Maybe a trip to the Alaska State Fair in Palmer, she thought, examining her palette and selecting a number 11 seed bead in lime green. Rain or shine, the fair was always crowded over the Labor Day weekend, kids standing in line for their last Octopus ride before school started, serious, tight-lipped women examining the crafts building for blue ribbons, cowboys roping calves in the arena, lumbermen rolling logs in the pond, Roscoe’s Skyline Restaurant selling the best barbecued ribs this side of Texas on the Red Path. But no, Roscoe had forsaken the fair for the Sears Mall, and for that matter, Labor Day was the last day of the fair, wasn’t it? She used to know these things. Fine, they could stop at Roscoe’s at the Sears Mall on the way home. Rebecca’s mouth watered at the thought.

No more washing dishes in cold creek water, of filtering drinking water for both sand and beaver fever. Rebecca thought of the Amana Heavy Duty Washer, with its Extra Large Capacity and Seven Cycles, and of the Amana Heavy Duty Dryer with Nine Cycles residing in the laundry room of their home on the Hillside. No more scrubbing of clothes in the tin washtub. No more spit baths in that same washtub. No more listening to Mark complain because his jeans never dried on the line strung between the cabin and the toolshed. How were they supposed to dry without sun? It wasn’t her fault he’d chosen to buy a gold claim stuck down a hole.

No more picking lettuce out of the garden, instead of buying it already picked-and washed-from City Market, like a civilized human being. She could look for a new job, a real job in a downtown office with a computer and a modem and a telephone and copy and fax machines, in an office with no mosquitoes or black flies, where she could go down to M.A.’s hot dog stand at the corner of Fourth and G and have a Polish Special on a sunny summer day, and to the Snow City Cafe for a salad sampler on a crisp winter day.

She had never felt so isolated, so abandoned, so alone.

She looked at her palette, a paper plate with piles of beads, seed, square, frosted, tubular, in shades of green and purple and gold.

“Say it,” she said out loud. “So bored.” She looked at the piece in her hand, which had begun to curve eastward around the vintage German teardrop, and threaded a faceted garnet onto her needle. A little splash of color in this otherwise otherworldly piece, something to draw the eye but not enough to overpower the whole. Yes, she thought. Alone, lonely, but most of all, bored.

Mark, on the other hand, was thriving. He’d pulled nineteen ounces of gold out of the creek, once he had identified a deposit and had worked out how to pan it. Rebecca thought of his salary as a BP geologist, working one week on and one week off the North Slope oil fields, and one evening took pencil in hand to figure out the dollar value of Mark’s take. Gold had been selling for two hundred fifty-four dollars an ounce when they left Anchorage in June. Nineteen times two hundred fifty-four equaled four thousand eight hundred and twenty-six dollars. The mine and the surrounding five acres had cost them twenty thousand dollars, which didn’t include state permits and fees, supplies and transportation, or the house sitter’s fee. Mark’s salary was one hundred and fourteen thousand a year, which would be cut by nearly a third because of all his time off this summer. Paid vacation time only covered three weeks.

She looked back down at her work, and sighed. One good thing to come out of this summer, she’d filled her Christmas list. A woven bead necklace for Mom, a sweater for Dad, sweatshirts with beaded designs for her niece and nephews, beaded Christmas ornaments for friends, all were done and already neatly packed away in the single box that contained her personal belongings, all that she had brought in and all she was taking out.

Mark, on the other hand, had not even begun to pack. Every available inch of space was littered with his clothes and geology books and gold pans and pickaxes and pry bars and what seemed to be hundreds of rock samples. The shack was too small for this much clutter, but Rebecca had soon given up on trying to keep Mark’s gear in order. She kept the cooking area clean because they had to eat, but she left Mark’s stuff strictly alone. He didn’t complain, at least out loud.

She heard his step on the path to the cabin and looked up when the door opened. “You’re early,” she said. “I haven’t even started lunch.”

“I know. No, it’s okay,” he said when she put her work to one side and began to rise. “I wanted to talk to you.”

His face was grave and her heart skipped a beat. “What about? Is something wrong?” Had Nushagak Air Taxi somehow left a message that through some unavoidable mix-up they wouldn’t be picked up on Monday?

He pulled out a chair and sat down opposite her, leaning forward to place his hands on her knees.

She looked at him and some part of her thrilled yet again to his dark good looks, the thick black hair curling against his collar, the dark eyes, the firm-lipped mouth. His shoulders were broad, his hips narrow, his legs long and well muscled. Naked, he looked like a god. They had made love standing in front of a mirror once, and she still marveled at the memory, dark and light, masculine and feminine, strength and softness. It remained her best orgasm to date.

He took the piece from her hands and examined it. “What’s this?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“What do you call the method again?”

“Bead weaving.”

“Right, right. Pretty, whatever it is.”

She removed it from his hands, square hands with strong fingers and neatly clipped nails, permanently grimed now after three months of grubbing in the dirt. “You didn’t quit work early to come in and talk about my beading. What’s up?”

“Besides me?” His hands traced a firm path up her hips, urging her legs apart. It melted her, as it always did. He knelt between her legs to suck at the pulse in her throat, nibble on her earlobe, bite her nipples through the knit fabric of her T-shirt.

He raised his head and kissed her, long and slow, flirting with his tongue and his teeth. She dropped her beadwork and reached for his zipper.

He pulled back and framed her face in his hands to smile down at her. In a low, husky voice, he murmured, “What would you say if I told you I wanted to quit my job, and for us to stay out here year-round?”

Newenham, September 1

The hopelessly drunk, the terminally idiotic and the criminally inclined had for a change taken the rest of the day off, and Liam was home by five-thirty and gloriously off duty, as Prince was on call for the evening. “Tim?” he said when he stepped in the door. “Wy?”

No answer. He went out on the bluff between the house and the river and stood post for fourteen minutes, until his thighs decided enough was enough, and then went through all thirty movements of the form three times. It was thirty now instead of sixty-four, Moses had informed him a week earlier, because Liam had learned enough not to have to break each movement down into each of its component parts, and had given him a whole new set of names to memorize. Liam was fully conversant with the statutes describing assault in its various degrees, and had kept his hands in horse stance instead of fastening them around Moses’ neck.

Doing form wasn’t enough to soothe his conscience-Bill’s “social worker” remark still rankled-but he showered and changed into jeans and unpacked the bag of groceries he’d bought on the way home. Dinner for two, with wine, no less. She couldn’t be mad at him if he made her beef Stroganoff washed down with cabernet sauvignon, could she? The cabernet had cost more than all the rest of the ingredients put together.

He cut up the beef and put it into a frying pan to brown, adding a dollop of the wine for the hell of it. He poured out a glass of Glenmorangie for himself and broke into the bag of egg noodles. He was filling the pot with water when the phone rang.