“Yeah, I saw him before. A good-sized dog.”

“Is that what they’re called?”

“Uh-huh, dogs.”

“Where is he?” “somewhere around. Hunting. The little ones probably see a lot of gulls with broken wings dragged home for dinner.” Rosie’s eyes drifted to the roots of the tree beneath which the foxes had made their den, and she felt deja vu touch her again. A brief image of a root moving, as if to clutch, came to her, shimmered, then slipped away.

“Are we scaring her?” Rosie asked.

“Maybe a little. If we tried to get closer, she’d fight.”

“Yes, Rosie said.

“And if we messed with them, she’d repay.” He looked at her oddly.

“Well, I guess she’d try, yeah.”

“I’m glad you brought me to see them.” His smile lit his whole face.

“Good.”

“Let’s go back. I don’t want to scare her. And I’m hungry.”

“All right. I am, too.” He raised one hand and waved solemnly. The vixen watched with her bright, still eyes… and then wrinkled back her muzzle in a soundless growl, showing a row of neat white teeth.

“Yeah,” he said, “you’re a good mama. Take care of them.” He turned away. Rosie started to follow, then looked back once, into those bright, still eyes. The vixen’s muzzle was still rolled back, exposing her teeth as she suckled her cubs in the silent sunshine. Her fur was orange rather than red, but something about that shade-its violent contrast to the lazy green around it-made Rosie shiver again. A gull swooped overhead, printing its shadow across the brushy clearing, but the vixen’s eyes never left Rosie’s face. She felt them on her, watchful and deeply concentrated in their stillness, even when she turned to follow Bill.

“Will they be all right?” she asked when they reached the waterside again. She held his shoulder, balancing, as she removed first her left sneaker and then her right.

“You mean will the cubs be hunted down?” Rosie nodded.

“Not if they stay out of gardens and henhouses, and Mom and Pop'11 be wise enough to keep them away from farms-if they keep normal, that is. The vixen’s four years old at least, the dog maybe seven. I wish you’d seen him. He’s got a brush the color of leaves in October.” They were halfway back to the picnic area, ankle deep in the water. She could see his boots up ahead on the rock where he’d left them with the prim white socks lying across the square toes.

“What do you mean, “if they keep normal"?”

“Rabies,” he said.

“More often than not it’s rabies that leads them to gardens and henhouses in the first place. Gets them noticed. Gets them killed. The vixens get it more often than the dogs, and they teach the cubs dangerous behavior. It knocks the dogs down quick, but a vixen can carry rabies a long time, and they keep getting worse.” “do they?” she asked.

“What a shame.” He stopped, looked at her pale, thoughtful face, then gathered her into his arms and hugged her.

“It doesn’t have to happen,” he said.

“They’ve got along fine so far.”

“But it could happen. It could.” He considered this, and nodded. “sure, yeah,” he said at last.

“Anything could. Come on, let’s eat. What do you say?”

“I say that sounds like a good idea.” But she thought she wouldn’t eat much, that she’d been haunted out of her appetite by the vixen’s bright regard. When he began laying out the food, however, she was instantly ravenous. Breakfast had been orange juice and a single slice of dry toast; she’d been as excited (and fearful) as a bride on the morning of her wedding. Now, at the sight of bread and meat, she forgot all about the foxes” earth north of the beach. He kept taking food out of the cooler-cold beef sandwiches, tuna sandwiches, chicken salad, potato salad, coleslaw, two cans of Coke, a Thermos of what he said was iced tea, two pieces of pie, a large slab of cake-until it made her think of clowns piling out of the little car at the circus, and she laughed. It probably wasn’t polite, but she had enough confidence in him now not to feel she had to be merely polite. That was good, because she wasn’t sure she could have helped herself, anyway. He looked up, holding a salt shaker in his left hand and a pepper shaker in his right. She saw he had carefully put Scotch tape over the holes in case they fell over, and that made her laugh harder than ever. She sat down on the bench running down one side of the picnic table and put her hands over her face and tried to get a grip. She’d almost made it when she peeked through her fingers and saw that amazing stack of sandwiches-half a dozen for two people, each cut on the diagonal and neatly sealed in a Baggie. That set her off again.

“What?” he asked, smiling himself.

“What, Rosie?”

“Were you expecting friends to drop by?” she asked, still giggling.

“A Little League team, maybe? Or a Boy Scout troop?” His smile widened, but his eyes continued to hold that serious look. It was a complicated expression, one that said he understood both what was funny here and what was not, and in it she finally saw that he really was her own age, or close enough not to matter.

“I wanted to make sure you’d have something that you liked, that’s all.” Her giggles were tapering off, but she continued to smile at him. What struck her most was not his sweetness, which made him seem younger, but his openness, which now made him seem somehow older.

“Bill, I can eat just about anything,” she said.

“I’m sure you can,” he said, sitting down beside her, “but that’s not what this is about. I don’t care so much about what you can stand or what you can manage as I do about what you like and want to have. Those are the kinds of things I want to give to you, because I’m crazy about you.” She looked at him solemnly, the laughter gone, and when he took her hand, she covered it with her other one. She was trying to get what he’d just said straight in her mind and finding it hard going-it was like trying to get a bulky, balky piece of furniture through a narrow doorway, turning it this way and that, trying to find an angle where everything would finally work.

“Why?” she asked.

“Why me?” He shook his head.

“I don’t know. Fact is, Rosie, I don’t know very much about women. I had a girlfriend when I was a junior in high school, and we probably would have slept together eventually, but she moved away before it could happen. I had a girlfriend when I was a freshman in college, and I did sleep with her. Then, five years ago, I got engaged to a wonderful girl I met in the city zoo, of all places. Her name was Bronwyn O'Hara. Sounds like something out of Margaret Mitchell, doesn’t it?”

“It’s a lovely name.” “she was a lovely girl. She died of a brain aneurysm.”

“Oh, Bill, I’m so sorry.” ’since then, I’ve dated a couple of girls, and I’m not exaggerating-I’ve dated a couple of girls, period, end of story. My parents fight over me. My father says I’m dying on the vine, my mother says

“Leave the boy alone, stop scolding.” Only she says it scoldink.” Rosie smiled.

“Then you walked into the shop and found that picture. You knew you had to have it from the word go, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“That’s how I felt about you. I just wanted you to know that. Nothing that’s happening here is happening out of kindness, or charity, or duty. None of what’s happening here is happening because poor Rosie has had such a hard, hard life.” He hesitated and then said, “It’s happening because I’m in love with you.”

“You can’t know that. Not yet.”

“I know what I know,” he said, and she found the gentle insistence in his tone a little frightening.

“Now that’s enough soap opera. Let’s eat.” They did. When they were done and Rosie’s stomach felt stretched drumhead-tight against the waistband of her pants, they repacked the cooler and Bill strapped it onto the Harley’s carrier again. No one had come; Shoreland was still all theirs. They went back down to the waterside and sat on the big rock again. Rosie was starting to feel very strongly about this rock; it was, she thought, the kind of rock you could come to visit once or twice a year, just to say thanks… if things turned out well, that was. And she thought they were, at least so far. She could not, in fact, think of a day that had been better. Bill put his arms around her, then placed the fingers of his left hand on her right cheek, turning her face toward him. He began kissing her. Five minutes later she did feel close to fainting, half in a dream and half out, excited in a way she had never conceived of, excited in a way that made sense of all the books and stories and movies she hadn’t really understood before but had taken on faith, the way a blind person will take on faith a sighted person’s statement that a sunset is beautiful. Her cheeks were burning, her breasts felt flushed and tender from his gentle touch through her blouse, and she found herself wishing that she hadn’t worn a bra. The thought made her cheeks flush brighter than ever. Her heart was racing, but that was good. It was all good. Over the line and into wonderful, in fact. She put her hand on him down there, felt how hard he was. It was like touching stone, except stone would not have throbbed beneath her palm like her own heart. He left her hand where it was for a minute, then raised it gently and kissed the palm.