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By Root 766 0

been sick, they were busy: I could practically hear her making the feeble excuses, and yet I couldn’t think what she was trying to hide. I was writing to her several times a week, first of all because I was so thankful she was caring for Emma and Claire, and second, because I thought that as well as nourishing Howard she might be able to keep his spirits up. Theresa’s letters were unusual because she wrote just as she spoke, bubbling along about her mother, the girls, the flower borders, an epiphany, a recipe for shortbread. I appreciated her trying to keep me in touch with ordinary life, a place where one fretted over shoddy merchandise and strained relationships. After her communications stopped I knew that something had happened, and that she, even with her considerable talents, did not know how to tell me.

When the call came through that I could go, everyone stopped what they were doing. They gathered in the day room to watch me pack. Sherry asked me what I was going to wear home and I described, as best I remembered, the khaki shorts and the gray T-shirt that I’d worn the day I was taken.

“You jus’ as well keep the orange shit on,” Sherry said. “That sound bland as mud.”

“You are so lucky,” Debbie whimpered. “I wish someone could get me out of here.”

“You try to keep the faith,” I said.

“You going back to the farm?” Sherry asked. When I didn’t answer she said, “I couldn’t stand to live out there in all that dark empty space. I’d feel like somebody was lookin’ at me all the tahm.”

A woman who was new called from across the room, “Like there ain’t nobody lookin’ at us right now?”

“Let’s not have long faces!” Sherry shouted. “You know we’ll be back here someday. You know we was meant to be one happy family.”

Dyshett stood just outside of her cell and watched. I gathered my books in the grocery bag and went quickly for the door without any personal good-byes. It was possible we would meet again, that we might spend the prime of our lives together, if we were convicted of our various crimes. As the door buzzed and the guard came through to get me I turned and waved. “Be good,” I said.

“Keep in touch,” Sherry yelled.

I could see them soundlessly repeating both jokes as I was led along the hall and out a series of doors to the elevator.

I felt as I’m sure that dog must have felt, the dog we came upon in our woods one day, wrapped around a tree by its own leash. It was barking and barking. And after Howard carefully unwrapped the leash and it was free to go, it still stood there, barking and barking. Even when it took one step, and another, it couldn’t believe that it was no longer bound. It barked at us, at the tree, at itself. It barked as it ran off, astonished all the way through the woods.

Before we went to our new town we stopped at a county park to walk along the nature trails. We didn’t talk much, except to point out a turtle, a kestrel, a great blue heron. There had been a short spate of rain and the trees dripped their water on us. I had missed a season, one dry summer; I had gone in when it seemed the heat would never abate, and come out to find a wet, cool September day. It had rained in my absence. Howard had told me about the first storm in July, and then the few showers that came after. I hadn’t heard the thunder inside our pod. The rain hadn’t been enough or come in time, and many of the farmers in the southern part of the state had lost their crops. One summer wasn’t much to lose over a lifetime, a season blotted out. There might be others to follow in some new place, lush wild summers, with cicadas, fireflies, mosquitoes, fish jumping, sunsets, and northern lights. There was no telling where we might go. I felt weightless walking along the trail, as if I might drift up to the sky like a helium balloon if I once let go of Howard’s hand.

I was standing in the brush looking over the cattail marsh when he told me that school was starting on Monday. There had been a teacher’s strike for nearly a month. The girls had seemed so far away while I was holed up, and I had somehow not been able to absorb