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comment on the music?”
    “Perhaps you’ve done it better, but not by much,” I answered.
    “An admirably diplomatic answer. How do your friends like it out here so far?” she asked, turning to face me.
    “So far, they seem quite content. They’re out wandering in the woods right now.”
    “Good,” she replied. “You know, this is the first time you’ve added any names to the guest list.”
    “I guess.” It was. “Is it a problem?”
    “No, of course not. I’m glad. You’ve always seemed so…contained. Aloof even.”
    “Oh,” I answered. “Perhaps.”
    Then a silence until she asked, “Do you have a lover?”
    “No.” I took a nervous sip of my coffee. “No, I don’t. Not at the moment.”
    “Recently?”
    “Uh…no, not really,” I equivocated.
    “Not really?”
    “No…not really.”
    Then another silence.
    “I’ve known you since you were…what? Seventeen? True, we don’t see each other that often anymore. These weekends, Christmas, maybe my birthday. Special occasions. Every time I wonder if you’ll be with someone, but you always come alone.”
    “I don’t want distractions at your birthday,” I cut in.
    “Why?”
    “You spoiled me. I have yet to meet a woman who’s as good a cook as Rachel.”
    “I see you’re not in a serious mood this morning. But one more impertinent question and you can go back to your coffee. Have you ever been in love?”
    I looked into my coffee cup, but no answers were there. “Yes,” I finally said.
    Emma waited a moment more while I groped for some words to clarify. Yes, I’ve been in love. I am in love, but I’ve neither seen nor spoken to her in several months. Is that really love? All these thoughts jumbled through my head. I was too caught in a limbo of indecision—no, Cordelia’s decision, all out of my power—to know what to reveal.
    Emma turned back to face her harpsichord, letting my answer satisfy for the moment. “What would you like to hear next?” she inquired.
    “Some more Bach would be nice.”
    She looked through some of her sheet music.
    “‘Capriccio in B-flat Major,’” Emma announced. Then she turned to me for a moment. “You don’t know anyone who can waltz, do you? No, of course not, your generation hardly knows what a waltz is anymore.” Emma was talking so as not to dismiss me too quickly with music. “Herbert can, but I am somewhat reluctant to begin this gala evening as part of a male/female couple. It doesn’t quite set the right tone. Oh, yes, the capriccio.” She arranged herself and started to play.
    I thought about volunteering myself. I could waltz. No, not really, I decided. A few years ago, my cousin Torbin had taught me. He was playing Ginger Rogers and needed someone to be his Fred Astaire. We had won first place, so I couldn’t have been that bad, but I had done little waltzing in the meantime.
    Several of Emma’s friends joined us. When she finished the last piece, I thanked her for the concert. Then I left, avoiding the bustling kitchen. It was lunchtime, but I wasn’t hungry yet. I wandered around the lawn, checking the pond for any long, thin denizens, but found only a lone frog. I left him there. A few women were swimming; the pond would be crowded when people finished eating. The sun was warm and direct. I walked into the shade of the woods, the trees muffling the increasing noise from the swimming pond. I ambled through the forest, at times cutting between trails when I got tired of the paths.
    Emma was right. In some ways I was an outsider, an observer, now wandering solitary in the woods rather than joining the gay laughter in the water.
    I followed the stream that ran out from the pond down a gently sloping hill. There was a trail farther away, but I liked the trickle of the brook guiding me. The trees were decked in their rich spring green, the brown pine needles silent underfoot.
    After the cloying suburbs where Aunt Greta and Uncle Claude lived, these bright, boundless woods had