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All you can do is trust in Him.”
    “Hmmph,” she said.
    Horace had started to cry upstairs. I excused myself and went inside, lingering in the dark hallway for a minute. I didn’t want to go out again, to face the heat of her frustration in the static warmth of the day. Even then, before my fears had any grounding, she made me uneasy. There was something thrilling in her dissatisfaction, something glamorous about her disdain for the town, and the fact that I was her confidante set me apart. If she said it to me, I wasn’t one of them. But at the same time I sensed down deep that if she could feel all thosethings and say all those things and still smile so sweetly at the farmers market on Wednesdays and hostess bridge with such easy charm, there must be in her something that would always need to undermine and deceive, to erode the base of what seemed solid and good because it didn’t have anything to do with her, anything to do with making her happy. I thought, even then, that I would have to be careful not to let her draw me in. If I got too close the fire would blind me and I wouldn’t be able to tell when she had had enough, when she started whispering to a newly married young arrival words that bit and chewed and spit me out.
    I went upstairs and got Horace and changed his diaper, and then Taylor woke too, so I cleaned her up and brought them down to the front porch, one on each hip. By the set of her shoulders I could tell Bryce was brooding, but when she heard the screen door open she turned toward us with her face arranged in a mama smile and her arms outstretched. She took Taylor from me and cooed at her and undid the buttons of her dress with one hand, lifting her breast for Taylor to suck. There was no one around, so I did the same. We sat on the porch with our babies, not speaking and Bryce’s body softened, finally, the way it always did, around Taylor’s tiny form.
        
This is the story I told Bryce Davies.
    “May 17, 1940. Bryce—Without preliminaries I will tell you that I found a letter from you to my husband in his shirt pocket this morning. I do not want explanations or excuses. Its intent was clear. My husband knows I found it and swears to me that he will never see you again. All I have to say is this: I could forgive the fact that you have lied to me, but you have also betrayed me as a friend, and that I cannot forgive. Do not come near me again. But most of all, stay away from my husband. If you cannot do that, I promise with all my heart that I will find a way to keep you away.”
    But that was only the beginning.

W hen I got home from Adam’s I called my father and told him we’d broken up.
    “Good,” he said. “Good for you. It’s about time.”
    “And there’s something else.” I paused. I didn’t know how to say it.
    “If it’s what I think it is, I don’t want to hear it.”
    “What do you mean, Dad?”
    “What do
you
mean, Cassie?”
    I gritted my teeth. “Well … I was thinking of taking that land. You know. Moving down there.”
    I could hear him sighing all the way from Boston. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
    “Daddy,” I said, coaxing.
    “I just don’t think it’s smart. You have no idea what you’re getting into.”
    “Yes, I do,” I said. But I was curious. “What are you so worried about?”
    “Oh, Cassie, those awful relatives of your mother’s, for a start.”
    “But I wouldn’t have to deal with them, would I?”
    “Oy vey.” He sucked air through his teeth. “Your aunt Elaine called today.”
    “She
called?
She never calls.”
    “Well, this is the first time. Come to think of it, this may be the first time in her entire life that she’s placed a phone call above the Mason-Dixon line.”
    “And?”
    He went into a singsong. “She told me about the land and the house and how Horace would be willing, bless his heart, to take it off your hands. She said she reckoned it was more of a burden than a blessing and you’d probably just