I take just two more steps and then I see the ladder propped against the tall budding tree. “It’s Joley,” I shout. “Joley!” I pick up the long skirt of Sam’s mother’s sundress and run across the field.

Joley is wrapping some kind of green electrical tape around a branch. His hair is still light and curling around his ears. He is wiry, strong, graceful. He opens his eyes, with their long dark lashes, and turns to me. “Jane!” he says, as if it truly is unexpected to find me standing there. He smiles, and the world turns inside out.

He jumps off the ladder and folds me into his arms. “How are you doing,” he whispers into my neck.

I blink back tears. I’ve waited so long.

Joley holds me at arm’s length, passing his eyes gently over my face and my shoulders and my hips. Still holding onto one of my hands, he walks over to Rebecca. “Looks like you survived the trip,” he says, and kisses her on the forehead. She bends in close, like she is receiving a benediction. He grins at Sam and Hadley. “I assume you’ve all met.”

“Unfortunately,” I murmur. Sam glowers at me, and Joley looks back and forth between us but neither of us will say a thing.

Joley claps his hands together and locks his fingers. “Well, it’s great that you’re here. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

Sam, in a stroke of unexpected kindness, gives Joley the afternoon off. We stand in front of each other, just staring, until everyone else disappears. My baby brother, I think. What would I do without him?

Joley walks me over to a fat stunted tree with low branches. From the looks of the tree, which is blackened and leafless, it is not going to make it. “I’m doing my best,” he says, “but you’re right. I’m not sure about this one at all.” He straddles one of the bent arms and pats the space beside him for me to do the same. We look at each other and both begin to talk at the same time. We laugh. “Where are we going to start?” Joley says.

“We could start with you. I want to thank you for getting me here.” I smile, thinking about his reflective letters, on yellow ruled paper, words written without margins, precipitous, as if they would have fallen right off the page without the adhesive structure of sentence. “I certainly couldn’t have done it without you.”

“I’m glad you didn’t have to. You look great. You’re prettier than you’ve ever been.”

“Oh, that’s a crock,” I say, but Joley shakes his head.

“I mean it.” He smiles at me, and he holds one of my hands, kneading it with his fingers as if that is the way to start resuscitation.

“Are you happy here?” I ask.

“Look at the place, Jane! It’s like God just dropped down this gorgeous hill and lake, and I have the good fortune to work here. If you can call this work. I fix the unfixable. I bring trees back from the dead.” He looks into my eyes. “I’ve become mythic. The god of second chances.”

I laugh. “Sounds right up your alley. No wonder I’m here.”

“Which brings us to you.” Joley looks at me, waiting for me to start talking.

“I don’t know where to begin.”

“Start anywhere,” Joley says. “It’ll come to center.”

“I can tell you this.” A nervous laugh. “I didn’t leave because I had thought long and hard about it. I left on impulse. Just like that.” I snap my fingers. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

“What made you hit Oliver, then?” Joley smiles. “Don’t get me wrong. Not that I don’t think it was a wonderful idea.”

“You know the textbook answer to that. Abused child grows up to be an abuser herself. I’ve been thinking so much about Daddy lately. It’s classic, isn’t it? The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children?”

Joley stretches my hand out on the leg of his jeans. “Do you think he’s on his way here?”

“I give him ten days at most.” I twirl my wedding band, which I am still wearing, to my own surprise. “Unless of course he just decided to take off to South America like he had planned. In which case I get a grace period of a month.”

“I hate to admit it myself, but you used to love him.”

Joley comes to the heart of the matter faster than anyone I know. “I loved the idea of being in love with him,” I say, “but that can be a poor substitute for a life.” I stare at my brother. “I already told you this isn’t about Oliver. It’s about me. I just snapped when we were having that fight. I mean, we were arguing about whether shoe boxes or files should go in my closet. That doesn’t ruin a marriage.” I look into my lap. “I’m scared. I’ve spent fifteen years cutting up fruit the way Oliver likes it, folding his laundry, wiping clean his messes. I’ve done everything that I was supposed to. I don’t know what made me hit him that day. Maybe it was just a way out.”

“Is that what you’ve been looking for?”

“I don’t know what I’m looking for.” I sigh. “I got married young. I had a baby young. So when people asked me who I was, I’d answer by saying ‘a wife,’ or ‘a mother.’ I can’t tell you at all what I’m like, what Jane is like.”

Joley’s eyes do not leave my face. “What is it you want?”

I close my eyes, and try to picture it. “Oh, Joley,” I say, “I’ll go home and be the ideal wife, the perfect mother. I’ll do everything I’ve been doing and I won’t ever bring this up again. I’ll live the most ordinary life there ever was, just as long as you promise me that I’ll get five minutes of wonderful before it’s all over.”

From the beginning there’s friction. I know she’s coming, but I’m not looking forward to it, and sure enough she shows up just when I’m in the middle of shearing. So I see her get out of the car with the little girl, but I pretend I haven’t heard her drive up. I am working the ram when she comes into the pen. I can’t tell much about her because I am facing the sheep, except that she has pretty good legs. I try to concentrate on running straight rows of fleece, on peeling the wool back from the sheep’s side like filleting a bass. Good wool is seventy-five cents per pound these days, belly wool goes for something cheaper. When my mother was alive she’d card and spin it, and then knit something out of it: a sweater, an afghan. But these days we just sell the fleece to the town pool. From time to time, I’ll buy one of the blankets they weave from everyone’s sheep.

She’s stepping around on the hay like it’s a mine field. For Christ’s sake, it’s just manure. Half the vegetables she eats at the supermarket have probably been mulched with the stuff. She asks me if I know Joley.

Maybe I shouldn’t give her such a hard time. After all, I don’t really know her. What I’m going on is an assumption. Still, I can’t resist. Just because I want to watch her out of her element, I ask her to help me get the next ewe, and she follows me into the barn. I’m figuring on a good laugh, and then I’ll tell her who I am.

She follows my actions, digging into the fleece like she is knotting her fingers into a net, and we walk slowly, hunched, with the sheep between us. She follows me out to the ledge where I’ve been doing the shearing. I steal a look at her, then, impressed. She isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty, at least. She has a high forehead and a little nose that goes up at the end, like it’s too small for her face. I wouldn’t call her a knockout, but she’s all right. In a fresh, just-washed way. Of course, I’m not seeing her all done up. Back where she’s from, she probably wears all that makeup and chunky jewelry and suits with crazy angles.

I have to keep myself from smiling: she’s doing a good job. I let go of the sheep to grab the razor and all of a sudden the ewe bolts, heading straight for the girl. “What are you doing!” I yell, the first thing that comes to mind. “Catch her!”

The girl-Rebecca, that’s her name-dives for the sheep but it runs in the opposite direction. I turn to Joley’s sister. I absolutely can’t believe someone would be stupid enough to let go of a sheep before shearing.