petting the dogs’ heads.

  “It means I’ll give your opinion the weight it deserves.”

  “In other words, you think it deserves nothing.”

  “No. I didn’t say that. What I think I should do is more important to me than what you think I should do. But that doesn’t mean your opinion has no value to me at all. Now, I’m going in. You should go running with the dogs. You’ve been missing a lot of mornings, and I think it would do all three of you good.”

  And with that she was gone.

  The dogs and I ran. Probably six miles or more.

  It did all three of us good.

  I was jogging down Main Street by myself, doing what I more or less thought of as a cooldown, when I heard a female voice call my name.

  I stopped. Turned all the way around.

  At first I saw no one.

  Then a second later Libby Weller stepped out of the doorway of the ice cream place, and waved at me.

  I waved back, all ready to run on. But she motioned me over.

  I went, because I couldn’t figure a way to ignore a direct order like that one. But I really didn’t want to talk about Roy.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She was wearing short-shorts. Her legs were long and tan, and it was all I could do not to stare at them. Her hair was pulled back into a light brown ponytail. She was every bit as tall as I was, maybe even half an inch taller. And I was pretty tall. She was a year older than me, which always made it feel weird to talk to her.

  “Hi,” she said back.

  A little shyly, I thought. What she had to be shy about . . . well, I had no idea.

  “I was just going in for an ice cream soda. Want to join me?”

  “Oh. I can’t. I’m in training.”

  I would’ve killed for an ice cream soda, and training had nothing to do with it. If anything, another pound or two would have done me good. The problem was, I had no money in my pocket. None. And you didn’t ask a girl to buy you an ice cream soda. That would be totally humiliating.

  “At least come sit with me while I drink mine.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  But I really just wanted to run home.

  “So how’s Darren doing?” I asked after a minute of watching her nearly turning her cheeks inside out trying to get a plug of ice cream up and out of her straw.

  She took her mouth off the straw. Frowned. I wondered if I shouldn’t have asked.

  “Not so good,” she said. “He’s depressed, I think. Nobody’ll say it but me, but it’s so obvious. And he’s getting really frustrated. He’s supposed to get a prosthetic. You know. A false foot he can strap on. But now the stump is infected, and it’s much too painful. He’d rather die than put any weight on it. So it’s going to be another couple of months at least. And he hates the crutches, because when he uses them, it pulls on these muscles in his chest where he took some shrapnel. So he mostly just stays in bed.”

  “Oh,” I said, wishing I had never brought it up. “That’s too bad.”

  “I just hope when Roy comes home, he comes home in one piece. You know. All of him.”

  “I just hope he comes home,” I said.

  She shot me a funny look, and I realized I was setting my hopes weirdly low. So I added, “Yeah, but . . . of course. Uninjured would be great.”

  For a good minute or more we lived out an awkward silence.

  “Does he have anybody he can talk to?” I asked.

  “Well. Me.”

  “Yeah. Right. Of course. But I guess I meant . . .”

  “Somebody who knows about war stuff.”

  “Right.”

  “He has a counselor at the VA. But it’s the government, so I don’t know how good the guy is.”

  I thought about Zoe Dinsmore and what she’d said about government work. How it never works very well.

  Then Libby spoke again, knocking me out of those thoughts. What she said knocked me out of everything, actually. My whole life up to that moment.

  “How come you never ask me anywhere?”

  Honestly. That’s what she said.

  “Ask you anywhere?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where, for example?”

  “You know . . . out. For example.”

  Then I felt like a complete idiot. Because Connor had been right all along. And I’d been too stupid to see it. Even a second before she said it, I hadn’t seen, though we’d been sitting together for several minutes and she hadn’t talked about my brother much. Not even when I brought up hers. My first thought was that I wanted to tell Connor about this. Tell him he’d been right. Because that’s always a good-feeling thing when somebody lets you know you were right. Then my second thought was that I shouldn’t tell Connor, because it was bad enough he was stuck in his house and feeling all desperate and angry and depressed. Hearing that I was not only out and about but making a date with a pretty girl would have to be something like rubbing salt in his wounds.

  “Well . . . ,” I began. “I guess I just didn’t know you wanted me to.”

  “I talk to you every chance I get.”

  “I thought it was just because of my brother being drafted, like yours.”

  “I didn’t know what else to talk to you about,” she said.

  And with that we fell deeply into that humiliated silence. The one where you have no idea what else to talk about.

  “I could ask you somewhere,” I said. Anything to break the stillness. “A movie, maybe.”

  “That would be nice. Tonight?”

  “I was thinking Saturday.”

  I got my allowance on Fridays. But I didn’t want to say that, because it made me sound too young and too broke and too utterly ridiculous.

  “Okay,” she said. “I accept.”

  “What do you want to see?”

  “I don’t care. You choose.”

  “Okay,” I said. But it was not okay. It was a huge burden, and I felt in no way up to the task. What if I chose something she hated? “I’m going to finish my run now. But I’ll call you.”

  “You better.”

  I smiled without meaning to.

  Then I got up and left the shop. Picked up a run before the door had even swung closed behind me. As I ran by the window she waved at me, and I waved back. I felt my face redden to a humiliating degree. Fortunately, that takes a minute to play out. And it only took a couple of seconds to run by the window. So I don’t think she saw.

  So that’s how fast the world changes, I thought as I ran home. I’m minding my own business, thinking it’ll be a day just like any other. And then all of a sudden I realize I might be about to have a girlfriend for the first time ever.

  And I hadn’t even seen it coming. But maybe you never do.

  When the dogs met me outside the cabin the following morning, Mrs. Dinsmore was nowhere to be seen. I figured she was just inside. At first I didn’t think anything about it. I was all ready to go runnin
g without giving the lady another thought.

  Then I started worrying, and I didn’t want that on my mind the whole run. It was hard enough trying not to think about Libby Weller. Add a worry onto that and I figured I’d probably crash into a tree or something.

  I stepped up onto her porch and rapped on the door.

  “Mrs. Dinsmore?” I called.

  “I’m alive, Lucas,” she called back.

  “That’s good to hear, ma’am.”

  “It’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it?”

  “Pretty much, ma’am. Yeah.”

  “Then go run.”

  I made eye contact with the dogs and launched myself from the porch, and then we were off.

  We hadn’t gotten more than an eighth of a mile before it started to mist rain. That was unusual for June, to put it mildly. First I slowed, thinking we might have to go back. Then I thought, What the hell? It wasn’t cold—in fact, it was clammy and warm. So if I got wet . . . so what?

  I ran faster, and the dogs kept pace with me, and then the rain came down harder. Bigger drops. It made all three of us blink and squint our eyes against it, but we didn’t stop.

  We ran all the way to the cemetery. Because I’d been thinking about it. And I wanted to see it again. I wanted to stand in front of those two grave markers again, now that I knew who those two young people were, and how they intersected with my life. I wanted to see what I would feel.

  The old yellow flowers had been taken away. They had not been left there to wither. In their place were two similar stalks, but blooming with purple flowers. They looked like they must have come from the same garden or shop as the last ones. Only the color had changed. They looked fresh.

  I read the names of the children again, but I can’t really say what I felt. I didn’t know them, so I didn’t know what to feel. But I did feel bad for the people who had known them. It was just obvious that I hadn’t gotten to be one of them. Part of me regretted that. Painful as it must have been, I felt as though I’d missed something important.

  Then we shortened our run by jogging straight home from there. Not because I was soaked to the skin, although I was, but because the leaves and pine needles under my feet were getting too slippery. As I did, I let the tragedy of the past fall away, and the excitement of my first date come back in to replace it. Part of me felt bad about that. But it happened all the same.

  I came back at a light jog for the sake of safety, the dogs trotting beside me. Halfway back to the cabin the rain stopped, and the sun came out. Just like that. The sky was blue everywhere except to the east, where the clouds had gone.

  Mrs. Dinsmore was outside the cabin when we got there. She was around the side of the place, standing on a short stepladder cleaning the windows with a rag. The same windows I’d looked through when I’d seen her that first time. When I thought I might be looking at a corpse. And I wasn’t far enough from wrong, either.

  She turned partway when she saw me.

  “I hate dirty windows,” she called to me. “Especially water-spotted ones. What’s the point of living out in the middle of nature if you can’t even have a good look at it out your windows?”

  I didn’t answer. Just moved closer and watched her work for a minute.

  Then I said, “Can I get your advice about something?”

  “I suppose.”

  “If you’re going to take a person to a movie, and this person says it’s up to you to pick which movie, how do you pick? I mean, how do you know how to pick so you don’t end up with something this person’ll hate?”

  She wrapped up her work on the window right about then. Stuffed the rag into her overalls pocket. As she backed down off the stepladder, she looked right into my face.

  “So that’s why you’re grinning like a damn fool,” she said. “You have yourself a date with a girl.”

  I hadn’t known I was grinning. But when she said that, I checked my own face. You know, from behind. And I do think I might have had some of that “nervous cheeks” thing going on. I wondered if that was why my mother had been staring at me over dinner the night before. It had been just the two of us. My father had been late coming home from work, and my mother didn’t like him nearly enough anymore to hold dinner.

  “I do have a date,” I said. “And I just thought you might be able to help me with the picking problem. Because I’m not a girl. And you are. Or you were. Or, anyway . . . you’re female, is what I mean to say.” I felt my words get stumbly and my face hot. “I guess I really stepped in something with that, didn’t I?”

  “Your good intentions will excuse it this time. Did you look in the paper or call the theater to see what’s playing over in Blaine?”

  Blaine had the closest theater. Three screens. Ashby was too small to have a theater. Not even a one-screener.

  “I did, yeah.”

  “So what are your choices?”

  “There’s that western with John Wayne. And then there’s a scary one. I forget the title, but it’s supposed to be really bloody. And then the one about the little VW Beetle car that talks. Or maybe it doesn’t talk. Maybe it just flies or something. I saw a trailer for it, but I don’t remember much about it now.”

  “Interesting,” she said. She folded up the stepladder. Tucked it under her arm. “An interesting set of options.”

  “Interesting how?”

  I walked with her to the shed to put the stepladder away. That seemed to be the only way I was going to get my advice.

  “Because each choice says a lot about you as a date. Let’s say you choose the western. I can’t say for a fact that this gal doesn’t like westerns. Some girls might. But she’s less likely to enjoy them than you are. And even if she does, choosing the boy movie might be seen as a way of saying, ‘Well, you let me have my choice, so I just chose what I wanted.’ Might come off a little selfish. Now, a lot of boys’ll pick the horror flick for a date. Even though that runs the risk of putting her in a terrible mood and making her have an upsetting time. Know why they might pick that one anyway?”

  I stopped outside the shed and waited for her.

  “No, ma’am. I don’t think I do.”

  “Because they’re hoping for the girl to snuggle in close when she gets scared. But here’s the thing you need to know about girls: We’re not stupid. We know about how boys do that on purpose. We can figure stuff out. So you run the risk of her thinking you’re only after one thing.”

  “I’m not,” I said, disturbed by my motives being questioned even in casual conversation.

  “I didn’t think so,” she said. “But you don’t want her to get the wrong impression.”

  “So, the Love Bug one.”

  “Sounds like a safe choice. It’s a comedy, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, that’s good, I think. A comedy. That sends the message that you want her to have a nice time. That you’re trying to make a fun date for her.”

  We started back toward the cabin together.

  I felt layers of stress dropping away with every step. It was so easy. Just take her to see the Love Bug movie. I couldn’t believe I’d wasted half the night tossing and turning over something that had proved to be so simple.

  “Thanks,” I said. “That’s good advice.”

  “Worth it to have somebody call me a girl again,” she said. “It’s been a while.”

  Chapter Eight

  The Key

  I knocked on Libby’s door promptly at six. And by promptly I mean I’d walked around the block for ten minutes, glancing obsessively at my watch. Then I’d stood on her welcome mat watching the second hand tick around to the top of the hour. It was all downright silly, looking back.

  I was wearing clean khaki pants that I’d pressed myself, and a short-sleeved white shirt. And a necktie. Probably overkill, but that was me at fourteen. Overkill Boy.

  Besides, I knew I was going to have to meet her parents first. She’d told me.

  Libby answered the door, and the way she sm
iled at me made my knees wobbly. I had to pay attention to standing steady.

  She was wearing her hair long and straight, falling around her shoulders, and a peachy-colored, off-the-shoulders light dress, like a sundress. It had high short sleeves and a short skirt, and once again I had to work hard not to stare at the wrong places.

  “Sorry about this,” she said, tossing her head back over her shoulder to indicate something in the house behind her. I knew what she meant. She was embarrassed that her parents insisted on meeting me. “They’re kind of old-fashioned that way.”

  “It’s not a problem,” I said.

  She stepped back and I walked in.

  It was true and it wasn’t true, what I’d said. I understood her parents wanting to meet me. She was their only daughter. And who was I, after all? It was a small town, of course, so I wasn’t a literal stranger to them. They probably could have picked me out of a crowd and told you my name and who my parents were, along with what my father did for a living. But we had never sat down and talked, so I guess they weren’t sure enough of who I had grown up to be. So I got where they were coming from. But it was a problem—to me, anyway. It made me so nervous that, if I made the mistake of stopping to think about it, I felt like my seams were unraveling all down the inside of me.

  I took a deep breath and followed her into the living room. And I forcefully put all the fear and insecurity stuff aside. Just locked it out for the time being.

  Her parents stood to greet me, and I stepped up to each one of them, starting with her mom, and shook their hands with pretend confidence.

  “Mrs. Weller,” I said. “Pleased to meet you.”

  I was careful that my grip was firm when shaking her father’s hand. Not aggressive or challenging. Just firm.

  “Mr. Weller. Pleased to meet you.”

  They motioned for me to sit.

  I perched on the edge of the couch, trying to look less nervous than I felt, and Libby sat close to my left hip.

  “So you’re Bart and Ellie Painter’s boy,” her father said. He was smoking a filterless cigarette, high up in the crook between his first and second fingers, and it was burning dangerously low.

  “Yes, sir.”