"I'll find her for you."

He turned away and poked vigorously at the fire with a stick. "Good," he said after a while. "We'll go back to the city in the morning."

"You go. Bring back everything that might help us find out where Tammy is. Bring the mail from her apartment. Bring anything she sent you in the last few months: phone messages, cards, letters, photos. All of it." The lovesick fool would have kept everything, just as I would have kept Julia's letters, if I'd had any. "I'll need other things, too. I'll give you a list."

I didn't want to go back to Atlanta, to the house with the unfinished chair I had worked on while thinking of Julia, to the rug where she had curled up one evening, and the laundry on the floor that smelled of her: of sunshine and musk and dusty violets, of her rich skin, and her hair, oh dear god her hair....

"What?" Dornan said.

"There's a sofa-bed in the trailer," I said harshly. "Go inside and leave me alone."

I watched the rest of the stars come out, one by one, and tried to catch back that fleeting sense memory, her scent before she ended up wired to those machines, smelling of pain and medication and death.

An owl screamed in the wood and I wanted to ride behind its eyes when it plunged its talons into living flesh, wanted to tear something warm and soft to pieces while it squealed; wanted something else to hurt.

I dreamt of the phone ringing, the answering machine in Atlanta blinking red as messages piled up.

Beep.

A tremulous southern voice: "Aud, this is Annie. Why did you leave? You killed my daughter. She would be alive if she hadn't gone to Norway. If she hadn't loved you. You killed her and I want her back."

Beep.

A cold, Norway-accented voice: "Hold for Her Excellency." A pause. "On reflection, Her Excellency does not wish to speak to you. She no longer considers herself your mother. Not that she ever did, deep down."

Beep.

Another voice, a woman's, as warm and familiar as my own knuckles. "Love? You promised me. You promised."

Dornan got up two hours after dawn. A raft of cloud had just floated over the sun and there was a breeze. He shivered as he climbed down from the trailer. I had water boiling over a fire.

"Morning," he said. "Been up long?"

If he used his eyes he would see the pile of fresh shavings and newly stacked shingles by the shaving horse at the south end of the clearing. "There's coffee in the pot but I'm boiling more water if you want fresh. I have some apples, and what's left of yesterday's rice, but if you want eggs or bread, then you'd be better off eating on the road."

"Not too subtle, as hints go."

"I put a list of the clothes and other things I'll need in the glove compartment of your car."

He nodded, but frowned. I waited. "I won't, ah, I won't bring any guns. Not across state lines."

"I don't need a gun. Here." I handed him a cup of scalding black coffee.

"Ah, bless you." He sipped, seemed to enjoy it as much as a fresh latte from one of his Borealis cafés.

"The day after tomorrow, then."

"Aud...."

"Drive carefully."

He smiled at me oddly, and carried his coffee to the Isuzu. The engine caught with a metallic shudder. He waved. I nodded. He turned in a circle and went back the way he'd come, leaving me to the wind and the birds and the smell of sawdust.