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instructions on the back. They turn onto Big Pine Road. “Now we’re supposed to watch for a waterfall,” says Carla.
    A bright-orange truck tears past the Volkswagen, with a couple of teenagers inside and music blaring. “So much for the peaceful bucolic existence,” says Greg.
    Then they see the brook, and up ahead, the falls and Dan and Sally’s cottage. Greg shut off the engine. Except for a young woman and a dog, just heading up the hill maybe a quarter of a mile away, there is no one, and no other house, in sight. There’s a piece of an old condom lying in the dirt. Greg gets a stick and pushes it into the woods. Carla has already gone on ahead with the bagels.
    The red car is parked outside the girl’s house, but no one answers when Reg knocks on the porch door. He thinks maybe she doesn’t hear him, so he opens the door to the porch and tries again, on the kitchen door. On the porch table there are three yogurt containers and an empty granola box. Leaned up against the door is a rosebush that appears to be dead.
    He’s not the prying kind, but he looks inside the kitchen, in case maybe something is wrong. The place looks different from when old Mrs. Richards lived here, that’s for sure. There’s a mobile made out of shells hanging over the sink. There’s a pan in the sink that has something burnt-looking in it—popcorn maybe. A cat is sitting on the counter eating butter off a plate. The stove has been painted bright red, but some of the paint has peeled off. There’s a bookcase inside the kitchen fireplace, made out of cinder blocks and boards, with records stacked on it. She must have a couple hundred records. His daughter Jill would like that.
    Still no answer. He guesses he should go. Maybe he will just write a note, ask if she’d like her garden tilled. Looks like the house could use some paint too, and a gutter is falling off the roof. One thing at a time.
    There’s a pad of yellow lined paper and a felt-tip pen, just inside the door. Shame to come all this way and not leave a note. He looks out to the field again—a perfect spot to grow corn. His own yard is too shady, and all granite besides. He dusts off his boots and steps into the house.
    “Maybe you have forced yourself to forget what you and I felt,” it says on the yellow pad. “As for me, I would rather be in agony than numb.”
    Two lines down the page: “I feel like an exile. I have lost your world, and can no longer enter what used to be mine.”
    “I’m working hard, planning a garden, taking walks. I am thinking about adopting a Cambodian orphan. I have a dog named Simon. I think you would like this place. I hope you would be proud of me.”
    “I would come back tomorrow if you wanted me.”
    “I think my heart is broken.”
    Reg didn’t mean to read these things. He puts the pad down. He will try another day. Doris will be waiting supper.
    He hears a door slam on the porch, then, and a dog yipping. She is scooping dog chow into a blue ceramic dish.
    “Reg Johnson from down the road,” he says, shifting his feet. “Thought with this old house and all, maybe you could use a man.” She’s still standing there, holding the dog dish. He is thinking: She’s not that much older than Jill.
    “To help out,” he says. “I’m pretty handy.”
    “Yes,” she says. “I guess I could.”
    Doris is surprised—this being Tuesday—that Reg has worn his shorts to bed. This is how she knows he would like to have relations, and they do not usually have relations on Tuesdays on account of Rockford Files , which is his favorite show. She finds the show confusing—impossible to follow, if you’re also knitting—but she likes Jim Garner. He seems to have put on weight lately; in one of tonight’s chase scenes, she thought he might actually split his pants. But there’s no getting around it, Jim Garner is a very good-looking man. Kids today: her daughter Jill’s idea of a man is this Rod Stewart, who wears eyeliner and a