They let the Coward sleep, and walk down into the Marshes. They hardly speak. What, after all, would they say? Wait for me? Don’t hold this against me? Don’t forget me, not tonight and not ever? Without language they can at least pretend they are the last two people, or perhaps the first, the ones who don’t need speech. They need each other, that’s all, for one last night.
They stay down in the Marshes until their fingers and toes are nearly frozen; then they come back inside, where they fall asleep side by side on the Coward’s floor, close together, their breath even and deep. They are greedy for sleep and forgetfulness; one pure and perfect night of sleep, that’s what they yearn for, but even that is too much to expect. Is it possible for two people to have the same dream? As Hank is sleeping on the hard, wooden floor he dreams of a hedge of evergreens in which there is a door. On one side of the hedge is the future, on the other side, the past. In Gwen’s dream the hedge is made of thorns and the door has a lock and key. Someone is urging her to step through. Go ahead, they tell her, and when she does, the lock falls away. She can’t look back, she knows that much; she doesn’t dare. In his own dream, on the threshold of his gate, Hank can hear her footsteps in the distance, already fading.
In the morning, when the light is yellow and pale, and the Coward has begun to heat a big kettle of ice into drinking water for the horse, Hank steps outside onto the porch. By then, Gwen is gone.
“She went to Susanna Justice’s,” the Coward tells him. “She took the dog with her. She’s going home.”
Hank nods and sits down on the cold wooden steps of his father’s house. He notices that the tide coming in sounds as if a million tears were falling. Perhaps it’s the ice cracking beneath the rush of cold salt water. “I don’t blame her,” he says.
“Blame,” the Coward says, “is a serious thing.”
“Hey, when all else fails, blame yourself, right?” Hank tries to smile, but he feels too tight inside.
“If he comes for the horse, I’ll kill him,” the Coward says.
“Yeah?” This has to be a joke. “How do you plan to do that?”
The Coward watches a heron that is so far off it would look like a branch to other eyes. “My bare hands,” he says.
Hank tries his best not to laugh. “You know what I’d try first?” he suggests. “Camouflage.”
They work all the rest of the day on a dilapidated, filthy little outbuilding behind the house, which can serve as a barn. Hank hammers some boards over the holes in the wall and the Coward sets marsh grass over the roof. Today is the day Hank’s senior thesis is due, but maybe he can get an extension.
“I can write you a note,” the Coward says. “I’ll explain everything to the school authorities.”
“No way. Don’t think anything is different between us,” Hank warns the old man. “I’m helping with Tarot because of Gwen, not you.”
“Of course,” the Coward says. “And this is from Gwen, not from me.”
The Coward slides the silver compass which once belonged to him onto the porch railing. Out in the tall grass, the stick that looks like a heron takes flight, slowly and beautifully in the last of the day’s light.
“May you never be lost,” Alan Murray tells his son.
22
March is no longer working on her jewelry or expecting Hollis to bring back silver or gold. She has taken the gem-stones she’d hoped to set into bracelets, the opals and the tourmalines, and stored them in a canvas bag, kept in a dresser drawer. Instead of working, she stares at the ice on the window. She waits for night to fall. Sometimes she goes out beyond the fields. She walks past the meadows and the split-rail fences; once, she went as far as the cemetery, but she felt frightened there. There were no leaves on the trees, and the ground seemed so unforgiving and hard. Worst of all, she thought she saw Judith Dale in the distance; she thought she saw her crying.
Now, March will not venture any farther than Fox Hill. That, at least, is familiar territory. She goes in the sleet and the snow, and maybe this is why she’s developed a cough. It’s an aggravating hack that won’t go away, in spite of all the hot tea with honey she drinks. Fox Hill makes her sad, but she goes anyway. The mourning doves are gone. Hank’s attempt to move their nest has failed; they’re gone for good. When March peers into the windows of the old house, she cannot help but think of Judith Dale, and sometimes she looks over her shoulder, as if Judith might somehow appear.
Lately, March has been wondering why Mrs. Dale was not buried with the emerald ring. the gift of her true love. March has been thinking about this every day when she walks through the woods, and she believes she finally has the answer. Judith was not wearing the ring when she died; she’d already removed it, and set it aside. She was done with love. At least with the sort of love that has rules you have to abide by, and which, in the end, offers far less than you’d hoped for.