“Thanks.” She looked fondly at Ki, who stood by the tree watching the juggler. He had put his rubber balls aside and moved on to Indian clubs. Then she looked back at me. “Are we done eating?”

I nodded, and Mattie began to pick up the trash and stuff it back into the take-out bag. I helped, and when our fingers touched, she gripped my hand and squeezed. “Thank you,” she said. “For everything you’ve done. Thank you so damn much.”

I squeezed back, then let go.

“You know,” she said, “it’s crossed my mind that Kyra’s moving the letters around herself. Mentally.”

“Telekinesis?”

“I guess that’s the technical term. Only Ki can’t spell much more than ’dog’ and ’cat.’”

“What’s showing up on the fridge?”

“Names, mostly. Once it was yours. Once it was your wife’s.”

“jo?”

“The whole thing—JOHANNA. And NANA. Rogette, I presume. JARED shows up sometimes, and BRIDGET. Once there was KITO.” She spelled it.

“Kito,” I said, and thought: Kyra, Kia, Kito. What is this? “A boy’s name, do you think?”

“I know it is. It’s Swahili, and means precious child. I looked it up in my baby-name book.” She glanced toward her own precious child as we walked across the grass to the nearest trash barrel.

“Any others that you can remember?”

She thought. “G has showed up a couple of times. And once there was CARLA. You understand that Ki can’t even read these names as a rule, don’t you? She has to ask me what they say.”

“Has it occurred to you that Kyra might be copying them out of a book or a magazine? That she’s learning to write using the magnetic letters on the fridge instead of paper and pencil?”

“I suppose that’s possible. .” She didn’t look as if she believed it, though. Not surprising. I didn’t believe it myself.

“I mean, you’ve never actually seen the letters moving around by themselves on the front of the fridge, have you?” I hoped I sounded as unconcerned asking this question as I wanted to. She laughed a bit nervously. “God, no!”

“Anything else?”

“Sometimes the fridgeafator people leave messages like HI and BYE and GOOD GIRL. There was one yesterday that I wrote down to show you. Kyra asked me to. It’s really weird.”

“What is it?”

“I’d rather show you, but I left it in the glove compartment of the Scout. Remind me when we go.”

Yes. I would.

“This is some spooky shit, segor,” she said. “Like the writing in the flour that time.” I thought about telling her I had my own fridgeafator people, then didn’t. She had enough to worry about without that. . or so I told myself. We stood side-by-side on the grass, watching Ki watch the juggler. “Did you call John?” I asked. “You bet.”

“His reaction?”

She turned to me, laughing with her eyes. “He actually sang a verse of “Ding Dong, the Witch Is Dead.’”

“Wrong sex, right sentiment.” She nodded, her eyes going back to Kyra. I thought again how beautiful she looked, her body slim in the white dress, her features clean and perfectly made. “Was he pissed at me inviting myself to lunch?” I asked.

“Nope, he loved the idea of having a party.” A party. He loved the idea.

I began to feel rather small. “He even suggested we invite your lawyer from last Friday. Mr. Bis-sonette? Plus the private detective John hired on Mr. Bissonette’s recommendation. Is that okay with you?”

“Fine. How about you, Mattie? Doing okay?”

“Doing okay,” she agreed, turning to me.

“I did have several more calls than usual today. I’m suddenly quite popular.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Most were hangups, but one gentleman took time enough to call me a cunt, and there was a lady with a very strong Yankee accent who said, “Theah, you bitch, you’ve killed him. Aaa you satisfied?’ She hung up before I could tell her yes, very satisfied, thanks.” But Mattie didn’t look satisfied; she looked unhappy and guilty, as if she had literally wished him dead. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Really. Kyra and I have been alone for a long time, and I’ve been scared for most of it. Now I’ve made a couple of friends. If a few anonymous phone calls are the price I have to pay, I’ll pay it.”

She was very close, looking up at me, and I couldn’t stop myself. I put the blame on summer, her perfume, and four years without a woman. In that order, i slipped my arms around her waist, and remember perfectly the texture of her dress beneath my hands; the slight pucker at the back where the zipper hid in its sleeve. I remember the sensation of the cloth moving against the bare skin beneath. Then I was kissing her, very gently but very thoroughly—anything worth doing is worth doing right—and she was kissing me back in exactly the same spirit, her mouth curious but not afraid. Her lips were warm and smooth and held some faint sweet taste. Peaches, I think. We stopped at the same time and pulled back a little from each other. Her hands were still on my shoulders. Mine were on the sides of her waist, just above her hips. Her face was composed enough, but her eyes were more brilliant than ever, and there were slants of color in her cheeks, rising along the cheekbones. “Oh boy,” she said. “I really wanted that. Ever since Ki tackled you and you picked her up I’ve wanted ir.”

“John wouldn’t think much of us kissing in public,” I said. My voice wasn’t quite even, and my heart was racing. Seven seconds, one kiss, and every system in my body was red-lining. “In fact, John wouldn’t think much of us kissing at all. He fancies you, you know.”

“I know, but I fancy you.” She turned to check on Ki, who was still standing obediently by the tree, watching the juggler. Who might be watching us? Someone who had come over from the TR on a hot summer evening to get ice cream at Frank’s Tas-T-Freeze and enjoy a little music and society on the common? Someone who traded for fresh vegetables and fresh gossip at the Lakeview General? A regular at the All-Purpose Garage? This was insanity, and it stayed insanity no matter how you cut it. I dropped my hands from her waist. “Mattie, they could put our picture next to ’indiscreet’ in the dictionary.” She took her hands offmy shoulders and stepped back a pace, but her brilliant eyes never left mine. “I know that. I’m young but not entirely stupid.”

“I didn’t mean—” She held up a hand to stop me. “Ki goes to bed around nine—she can’t seem to sleep until it’s mostly dark. I stay up later. Come and visit me, if you want to. You can park around back.” She smiled a little. It was a sweet smile; it was also incredibly sexy. “Once the moon’s down, that’s an area of discretion.”

“Mattie, you’re young enough to be my daughter.”

“Maybe, but I’m not. And sometimes people can be too discreet for their own good.”

My body knew so emphatically what it wanted. If we had been in her trailer at that moment it would have been no contest. It was almost no contest anyway. Then something recurred to me, something I’d thought about Devore’s ancestors and my own: the generations didn’t match up.

Wasn’t the same thing true here? And I don’t believe that people automatically have a right to what they want, no matter how badly they want it. Not every thirst should be slaked. Some things are just wrong—I guess that’s what I’m trying to say. But I wasn’t sure this was one of them, and I wanted her, all right. So much. I kept thinking about how her dress had slid when I put my arms around her waist, the warm feel of her skin just beneath. And no, she wasn’t my daughter.

“You said your thanks,” I told her in a dry voice. “And that’s enough.

Really.”

“You think this is gratitude?” She voiced a low, tense laugh. “You’re forty, Mike, not eighty. You’re not Harrison Ford, but you’re a good-looking man. Talented and interesting, too. And I like you such an awful lot. I want you to be with me. Do you want me to say please? Fine.

Please be with me.”

Yes, this was about more than gratitude—I suppose I’d known that even when I was using the word. I’d known she was wearing white shorts and a halter top when she called on the phone the day I went back to work. Had she also known what I was wearing? Had she dreamed she was in bed with me, the two of us screwing our brains out while the party lights shone and Sara Tidwell played her version of the white nana rhyming game, all that crazy Manderley-sanderley-canderley stuff?. Had Mattie dreamed of telling me to do what she wanted?