Page 177 of Wayfarers

“Is that what you want? For me to get in?”

I don’t trust my voice. “Yes,” I say a little hoarsely.

“Turn around,” he says, and this time it’s not a debate. So I hear him approach instead of seeing it—the hushed feet on sandy ground, Winslow scrabbling to his feet and Knox trying to tell him to “Stay, good boy, stay,” and it’s no use, because there, that there’s the dolphin sound of Winslow belly-flopping into the water, the breath as he paddles toward me, that’s Knox’s moving slowly, deliberately beside him and I know his cast is held up high above his head, I know his other hand is about to slip forward to touch my shoulder, maybe tangle in my hair and I—

A sound in the underbrush. Winslow bursting into his operatic K-9 unit bark. A flashlight erupts and my shadow emerges out far ahead of me on the suddenly bright water, Knox’s shadow superimposed around it—we have four arms, two heads, and one territorial golden retriever, and we’ve been caught and I am naked in the woods.

Is this a flight response? I’m surging past Knox up and onto the bank and I can’t see the intruders, just hear some embarrassed scrabbling, the flashlight going wild over our heads—is it the police? Can you get arrested for skinny-dipping?—as I snatch up my dress and my shoes from the ground and is Knox behind me? Make like Winslow, I think, escape, and yes, Knox is following, there’s the thunder of all eight of our feet down the path until we reach the trailhead, the parking lot, the van. I pull on my dress, my head through the neck hole but whatever, open the door for Winslow to caper gleefully into the van and shake and shake and shake his wet all over everything.

When I finally catch my breath, I say, “Knox?”

“Yeah?” he says behind me.

“Are you decent?”

“That’s such a funny question.”

“Knox! Tell me!”

“Yes, I am wearing my jeans. Decently.”

When I turn to him I throw my arms around his neck. I feel electric. I feel like I could fly around the world using only my arms. “Wasn’t that insane?!?”

“Yeah, totally.”

“I’ve never felt adrenaline like that before.”

“For sure, no doubt.”

“Knox?”

“Yep.”

“This isn’t the first time you’ve run naked through the woods, is it.”

“It’s my first time running naked through the woods with you,” he says, his mouth very close to mine.

Sylvie

“I think this is it,” Knox says, peering through the windshield. “But what if I’m wrong, and I knock, and some guy answers the door with a shotgun?”

We look at each other.

“This is probably going to be fine,” I tell him. “But if it isn’t, we’ll travel for a few more weeks until you can make another plan.”

He nods, distracted. “Okay, I have to know,” he says, “I have to know she’s okay. Miss Tara and Miss Mara got in my head.” And he gets out of the van and books it to the front door.

With his good hand, he rings the doorbell, waits for a while, and then knocks. He throws a worried glance back at me. Another long pause. The door opens gradually. And I watch from a distance as the tiny old woman takes him into her arms.

Knox

With every step toward my mamaw’s front door, my pulse quickens by 10 percent. Her house looks different. Not different like someone new necessarily lives there, but the lawn is wilder than I ever remember it being. A broken venetian blind sags in a front window. It feels deserted, but not so much so that it’s clear no one lives there. Silence as I ascend the porch steps, no shrill barking of the tiny dog she always owned. Ruby, her dog’s name was. She’s surely gone now. The dog. Not my mamaw, I desperately hope. Maybe we should have beelined it here. Maybe we shouldn’t have stopped for anything—not the eclipse, not to skinny dip. But Sylvie. Sylvie.

As I go to ring the doorbell, I realize I’ve made no emotional plan for what I’ll do if a stranger answers the door and tells me she bought the house at an estate sale after the old lady who owned it died with no heirs.

Actually, I have no plan of any kind for what I’m going to do if she doesn’t answer.

I ring the doorbell.