Niagara Falls (Ontario) Public Library.

I walk River Road, uncertain why I stoop to pick up a number of the stones in my path and slip them into my pocket. I tread southward, upriver, until I reach the Lower Steel Arch Bridge. Then I turn and retrace my steps.

Just opposite Glenview, I rest, leaning against a tree, gazing up at the house. What might Tom see as he passes by on River Road, that is, if he even bothers to look? Faded glory? The eaves could use a fresh coat of paint, several of the supporting brackets show signs of rot, and a pane of the pediment window is cracked. I know these flaws exist yet can see no evidence from the road. Maybe he sees grandeur. Glenview does loom large, even more so because of its position atop the bluff. The skirting homes could almost be the shanties of a manor, a flock of goslings seeking shelter under the wing of mother goose.

I remember the day Isabel and I were first shown the house. Mother held our hands as she led us from one empty room to the next, describing where the furniture would be placed, the wallpaper she would hang. She spent a good deal of time in each of the bedrooms that would become ours, pointing out the loftiness of the ceilings, the grace of the plaster moldings, the quarter-cut oak of the floors, the view of the gorge, and then joined in when Isabel and I galloped each room, marveling at the breadth.

Might Tom look up at Glenview and decide he was a fool to have ever handed over the best of his sturgeon and pike? Such thinking seems an acquiescence to Mother, and I suppose in our quiet battle she has gained the upper hand. There is, after all, a hole in my day that used to be filled by a minute or two at the gate, a hole that is becoming clogged with self-reproach. Before I snapped back, accusing him of lacking gentlemanliness, he had said only that he had figured me for a girl with a little pluck. And is a bit of courage so wrong a thing for him to want from me when any friendship between the two of us demands it on my part?

I take a stone from my pocket and place it on the side of the road. I place another, and another, until I have spelled out the word Hello with gray, jagged stones. He will come upon the stones as he passes by on his way to his fishing camp at the whirlpool, today or tomorrow or the day after that. I stand back surveying my work, and unsure he will know the message is for him, I add just beneath it his name, Tom.

All day I am anxious. Mother would be furious if she were to come upon the stones. She would say I had disobeyed her, and while I could argue that she only said for me to tell Tom not to bring any more fish, we would both know I understood what she meant. I was to see no more of him. His credentials were not up to snuff. I would never have the courage, but here is what I would like to say to her: Jesus collected the less fortunate, even the destitute, and called them his friends. He would say Mother was wrong.

In the evening the sky is particularly red and strewn with strands of flat, orange-pink cloud, and I pray for the courage to say to Mother that I will go down to River Road, that from there I will take in the setting sun. As I stand in the doorway of the sewing room saying what I had planned, my heart does not race, my voice does not tremble, my palms do not grow damp. And Mother busily waves me away without a second thought.

The stones have not been knocked about the roadside by a careless passerby but stacked in a neat pyramid. I squeeze a handful of the stones, then study the indentations and chalky white residue on my palm, but cannot read whether it was Tom who shaped the monument. I restack the stones, but a foot or so closer to the edge of the gorge, on trampled grass rather than hard-packed dirt.

The following afternoon I am on River Road again, returning from the shops with a roasting chicken and a concoction of rice, rye, and whole wheat flours recommended for wartime in the newspaper. As I approach the spot in front of Glenview, I squint to see the stone pyramid, but the struggling grass appears unmarred except by a fallen branch. A few steps farther on, I speed up, almost sure the side of the road has been somehow altered.

The stones I come upon are much prettier than those I gathered, each seemingly selected for some particular quality. One is pale pink, another prettily speckled, the next translucent and white. All the stones are worn smooth, their contours rounded by the water and grit of the river over time. They are laid on the ground to form the word Bess.

I gather the stones quickly and run up the steep rise of Buttrey Street, panting and sweating, and thinking all the while of what I will next leave for him.

As I had hoped, Mother is not in the sewing room. I take six small beads meant for Miss O’Leary’s wedding gown from the box sitting on the windowsill and clutch them in my fist as I dash from the house.

But on River Road, my choice seems poorly thought out. He had left me a bit of his world, and I intended to leave him a bit of my own, but I can hardly expect him to find six small beads amid packed dirt and broken stone. I walk in slow circles on the trampled grass until I find a half walnut shell. I make a small basin in the roadside using a stone and set the shell into it, upright. In the sunshine, the bead-filled shell glistens, and surely he will be looking. He will find it.

It is well past midnight as I lie awake in bed. I do not toss and turn, my body one minute too warm and the next chilled. I lie contentedly, even blissfully awake, thinking of what I will next leave.

In response to the beads, he leaves two pieces of flat shale with an assortment of pressed ferns sandwiched between. I consult Mother’s guide to flora, looking for some secret meaning in the names of the ferns. The first one I identify is lady fern, which seems a compliment of sorts, even more so when I discover the second to be called maidenhair. But the next is narrow-leaf spleenwort and the one after that common polypody. Still, the ferns were fed by his river, cut from the shady depths of his gorge.

In return I leave a swatch of green-blue charmeuse, the color and luster of the fabric much like sunshine on the river. Does he ponder my leavings the way I do his? Does he understand how the swatch of fabric implies the meeting of our worlds?

I find a feather at our roadside spot, held upright there by a ring of supporting stones. The shaft of the feather in one hand, I pull the flattened mesh of the vane through my fingers, mulling over the gift. Herons are known to wade in the shallows of the Niagara, and the feather is in fact oversize and gray-blue. Does he somehow know the great blue heron is a bird I adore? Vast wings spread in flight, lengthy legs angled behind, elongated neck held in an S-curve, the heron seems otherworldly or maybe from an earlier time.

Even so, the feather disappoints me. I thought he would hint his understanding of the message underlying the charmeuse. I decide to be more blatant and pull threads from the frayed edge of the charmeuse and braid them together with a lock of hair snipped from my head.

He leaves a wooden container, rather like a pencil box, with a sliding panel. When I open it, a small cinnamon-colored butterfly flutters from the box, escaping its confines. In this I find meaning, also the courage to leave him a note.

I compose as I lie in bed, but in the morning, fountain pen put to paper, I am not satisfied. Rather than go down for breakfast, I work on the note, which causes Mother to rap on my door and me to hurl myself into bed and claim a headache.

The content of the note settled, I copy it onto stationery and, after three attempts, am finally happy with my penmanship. I hold the stationery an arm’s length away, trying to see what he might. My name, along with “Glenview,” appears in embossed type at the bottom of the page, which would be disastrous if it ended up in the wrong hands, but, more important, he might be unnerved by it. I copy the words onto plain paper. The final product is simple, laughable, considering the effort.

I tuck the note between two rocks and return to Glenview but twice make excuses and head back to River Road. Both times, I slide the note from the rocks and reread it, though I know the content by heart. Then, with just enough of a corner protruding, I replace the note between the rocks.

A day later, I glimpse a bit of white between the same two rocks. From a few steps closer, I know by the tattered edge of the paper that it has been exchanged for my note. I snatch quickly, and, paper trembling in my hands, I read.

Did he struggle with the reply? Has he an outing in mind? Does he lie awake with my note pressed to his heart?

Will Thursday ever arrive?