stories they were always big women. Big shotguns. Len had lived next door long enough to have figured out that the girls weren’t all that big, or half as threatening. They weren’t nuns, or Amish, or cult members, or all sisters with widely ranging fathers, as the rumors had variously claimed—and since the tree hugger had joined them, one of them was a man. Len had to hand it to them. Nobody thought they’d stick, coming up here from the city, paying too much for that run-down spread. It was too hard a life. Too wet in the winter and hot in the summer, too many earthquakes and landslides and wild animals who shrieked and snarled in the night. But they were into their third wet season, Willow and the others, and they had saved him, in a way. He didn’t know if he could have borne the heartbreak of Meg’s decline without their help.
The fourth gate, left open when he pulled out that morning, was his own. A single light on in the house poured its yellow into the yard. Len opened the truck door and smelled the wet dripping off the trees. Everything was damped-down and quiet. The road quit here in his driveway. Past that were dark trees and steep hillsides and a five-mile hike to the sea.
Len hadn’t told anyone quite where he’d gone, or why. He’d asked Willow to stay with Meg until he got back, and he could see her sitting at the kitchen table, her back to the door. He glanced sideways to make sure the kid was asleep but caught sight of the boy’s round face, his open eyes. Len swore slightly under his breath. He couldn’t count on this one to stay put. He crossed around the front of the truck to the passenger side, scooped the boy against his chest, and carried him like a loose sack of grain into the house.
Willow lifted her head to greet him. She cut an elegant figure, with her honey hair swept up like a movie star’s, her pearl earrings, those flat shoes that made her feet look dainty—not the clodhopper boots Ruth and that Melody girl favored. She was the only one of the bunch to put on lipstick, and anyone could tell she wore a bra. Not that Len was looking. Not exactly. He met her gaze and brushed past Willow to lay the sleeping boy onto the couch by the wood stove. Then he crossed the floor, boards squeaking underfoot, to find his wife asleep in the single bedroom.
Meg’s face in the muted light was peacefully asleep. Len felt a wave of love and revulsion. It was easy to confuse Meg’s new blankness with peace, but blank was blank. Blank was blank was blank. If the old Meg was trapped in there, Len had no way to get her out. The old Meg was peaceful. She had never talked much but there had been a calm, an ease to her that Len felt comfortable to be around. She was competent and even-tempered and had a way of running a hand under his shirt and up his spine that tingled the base of his brain and made him yearn, without reason, for the chill and tart flavor of raspberry sherbet. She had always been a modest woman, and now, quite simply, she was not. Len did his best to satisfy her but for him the pleasure had gone out of that part of his life. He felt for the wedding band on his left hand. Fifteen years grown into the flesh of his finger, they would have to cut his hand to get it off. Though why would they. There was no need. Len and Meg. Meg and Len. Even their names were similar, brief and to the point, the consonants crowding the short e. Len. Bed. Meg. Fed. Pen. Leg. Red.
Dead, he thought, and turned back to the other room.
Willow had her coat on, black wool with the high collar. She had draped the couch throw over the boy and tucked in its edges and was watching him intently, her slender hand stroking the soft blond of his hair. She looked up when Len entered, and he winced at the look on her face. That delicate, quizzical smile.
Len was helpless to answer. The letter had come from the state some weeks ago, and it sat on the kitchen table for days, yielding less and less to each reading until he couldn’t