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“And you brought me another big package.”
    I slipped my hand under the side of her overalls and cupped her breast.
    â€œI’m all sweaty and dirty,” she said.
    I kissed her behind her ear. “I love dirt and sweat. Good, honest smells. Earthy.”
    She turned, hooked an arm around my neck, and kissed me hard. “You smell good, too,” she said. “Fish and seaweed and salt. Working in the earth makes me horny. Shall we give one of the Adirondack chairs a try?”
    â€œOut here?” I said. “Under the open sky?”
    â€œWe wouldn’t want to get the sheets dirty,” she said.
    Â 
    The beers I’d brought out were lukewarm by the time we got around to drinking them, and the summer shadows had begun to lengthen inside the walls of our little backyard.
    â€œIt looks nice,” I said to Evie, taking in the garden with a sweep of my hand. “You do good work.”
    She nodded. “I know.”
    â€œWhen I was a kid I did yard work for two bucks an hour,” I said. “Under the broiling sun. Eight hours a day for sixteen dollars and maybe a glass of lemonade. My old man had plenty of money, but he believed a boy should work. So I mowed, I trimmed, I raked, I weeded. I had five customers, one for each day of the week. After four summers of it, I promised myself I’d never touch a rake or lawnmower ever again.”
    â€œThat’s why you don’t help,” she said.
    â€œA promise is a promise.”
    â€œWell,” she said, “I don’t want help. I like weeding and stuff. I like the way it looks when I’m done. And it takes my mind off things.”
    â€œAny particular things?”
    â€œTerrorism, global warming, genocide in Africa. A couple of gray hairs I found the other day.” She touched her temple and smiled.
    â€œThat’s it?”
    â€œSure,” she said. “Tell me about your visit with your uncle.”
    So I told her about Uncle Moze and how he hadn’t heard from Cassie in a year and a half, and I showed her the photo Moze had given me.
    â€œShe’s really pretty,” said Evie. “He hasn’t talked to her for a year and a half?”
    I nodded. “He figures he said something that alienated her. It’s eating him up.”
    â€œHow awful for him,” she said. “So you’re going to help, is that it?”
    â€œI told Uncle Moze I’d try to talk with Cassie,” I said, “see if I can convince her to reconcile with him, or at least to talk to him. Uncle Moze is a nice old guy. He was always good to me. Treated me like a man when I was just a kid. Now he’s heartbroken. Cassie’s pretty much all he cares about.”
    â€œSo what’re you going to do?”
    â€œI’ll do what anybody would do,” I said. “I’ll try to reach her on the phone, and if that doesn’t work, I guess I’ll head over to Madison and knock on the door.”
    I fished out the scrap of paper on which I’d scribbled Cassie’s two numbers, picked up the phone, and dialed her cell phone.
    It rang once. Then a husky female voice said, “Hi. It’s Cassie. Sorry, I can’t take your call right now. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you, I promise.”
    There was a beep, and then another female voice, this one sounding mechanical, said, “I’m sorry. This mailbox is full. Please try another time.”
    I clicked the phone off and looked up at Evie. “No answer. Her voice-mail box is full, just like Uncle Moze said. I wonder what that means.”
    â€œSome people never check their voice mail,” said Evie.
    â€œIt wasn’t full a month ago, according to Moze.”
    Evie shrugged.
    â€œMaybe she lost her phone,” I said.
    â€œThat could be,” she said. “Or it could be something else.”
    â€œLike what?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œIt was kind of weird,”