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said, “I didn’t want to come here this summer. It was you who asked for me to come.”
    She started running back to the house. Either she was faster than he was, or he didn’t try to catch up with her. She ran into the kitchen and up to the room which was her room and closed the door behind her.

7
    It was half an hour later when she heard him coming upstairs. He knocked on the door.
    â€œYou can come in,” she said. She was sitting on the bed, leaning against the wall. Her knees were bent and she had her arms wrapped around her legs, holding them close against her body.
    He stood in the doorway. “I’m not very good about talking about things, Clare,” he said. “Never have been. But I guess as much as I don’t like talking, I’ve got to say something now.”
    He leaned sideways against the doorframe, ran his finger up along the grain of the wood. “Looks to methat we’ve got two choices here. Either we can throw in the towel and call up your Aunt Eva and you spend the rest of the time with her. Or we hang on and see if we can get anything going for us.”
    Clare didn’t say anything right away. She looked down at the quilt, studied the pattern.
    â€œI’d say either way was OK with me,” said Richard, “but that wouldn’t be the truth, Clare. The truth is that I’d rather you said you wanted to hang on, because that’s what I’d like to do. Give us some more time. See what we can do? Or maybe I should put that differently.” He paused for a moment, cleared his throat. “What I should say is, give me more time, see what I can do. What you’re doing is—well—OK.”
    â€œAll right, then,” said Clare.
    â€œAll right, what?”
    â€œNumber two,” she said, and she looked up at him now.
    Richard stood straight up. “That’s good,” he said. “Thank you, Clare.” And he went back downstairs.

8
    In the afternoon Richard said they would go kayaking, so Clare went upstairs to put on her bathing suit. She’d brought three, and none of them seemed right. She had to stand on the bed to see all of her in the mirror over the bureau. Finally she chose the one that covered her the most, and pulled a big T-shirt over it.
    Down at the beach there was a pile of small boats along the side of low dunes.
    â€œHave you kayaked before?” Richard asked.
    Clare shook her head. “Then I suppose we should take a little time to get you used to it before we head out netting.”
    Richard hoisted a small boat up and carried it down to the water. It was the smallest and ugliest boat in the group. It was a dull orange, and looked as if it been battered by rocks. “This is my baby,” said Richard, and he gave it a tap with his foot.
    The words jolted Clare. “This is my baby,” Vera had said, the first time she introduced Tertio to Clare.
    The other boat Richard carried down, to Clare’s relief, was a larger, newer one. It was bright red. When he set it on the sand next to his boat, his boat looked even smaller and rougher.
    â€œI got this one for you to use,” said Richard. He said this casually, but looked back at her in a way that made Clare guess he was hoping she would be pleased. She wasn’t sure if he had borrowed the boat for her to use, or if he had actually bought it. Either way, he had thought about her, planned something for her visit.
    â€œThank you. I love red,” was all she could manage to say.
    He had outfitted her with a life jacket. Fortunately it wasn’t one of those awful orange kinds that you wore like a sausage around your neck, but a vest with a zipperup the front. She stood by the kayak now, holding the paddle he had given her.
    â€œTell me what kind of experience you’ve had with boats,” said Richard.
    â€œI use the rowboat on Tertio’s pond,” said Clare. Richard’s eyebrows rose before she could