The Progress of Love

The incident of the strange hand stayed with Ava, hovering always at the edge of her consciousness as she went about her daily routine, dazed and stuporous. It had obviously been a hallucination brought on by the sleep disorder, yet it had seemed so real, the texture of the skin, the slight pressure of the fingers, that even now, thinking about it, Ava shivered.

The lack of sleep was beginning to affect her in odd ways. She was always catching shadows out of the corners of her eyes, hearing strange sounds in the house even during daylight hours: whispers, plaintive snatches of jazz, footsteps on the stairs. Twice, when she was alone in the house, she heard knocking and went to the front door only to find that no one was there. And yet she was afraid to see a doctor for a prescription, afraid the medication would increase the hallucinations or, worse, dampen her creative urge, slow the torrent of work that seemed to occur every night now like automatic writing. At the rate she was working, the novel would be finished by the end of August. She couldn’t let anything interfere with its progress. She often had the feeling she was rushing toward something, some amorphous conclusion that kept her working relentlessly, regardless of its effect on her health.

And yet when Fraser invited her to go shopping with him and Alice in Nashville, Ava gratefully accepted. She was exhausted, and needed an excuse to get out of the house and away from her desk, away from the increasingly silent Will and his vague air of disappointment and regret.

They picked her up early one Thursday morning in Alice’s antique Chevrolet. Ava sat in the backseat and listened absently as mother and son kept up a steady stream of banter like an old vaudeville act. They shopped for a while at the Galleria, where Fraser helped Ava pick out a new purse (“You look like a bag lady with that horrible thing you carry”) and his mother a new dress and matching pumps (“Seriously, Mother, get out of the Keds and tennis suits!”).

“I don’t know what I ever did without you to tell me how to dress,” Alice said in a deadpan voice.

“Suffered unfashionably, I suppose.”

They stopped for lunch at a small tearoom in Brentwood. It was on a block of antique shops and clothing boutiques crowded with well-dressed shoppers.

“Hard to believe all this used to be farmland,” Alice said with a heavy sigh, gazing around the room with an expression of dismay. “Nothing but rolling hills as far as the eye could see. Two of my great-great-grandfather’s plantations, The Grove and Nott Hill, were not far from here.”

“Back in the good old days,” Fraser said to Ava, rolling his eyes.

“Well, they were the good old days,” Alice said sharply, then chuckled softly. “At least they were for some of us.”

“Yes, yes, Ava knows all about the long-vanquished Southern aristocracy. I’ve told her about the Captain and his lovely ways.”

Alice gave him a stern look. “Fraser, you really shouldn’t speak badly of the family.”

“You see,” he said to Ava. “We southern WASPs are not overly religious people but we do practice ancestor worship as devotionally as any Shinto practitioner.”

“Oh, Fraser, really,” Alice said. The waitress came and took their orders and brought them tall, frosty glasses of sweet tea.

“Did you talk to Will about making nice with Jake?” Fraser asked, helping himself to a basket of scones. Ava shot him a warning glance but he laughed and said, “Oh, don’t worry, I told Alice about our conversation. I tell Alice everything.”

“I’ll have to remember that,” Ava said mildly.

Alice looked uncomfortable. She took the basket from Fraser with a little shake of her head. “Where are your manners?” she said, passing the scones to Ava. “Would you like one, honey?”

“No, thank you,” Ava said. Her appetite had diminished over the past few weeks.

Alice set the scones down. “I hope you don’t mind Fraser confiding in me,” she said. “We are almost family, after all. At least I feel we almost are.” She colored, then went on blithely. “There are no secrets between family.”

“Really?” Ava said. “In that case, tell me what happened to Charlie Woodburn.”

Fraser laughed loudly. Bright spots of color appeared on either side of Alice’s nose. “What happened to him?” she repeated vaguely.

“How did he die?”

“Rather suddenly,” Alice said valiantly. “He was so sick, throwing up blood and hallucinating. He kept seeing his dead mother everywhere. He wouldn’t let anyone call a doctor, of course; he didn’t believe in doctors. Stubborn and pigheaded up until the very end.”

“I thought he drowned,” Ava said.

“Who told you that?” Alice asked sharply.

“Will.”

Fraser put his chin on his hand and gave his mother a slight, mocking smile.

“Well, yes,” she said quickly. “He was found in the water, that’s true. Out in the Harpeth River on the way to Longford. You know the Harpeth, it flows through town. There’s a bridge at the end of the street where we live that actually crosses it.” Fraser continued to smile at her, one eyebrow raised. Ava said nothing, waiting patiently for her to continue.

“Anyway, he was found in the river but there was an empty bottle in his pocket and he reeked of whiskey. Even after being in the water, he reeked. There was some conjecture at the time that he might have stumbled out of Woodburn Hall and, intoxicated, lost his way in the dark and fallen into the river. In those days there were no streetlamps at the end of the road, only a one-lane bridge, and he may have become disoriented and fallen in. That would explain him being found downriver near Longford.”

“You say he was hallucinating the week prior to his death?”

“Yes, he was very sick. I saw him. It was truly dreadful. The hallucinations could have been brought on by fever. Or by delirium tremens, I suppose.”

“Had he had these episodes before?” Ava asked.

“I really don’t know. Understand, at the time, his elopement with Fanny was considered scandalous. His living under the same roof as Fanny and Josephine was even worse. My mother wouldn’t allow me near that house. I had to sneak over to see them. And Josephine, well, poor Josephine suffered terribly, because how could she expect to make a good marriage after all that scandal? They were so isolated, the two of them, shut up in the house alone with Charlie. No friends, no family, no visitors. Just the riffraff Charlie associated with. And he was a violent man. He carried a pearl-handled derringer like the riverboat gamblers used to carry. I was terrified of him.”

This was not the Charlie Woodburn of Ava’s novel. He had been misunderstood and mistreated by life, forced into a role he was untrained for in a society that constantly devalued him. Ava had imagined him as a lonely, Christlike figure, yet she knew that truth was subjective, that it was only natural that Alice, Maitland’s sister, would see Charlie differently. She remembered Will’s assertion that Charlie had beaten Fanny. But that could have been something constructed later by the family to explain his murder. To justify it. Somewhere between the man Alice remembered, the man Will had been told about, and the man Ava had imagined lay the real Charlie Woodburn.

Ava said, “Celia had gone to live with a cousin after her father’s death, but why didn’t the cousins keep an eye on Fanny and Josephine, too? Why did the family turn their collective backs on them?”

“Because Charlie wouldn’t allow them to set foot in the house! He was Fanny’s husband, and in those days that meant something. He could do with her as he pleased, and no one could lift a finger because they were legally married. He would have thrown Josephine out, too, if she’d been less determined, but she would never have agreed to leave Fanny.”

“What about Clara? She was in the house with them, too, wasn’t she?”

“She lived in the cottage out back with her parents, Martha and John. But Martha was sick by then. She couldn’t come up to the house and work, and John wouldn’t allow Clara in the house. Charlie seemed to take particular pleasure in tormenting her. He would curse her and threaten to take a horsewhip to her father, who was a proud man, a prominent member of the African-American community.”

“You said Charlie was a violent man. Did you ever hear of him physically abusing Fanny?”

“Good Lord,” Alice said, gazing at her with an expression of alarm. “Of course not. Josephine would never have allowed that. Maitland would never have allowed it.” She took a long drink of iced tea, set her glass down again with a slight frown. She dabbed her mouth with her napkin. “Of course, such things did happen in those days but mainly among the—” She paused. “Mainly among other families, but not those along River Road.”

The waitress brought their food and they ate for a while in silence.

Fraser touched his mouth with his napkin and smiled at Ava. “You did a very nice job of changing the subject but you still haven’t told us how your talk with Will went.”

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“That well?”

“Fraser, be quiet,” Alice said.

Fraser waved his hand at the waitress and ordered a round of gin and tonics.

“It won’t work,” Ava said. “I don’t like gin.”

“Well, Missy, we’re going to sit here until you tell us, so you might as well spill it.” Ava stared at him obstinately until he said, “Okay. I’ll start. What did Will say about your secret visit to Jake Woodburn’s wood shop?”

Ava was dismayed to feel her face flushing. “I’ve already told you. He wasn’t happy about it. And it wasn’t a secret visit.”

Alice chuckled.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Fraser said.

“He doesn’t much like Jake, for obvious reasons, and he doesn’t want me hanging out with him.”

“The obvious reasons, I suppose, have to do with Hadley Marsh. What does he say about her?”

“Not much. He admits that she’s dead.”

Fraser giggled. “That’s a start,” he said.

“But other than that, he’d prefer not to talk about her.”

“Well, of course he does,” Alice said. “It was so tragic.” She waved one hand vaguely and picked up her iced tea. “All of that.”

“Tragic because they both fell in love with Hadley or tragic because she died?” Fraser asked.

“Both,” Alice said, regarding him evenly over the rim of her glass.

“What’s Jake’s story?” Ava said, folding and refolding her napkin in her lap. “Has he ever been married? Girlfriend?”

“He keeps to himself, which makes him all the more desirable,” Fraser said. “I think he turns down invitations and refuses to socialize because it makes him more mysterious.”

“But could he socialize? Would he be accepted?”

“Of course,” Fraser said. “He went to the right schools, he has the right pedigree. No one cares anymore that his branch of the family crawled out of the woodpile.”

Alice sniffed. “Well, some care,” she said.

“Most don’t care,” Fraser said. “Those old social customs that kept his grandfather down don’t apply anymore, thank God. I think Jake’s criticized more for the fact that he doesn’t seem to give a damn about dinner parties and joining the country club than for his obscure beginnings. By holding out he makes society feel bad about itself. How great can those things be if someone like Jake doesn’t want to join? And he’s a great-looking guy, you’ve seen that for yourself,” he said, slanting his eyes at Ava. “But he has a tendency to love the ladies and then leave them, which, of course, makes everyone nervous. No husband wants a guy as good-looking as Jake Woodburn on the loose.”

“So he has dated women in town?”

“He’s not gay, if that’s what you’re asking. Unfortunately.”

“Fraser, please,” Alice said, looking around at the other tables with an air of apology.

The waitress brought their gin and tonics.

Ava thought of the photo she had found in Will’s room. “Hadley must have been some girl to have both Will and Jake fall for her.”

“Well, she was gorgeous.”

“Of course she was.”

Fraser laughed. “Don’t say it like that,” he said. “You don’t need to feel intimidated by Hadley Marsh. She didn’t have your depth, your strength of character, your loyalty. Did she, Mother?”

“Oh, heavens no,” Alice said. “There’s no comparison at all.”

Ava made a wry mouth and Fraser laughed again. “Loyalty” was not a word they would use to describe her in the future. Not if her novel was ever published.

“You two are polar opposites,” Fraser said, continuing his comparison of Ava to Hadley.

“Apples and oranges,” Alice agreed, happy now that the waitress had brought their drinks.

Working late at night in the dark, sleeping house, Ava was vigilant now, listening for the creak of footsteps, quiet sighs, vague knockings behind the walls. She no longer switched on the lamp. She had not touched it since that evening when it felt like someone, or something, took her hand. She was accustomed to the occasional late-night hallucination but the horror of that moment had imprinted itself upon her mind in ghastly detail. She would not risk it again.

She wrote now by the light of her computer screen, crawling wearily into bed in a room illuminated by its dull, glowing light. The writing continued unabated; nothing seemed to interfere with that. She was quickly approaching the climax, and she knew now with a fair degree of certainty who had killed Charlie. It had come to her in the days following her trip to Nashville with Fraser and Alice. Some offhand comment made by Alice had brought the murderer’s motive suddenly and clearly into focus. From that point on, everything fell into place. It was all so clear now. She was astounded that she had not seen it before.

Toward the end of August, she got a call from Jake.

“I have something for you,” he said. His voice sounded curt, distant.

“Oh?”

“A photo.”

“I’m listening.”

“My mother found it in some old things she had.” And when Ava didn’t respond, he said more soberly, “A photo of Charlie Woodburn.”

Ava was quiet, bracing herself. In light of her novel’s ending, she wasn’t sure she wanted to see it. But how could she refuse? “I’d like to see it,” she said.

“Come by the shop tomorrow afternoon,” he said, and hung up before she could say anything else.

The Traveling Wilburys were playing “End of the Line” on the CD player when Ava stepped into Jake’s workshop. Light slanted through the tall windows set at regular intervals along the brick walls. There was a pleasant scent of pine and cedar in the air. Jake was standing at his worktable in the center of the room, hand-sanding the legs of a delicate-looking chair. He glanced up at Ava as she came through the door.

“So you made it,” he said. His hair was darker, longer than she remembered.

“Yes.”

“Do you want something to drink?”

“No. Thanks.”

“Let me finish this and we’ll go upstairs.” He went back to work, covered, as usual, by a light dusting of wood shavings. Ava wandered around the shop admiring his work, stopping to examine ornate fragments of fretwork and scrap.

Jake seemed absorbed in what he was doing, yet she had the feeling he was very much aware of her, following her progress with guarded eyes.

“I’ll be done in a minute,” he said. His hands moved along the chair legs as gently as a lover’s caress.

This thought made her stir; she roused herself and said, “I don’t want to keep you. Do you have the photo?”

He stood and wiped his brow with his wrist. “Are you in a hurry?”

She raised one hand, vaguely indicating the door behind her. “I have work to do,” she said.

He tossed the sandpaper down and strode toward her, walking in such a purposeful and determined way that she stepped back instinctively, striking the edge of a table with her hip.

He put his hand out to steady her. “Careful,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said politely, formally.

He looked her in the face. “I had thought, after our last meeting, that I might see you again,” he said.

“I had the impression, after our last meeting, that you did not want to see me.”

“It seems we’ve misread each other.”

“It would seem that way.”

He let her go, and walked ahead of her toward the narrow iron stairway in the corner of the room. She could still feel the warm pressure of his fingers on her arm.

“Where are you going?” she said.

He turned and looked at her. Their eyes locked. “The photo’s up here. In my apartment.” She hesitated and, seeing that, he grinned suddenly and put his hand on his chest.

“I’ll be on my best behavior,” he said. “I promise.”

She followed him up the circular stairs to a small, neat apartment above the shop. The room was filled with his whimsical furniture. A low sofa stood along a brick wall, opposite a galley kitchen. On another wall hung a pop-art print of a beautiful woman’s face. Hadley.

“Very nice,” Ava said stiffly.

“Do you like it? I did it years ago.” She swiveled her head and looked at him but his expression was bland, noncommittal. He went into the kitchen and took two bottled waters from the refrigerator.

Ava stood carefully examining Hadley. She seemed to be staring at Ava with a sly, mocking expression as if she found her presence here highly entertaining. Looking into her eyes, Ava felt as if she was intruding on something intensely personal, as if she was the brunt of some private joke.

Jake tapped her lightly on the shoulder and she startled, taking a bottle from him.

“I can’t stay long,” she said in a wooden voice.

“Oh. Well, then, I won’t keep you.” His manner changed abruptly and he set his water down on the coffee table and went into the bedroom to get the photo.

Whatever ease she had felt between them had disappeared under Hadley’s sly, knowing gaze. Why, despite everything that had happened, had he kept this reminder of her? Was it an act of defiance or one of tenderness? She turned and walked over to the window, staring down at the leafy street.

He came back a few minutes later carrying a faded black-and-white photograph. She sat down on the sofa and he sat down beside her. He passed her the photo. She stared down at it, feeling a catch in her throat. The photo showed a tall, earnest-looking young man with dark swept-back hair. His face was startling in its resemblance to Randal Woodburn, the patriarch. All but the eyes, which were dark and filled with an intensity bordering on mania. He was dressed in evening clothes and there was an air of studied elegance in his pose, something compelling and yet false, too.

“Handsome devil, wasn’t he?” He was so close she could feel his breath on her cheek, warm and sweet.

“Where did you find this?”

“My mother found it in my father’s things.”

“I don’t suppose I can have a copy.”

“Take this one,” he said. “I don’t need it.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His T-shirt stretched across his wide shoulders, exposing his back, and she could see the faint line of downy hair at the base of his spine.

“What did you mean?” he asked.

“Sorry?”

“Downstairs.” He turned his head and looked at her. “When you said you thought I didn’t want to see you again.”

She was quiet for a moment, thinking how best to begin. “I don’t know. You seemed to change when Will called. As if you were suddenly sorry I was here.”

“Baggage,” he said. “Not knowing if I was stepping in between Will and someone he cared about. Again.”

“I told you we were just friends.”

He smiled, nodding his head. “So you did,” he said.

“I had the impression you wanted me to leave.”

“You were wrong.”

The windows of the room had no shutters or blinds, and the sun fell through unimpeded, the crowns of the tall trees outside making lacy patterns on the glass. Books spilled out of the bookcases and were stacked in piles on the glossy wood floor. There were no rugs. The room was clean and neat but spare. A bachelor space. Ava stared at the photo, aware of the faint traffic sounds on the street and the dense silence that drifted between them. It was shocking, looking into a face she had seen so often in her imagination.

“Have you told Will yet that you’re writing a novel about his family?” He leaned back cautiously, his shoulder nearly touching hers.

“It’s not about his family. Not really. I mean, there are some similarities.”

“Have you told him?”

“No.”

There was a hole in his jeans just above one knee and he poked his fingers in and began to pull threads through the opening. “Because if you’re hoping to build something with Will, if you’re planning—” He stopped and continued to shove his fingers into the frayed hole, pulling loose threads free.

“I’m not planning anything with Will,” she said. “We’re friends. That’s all.”

“They’ll consider a novel about Charlie Woodburn a betrayal,” he said calmly, as if he hadn’t heard her. “It doesn’t matter how you write it or how it ends. They’ll blame you for bringing up the buried past.”

“I know that.”

“No matter how pretty and charming you are.” There was a faint cleft in his chin, visible through the stubble of beard. “No matter how fetchingly you blush.”

“I’m not blushing.”

He grinned slowly.

“Besides, isn’t it hypocritical of you to warn me about betraying the Woodburns, given your past history?”

“Do as I say, not as I did.” He leaned over and drank from his bottle, then set it down again on the coffee table.

Neither one moved, sitting companionably in a silence that seemed less awkward now. Outside the window the sun slid behind a ridge of clouds, causing a swift succession of shadows to fall across the floor. On the wall to their left, Hadley stared benignly, smirking.

“She was very pretty,” Ava said.

“I suppose so.”

Jake put his arm across the back of the sofa. She could feel the warmth of his hand, just inches from her skin. “Does Will ever mention Hadley?”

“He doesn’t like to talk about her.”

He smiled, his eyes fierce and black. “No, he wouldn’t. He’s not much of a talker.”

Ava felt disloyal talking about Will. “I don’t think he’s particularly happy about your—estrangement, as Josephine calls it.”

“Well, he hasn’t exactly tried to do anything about it.”

“Have you?”

“Yes. At first. I tried for years.”

She was quiet for a moment, looking down at the photo of Charlie. “I think he feels guilty, not only over the trouble between you and him, but also over Hadley’s death.”

“That wasn’t his fault. That wasn’t anyone’s fault but Hadley’s.”

She slid the photo into her purse. “Did you love her?”

He sighed and shook his head. “I suppose I did,” he said.

“So you weren’t just going after her because she was Will’s girlfriend?”

He met her gaze, giving her a long, searching look. “If you believe that you must not think very highly of me.”

She could feel the heat of his arm like a phantom limb, an extension of herself. “Sorry,” she said, looking down. “I know you wouldn’t do that.” The sun was back, glittering along the floor. In the street a truck passed, rattling the windows. “What was she like?”

“Hadley? Well, there was the person she wanted you to see and then there was the other one.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“No. You wouldn’t,” he said fondly, and he touched her now, lightly squeezing her shoulder. The shock of his touch was palpable, arousing. “She was from Birmingham, the youngest of six. Her father was a housepainter.”

“A housepainter?” She gave a half-laugh, an expression of surprise. “She went to boarding school. I would have thought she was part of the ruling elite.”

“She was a scholarship kid. Like me. There were a lot of us, and we tried desperately to fit in but in the long run, of course, we didn’t. I was lucky. I could bring friends home to Woodburn Hall. Will and I told everyone we were orphaned cousins being raised by our great-aunts, and of course that was true except for the fact that my mother was still alive. I saw her when I was home, but I never took friends from school home with me. You know how you care about things like that when you’re fifteen. I was lucky Will and Fanny and Josephine let me pretend to be one of them.”

“You are one of them.”

He laughed. “You haven’t been here long enough to understand that I’m not. I’m an impostor. A cuckoo in a magpie’s nest.”

“Fanny and Josephine are genuinely fond of you.”

“And I so wanted to be one of them.”

“Did they like Hadley?”

“Of course, everybody liked Hadley. She made herself very—agreeable. It was a knack she had. And she was impressed by the Woodburns, too, the family, the history, the money.”

“So what happened between you two?”

He put his head back against the sofa and looked at the ceiling. His profile in the slash of sunlight was strong, austere. “Have you ever been in love?”

“Yes.” She hesitated. “Twice.”

“In the beginning we were just friends. When she first came up to Sewanee that’s all it was. But over time, things changed. There was an attraction that we both tried to ignore. Things had always been rocky between her and Will. From the very beginning. So when she came to me and told me they had broken up, I believed her.”

“And you started dating her then? Thinking she and Will were broken up?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t be blamed for that.”

“I never asked Will. I never saw fit to question what Hadley was telling me. I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t want to know.” He lowered his chin, gazing out the window. “That night at the Christmas party at Longford when they announced their engagement, I was shocked. She hadn’t told me anything, she hadn’t warned me. We’d never dated openly at school. She’d been very careful about that. She knew I wouldn’t tell Will. She was very matter-of-fact about the whole thing. It was the money, of course. She’d grown up poor, and the money meant a lot to her. And the funny thing is”—here he stopped and looked at her with bitterness—“the funny thing is, I didn’t blame her. I could understand the lure of power and wealth. I felt complicit in the whole thing, and it made me sick with shame. That’s why I couldn’t stay around. I dropped out and headed to California.”

“But if you kept your relationship secret, then who told Will?”

They exchanged a long look. “I did,” he said. “After six months out in California I began to see her differently. I realized she wasn’t the girl I had thought she was. The girl Will thought she was, and I knew he deserved better. So I called him.”

“You did the right thing.”

He shook his head. “Will didn’t see it that way,” he said. “He probably thought I still had feelings for Hadley and was hoping to get something out of it. The truth was, the only thing I felt for Hadley, and myself, was disgust. Will was too proud to ever forgive her. She begged him not to, but he broke it off with her, and then six months later she was killed and he couldn’t hold on to all that rage and hurt he felt for her. So he put it on me.” He stared at the print of Hadley. A muscle moved in his cheek. “I guess I don’t blame him,” he said.

A hummingbird hung suspended outside the window, its delicate beak tapping the glass.

“So why do you keep her face on your wall?”

“To remind me of my fucking mistake.”

He put his hand on her shoulder and she let it nestle there, warm and comforting.

After that, there wasn’t much left to say. She could see him so clearly as he must have been as a boy, young and hopeful and believing for the first time in a future brighter than any he had ever imagined for himself. Imagining a life with a girl like Hadley.

He leaned back against the sofa, studying her. “Will you go back to Chicago?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” And it wasn’t until she said it that she realized she wouldn’t be going back. A new life here in this place, a thought that three months ago would have seemed inconceivable, seemed now to carry a certain weight, an incontrovertible authority. She could imagine herself holed up in a little cabin like his mother’s, overlooking a wide sweep of rolling hills, churning out novels about people who understood the joys of living in a place where nothing much ever happened. If you didn’t count murder, tragedy, undying love, and familial revenge.

“It grows on you,” he said. “It seeps into your blood when you least expect it, and before you know it you’re hooked. I went out to California, which for all intents and purposes is paradise, and after a while all I could think about was kudzu and sweet tea. I missed going out to the drive-in on Friday nights. I missed people smiling and saying ‘Good morning’ and telling me their life stories in the grocery store line.”

She laughed. “That’s a pretty good description.” She was aware of his hand on her shoulder, the weight of it, the gentle pressure of his fingers.

“So I take it wedding bells are not imminent?” he said.

She looked into his eyes. She felt breathless. Light-headed. “What are you talking about?”

“Between you and Will.”

“I don’t know why everyone is so eager to marry me off to Will.”

“I’m not.”

Looking at him she felt a familiar stirring deep in her chest. “I should go,” she said. He said nothing but as she tried to rise, he put his hand on her arm and kissed her. It was as natural as falling, that kiss. A sensation of letting go, drifting.

“I’ve wanted to kiss you from the first day I saw you,” he said.

Later, they heard the front door slam. They rearranged their clothes and Jake stood up. “Damn,” he said. “I forgot to lock it.” He went to the stairway and called, “I’ll be right down.”

Ava stood up, running her hands through her hair. “Who is it?”

“I don’t know.”

Her face was pink, and when he saw her, he laughed and pulled her into his arms. The door slamming again was like a pistol shot.

They went downstairs.

Whoever it was had gone. The sky had darkened and, looking up through the skylight, Ava could see swiftly moving gray clouds.

“Whoever it was doesn’t appear to have stolen anything,” Jake said, looking around the shop. He wrapped Ava in his arms, resting his chin on top of her head. “You don’t have to go,” he said, nuzzling her ear.

“I do have to go,” she said, pulling away reluctantly. “I’ll call you.”

“We’ll have a date,” he said. “Dinner. Maybe a movie. Hell, I might even take you dancing at the Cimarron Ballroom.”

They were almost to the front door when it swung open violently and Will stood there, outlined against a bone-white sky.

Behind her Jake said jovially, “Look out!”

Ava had enough sense to step aside as Will rushed past.

It took two burly welders Ava hailed from the building next door to break up the fight. Both Will and Jake were bleeding from the mouth and breathing hard, their shirts torn in front.

“I should have done that a long time ago,” Will shouted, as he was being pushed toward the door by one of the men.

“You should have!” Jake began to laugh, so the other man let him go. He wiped his face with his sleeve and called to Will, “What took you so long?”

“You always wanted what you couldn’t have.”

“And you always had too much.”

“Asshole.”

“Fucker.”

“I’ll see you then.”

“Whatever.”

“Bye.”

“Bye,” Jake said.

It was then that Ava realized it wasn’t about her at all.

Will didn’t say anything to her on the long drive home. She had agreed to let him drive her because it seemed the only fair thing to do.

“Look, Will,” she said, but he stared fixedly through the windshield and she saw that she would get nowhere with him.

The rain had begun, falling in windy gusts, splattering the glass. He let her out and drove away without a word. Ava tried to call him several times over the next two days but he didn’t answer his phone. Josephine stopped her in the hall one night and with a quiet, resigned air told her that Will had gone to Chattanooga to visit some friends and wouldn’t be home for a few days.

“Oh,” Ava said.

“How’s the work going?” In the dim light, Josephine looked much younger, and it was not hard to imagine her as she must have been in the time of Charlie Woodburn. A tall, handsome woman.

“It’s going well.”

“Is there anything I can get you?” Her expression was studied, polite, cold.

“No. Thank you,” Ava said.

Jake called several times but Ava didn’t answer her phone. She felt that she couldn’t talk to him again until she’d talked to Will. She owed Will that much at least. And there had been something in Josephine’s expression that night in the hall, an indication that her hospitality was almost at an end, that drove Ava to immerse herself in her work.

She finished the novel. One night, it just ended. The relief she felt was indescribable. She had expected emotional fireworks and soaring sensations of accomplishment, but not this quiet feeling of relief. She printed out the manuscript in its entirety. She arranged it neatly in a box on her desk. It wasn’t finished, of course. There were months of rewriting that would have to be done before she could begin her search for an agent. But it was enough for now. It was farther than she had ever gotten before.

She began to pack her belongings. She had no doubt that Will was steeling himself, strengthening his resolve to come home and send her packing. She didn’t blame him. And because she didn’t blame him, and because she felt that she owed him that much, she emailed him a copy of her manuscript.

She emailed a copy to Jake, too. But with him, her intentions were different. With Jake it was more a desire to impress him, to show him what she was capable of, that drove her.