“I don’t think he will go,” said Val. “He just isn’t interested. ”
Jonatha shook her head. “College would be good for him.
He’s smart enough. ”
“That has nothing to do with it. ”
“But it would give him a chance to meet other people, to get away from that place. ”
Val took a sip of her lemonade. “I don’t think he wants to get away. ”
“That’s insane, though!” said Jonatha. “After all he’s been through, why would he want to stay?”
Val and Crow exchanged a brief glance, but said nothing.
“Hey,” said Newton, changing the conversational tack,
“have you guys given any more thought to moving down here?”
“Uh-huh,” said Val.
“And . . . ?”
“Gets awful hot here during the summers,” Crow said.
“Makes it hard for Shamu here to get around. ” He winked at his wife, who mouthed the words “You will pay for that. ”
“Which means what?” asked Jonatha “You’re not going to come live with us? Why not stay at least until the baby’s born? We do actually have air conditioning, you know. ”
Val reached over and took Jonatha’s hand. “Thanks, sweetie, but the time’s not right. He won’t leave, and we won’t leave without him. ”
As Newton turned to say something, Crow held up his hand, “Now, now, don’t go off on a lecture tour on us, dude.
You guys have been terrific to us, and more than generous.
With the insurance money from the store and the cash you guys send us—which you don’t have to do, but which I will keep taking anyway, you filthy rich bourgeois snobs—we have the new house just about finished. ”
“The farm’s coming along, too. I made an offer on a couple of hundred acres of what used to be the Carby place. If it goes through next year we’ll become the second largest garlic farmer in the state. ”
“You guys are nuts,” Newton observed. He wore shorts and boat shoes and there was an old dime on a string around his ankle. “I wouldn’t live there for all the—”
Val shook her head. “Our life is in Pine Deep. ”
“Still?” Jonatha asked, cocking her head to one side.
“After everything?”
Val reached over and took Crow’s hand. “Yes,” she said.
“Especially after everything. It’s different for you two, it always was. Pine Deep wasn’t your home. It was our home, and it still is. We fought for it, and we won’t walk away now. ”
“Or hobble away,” added Crow, tapping the cane that lay beside him. After that hellish night he’d spent eighteen months in a wheelchair, another year on crutches, but was now able to get around with only a cane to help him up stairs and slopes. The doctors said he would always have a bit of a limp. A souvenir, one of them had said, and after the look Crow gave him he hadn’t repeated the joke.
“Has there been any sign of . . . ” Newton gestured vaguely.
“No,” Crow said quietly. “I think the fire, the birds . . . and Mike . . . whatever Mike brought to that fight seemed to turn the tide. I’ve, um . . . even been down there a few times.
Now that I know a back way I can drive in. Beats climbing that friggin’ hill. ”