Dear Kevin,
At first I thought this exercise sounded stupid, but I find I like writing to you, because I can imagine you at your desk in your office upstairs reading this, and if I try harder, I can imagine that I’m actually talking to you. I miss doing that. It’s funny knowing you probably won’t see this letter. Or maybe someday I’ll show it to you, if Betsy lets me have it back. Betsy is the camp leader. I’ve always heard talk about this or that person being “centered,” and never understood the term. Before I met Betsy I thought it meant people who didn’t tip over easily, ha ha ha. She’s the way I imagine a mother superior in a convent would be, not that I ever had a shot at entering a convent to know for sure. Not once I laid eyes on you.
Anyway, people are nice for the most part. I have three cabin-mates: Dinah, who has been married three times, can you imagine? I don’t see how anyone can fall in love that many times. Then there’s Martha, who doesn’t say very much at all. I can’t figure out if she has a fascinating internal life or if she’s just weird. And then finally there’s Ann, who I think you’d like. In fact, I think you probably should stay away from her, because she’s probably exactly your type, ha ha ha.
I’m taking tennis so you and I can play at the country club without me embarrassing you. I’m also taking archery because it makes me think of my mom and her camp. Archery was one of her favorite sports. There’s no swimming because the water is too cold, but there is kayaking. Also all kinds of spa treatments, but I want to keep this place special for things I can’t do at home.
Oh, and guess what? They put me in a baking class! I can see you rolling your eyes from here. Talk about something I can’t do at home!
It’s beautiful here. I haven’t been able to sleep, but that means I’ve been able to do lots of star-gazing. You wouldn’t believe how many stars you can see away from city lights. Though I suppose you’ve seen them somewhere on all your travels. The shooting stars are clear as day, sometimes crossing half the sky in a sudden streak. It’s disappointing knowing they’re lumps of rock heating up through the atmosphere and not real stars. Sometimes I think too much knowledge is a bad thing.
The weather has been gorgeous and the air smells better than just about anything I’ve ever smelled, except you when you’re dressed up to go out. I think we should take a long weekend here sometime soon, after we patch things up.
I’ll be home in a couple of weeks!
Your loving wife,
Cindy
Cindy walked a little apprehensively up the narrow trail toward Betsy’s private cabin, set a short way up the gentle slope above the lodge, its dark green door flanked by uncertain roses on one side and an apologetic lilac on the other. Cindy caught herself being surprised, as if Betsy should have been able to look the plants right in the petals and inspire them to grow and thrive. Maybe the Maine coast wasn’t the best place for every kind of blooming.
She’d been summoned right after her pottery class this afternoon, which had gone much better than her tennis lesson after group therapy. Cindy had managed to give the patient, earnest tennis instructor a bloody nose with a mis-hit ball. Nearby players rushed to offer tissues dug out of pockets, but Cindy had been rooted to the spot by shame, like the time she broke her mother’s vase when the heavy wet crystal slipped out of her hands and shattered in the sink. She hadn’t been able to move then either, even with blood flowing from a cut on her forearm. When her mom came in and found Cindy crying, she’d been exasperated. Why the fuss? It wasn’t the first time Cindy had been clumsy, and God knew it wouldn’t be the last.
Laura had been awfully nice too, about having her nose bloodied, as if it happened all the time, which Cindy was pretty sure it didn’t. Unable to shake off the horror, she’d gotten through the rest of class by lobbing careful shots against the backboard, which didn’t have a nose. Tennis might bring her and Kevin closer, but at this rate it wouldn’t do much for her emotional, spiritual, or physical progress at camp.
Lunch, a delicious vegetable soup—and how nice not to mind hot soup in August—restored her. She’d spent her pottery class blissfully producing a thick wobbly bowl that even a kindergarten mom would hesitate to display. But what fun. A lot of the other women had obviously worked the wheel before, but Cindy was determined not to feel inadequate so she didn’t. The activity was just the outlet she needed after group therapy and tennis turned out to be difficult. Bloodied nose in one, bloodied spirit in another. She was getting tired of people acting as if she were too stupid to know her own husband.
After pottery class, Patrick had come into the art room, and his eyes picked her out from among the others, which gave her a silly thrill. He was so handsome, it was hard not to react, even knowing he wouldn’t react back, not to her or any of the women, even one as beautiful and classy as Ann. He was the kind of man Cindy would probably have had a crush on in grade school, her bad boy type, until she got smart and chose someone solid and…well “dependable” was a poor concept in retrospect, but that’s how she’d felt about Kevin at the time. Her parents adored him at first, thrilled that Cindy had finally gotten something right. Then the cheating started.
Anyway, Patrick led her out of class into the late morning sunlight and stared intently with those gorgeous gray eyes and told her she had a nonemergency phone call from Lucy, her daughter. She was grateful he’d said nonemergency, because immediately on hearing that Lucy called, she started imagining Kevin having a heart attack while humping his girlfriend. Or worse, suffering cardiac arrest on his way to ask Cindy to come back to him.
Anyone wanting to reach guests at Camp Kinsonu had to call the main number and go through the formidable though admirably centered Betsy. Conversation with the men they were here to get over was absolutely forbidden. That had tickled Cindy, imagining Kevin being told he couldn’t speak with her. Kevin wanted what he wanted when he wanted it, which was why his wanting her so many years back had been so thrilling, after so many years of feeling wanted by practically no one. When told he couldn’t talk to her, he would jump the next flight to Bangor and show up in person to haul her back. Gave her goose bumps just thinking about it. However, it would take more than a few days for Kevin to realize his mistake with Patty. Next week, probably, he’d be here.
She knocked on the door, and after Betsy’s welcoming “Come in,” opened it and couldn’t help exclaiming because Betsy’s cabin was exactly the kind of place she wanted, only she hadn’t known until she saw it. Sailing posters, plants, bookshelves, rugs—and the best part, a window seat covered by a cream cushion, with green and blue throw pillows that evoked the sea and matched the navy rug with blue-green flowers on the pine floor. A wood stove took command of the opposite corner, black as nighttime in these woods. She couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful than sitting on those cushions, reading with a view of the sea, fire crackling in the stove, maybe a fragrant loaf of cinnamon bread in the oven and a cup of tea at hand, maybe a new Max beside her.
She also couldn’t imagine Kevin here. He’d be claustrophobic, antsy, wanting to be out doing and meeting and making things happen. So her cabin would have to stay in her daydreams.
“Hi, Cindy.” Betsy sat behind a simple blond wood desk with rounded corners, peering over a pair of black half-glasses perched midway along her nose. The effect was scholarly and chic at the same time, and Cindy almost rued her own perfect vision, which would prevent her getting a pair. “How was your class this afternoon?”
“Oh, wonderful. Though…” She grimaced comically. “The pottery world won’t be lining up outside my door anytime soon.”
“It’s the process that matters, Cindy. Not the end.” Betsy’s eyes held her over the half-glasses, light from the window flashing the lenses opaque. Her gaze seemed to pour inside Cindy, bolster her up, assure her she could make it through with flying colors until Kevin came back. “If your child did something badly the first time, what would you say? ‘The world will never line up outside your door, honey’?”
“Oh. No. Of course not.” She laughed uncertainly, not expecting to have to defend a comment she’d meant as a joke, and gestured around her. “I adore your cabin. It’s just the type of place I wish I lived in.”
“Why don’t you?”
Cindy blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“Why don’t you find a place like this?”
“I…well, because…I live in Milwaukee. My husband’s job took us there.”
“I see.” Betsy said this as if she couldn’t see at all, which was sort of a funny coincidence since she was taking off her glasses while she said it. Cindy fidgeted, feeling as if she should start apologizing for where she lived. Betsy had that effect on her. “One should always live somewhere that feeds the soul.”
“Right.” Cindy nodded. “Yes. One should. Always.”
She was going to say, I’ll get right on that, but it would sound sarcastic and rude. She didn’t mean to be rude, but after being required to defend her life over one lame joke and one compliment to Betsy’s taste, at this point she’d just like to know what Lucy wanted.
“Your daughter called.” Betsy leaned on her elbows, hands in prayer position, tips of her fingers pressed to her chin. “How do you feel about speaking with her?”
“Oh, I’d like to. Lucy stayed in Princeton for the summer to work for a real estate firm. She probably misses me. Or maybe she has a message from her father.” Cindy’s voice lifted hopefully, even though she knew it was too soon.
Betsy’s eyes narrowed. “Possibly.”
“Or maybe she needs advice. Like about cooking. Or men.” She’d rushed to deflect the topic of conversation away from Kevin, then realized her reputation as someone to consult about matters of the heart had already been irreparably tarnished. “Or something.”
“You don’t think she’ll upset you or impede your progress here at camp?”
“Oh, no.” She shook her head, trying not to wonder what kind of progress could be impeded when she’d barely been here twenty-four hours. “I’m sure it will be fine.”
“Then I’m sure it will be too.” Betsy broke out her reassuring smile and gestured to a door on Cindy’s left, closed with a black iron latch. “The phone is through there. Have a good talk with your daughter. All I ask is that you please check in with me on the way out. If I’m not here, I’ll make sure Patrick is.”
“Yes. Okay. Thanks.” She strode toward the door, eager to sink into a familiar relationship and remind herself the world was still out there to go back to. Not that she was in a hurry to escape, because there was still so much to explore and do here. In fact, even after the disasters today, she sort of hoped Kevin wouldn’t come back for her until next week. Camp was so fun. She should have gone as a girl, when her mom and dad wanted to send her, instead of moping all summer under their displeasure at her cowardice.
Inside the pretty little bedroom, she dialed the familiar number, hoping her daughter wasn’t too busy to talk, and couldn’t help the warm swelling in her heart when Lucy answered.
“Hi, sweetheart, it’s Mom.”
“Mom. Hang on.” A rustling, then her daughter’s muted voice talking to a coworker, so mature and professional that tears sprang to Cindy’s eyes. She and Lucy had spoken only once since Kevin made his little pronouncement about being in love and leaving, and Lucy had been very upset, but more philosophical than Cindy expected. As if she’d seen this coming. As if she was almost relieved finally to have to deal with it instead of having to dread it.
Sometimes Cindy felt as if she lived in a different dimension than most of the people she knew.
“Mom, what the hell is dad doing?”
Cindy’s tender maternal tears stopped in a hurry. “What? I…don’t know, what do you—”
“He moved his bimbo into our house.”
Cindy’s gasp could probably be heard down by the water. “What?”
“She’s living there.” Her daughter’s voice cracked in outrage. “She answered the freaking phone when I called last night.”
“But…she…I mean she can’t be.”
“Mom.” Impatience in Lucy’s voice. She’d never been a patient child, not from infancy. Give her something new to try, if she failed the first time, instant hysteria. “I just told you she is.”
“But I mean…” Cindy closed her eyes, feeling as stupid as she sounded. Shocks like this were getting very, very old. She wanted life back the way it was supposed to be. “If she happened to be there when—”
“Living there. Li-ving. Moved in. Given her landlord notice, for all I know.”
“But he…” She opened her eyes, unable to stand the darkness in her own head, and fixed on a jumbled modern landscape hung over the twin bed across the room. “He never told me—”
“Mom, he never tells you anything. How the hell am I supposed to go home now for vacation before school starts again? How am I supposed to live in that house with them all cozy there together?”
“Oh. Well.” Cindy sank onto a hard-backed chair, painted blue, next to the phone table. “I’m sure it’s a mistake. I’m sure when I get back from here he’ll—”
“Mom, you’re out. She’s in. You have to understand that.” She was nearly crying, heaving breaths to try to stop it, this girl—woman now—who hated showing vulnerability. Like her father. “What am I going to do? Where will I go home to?”
“No, no. It won’t come to that. Your home is your home, with me and your father.” Cindy shook her head vehemently. “That…woman will be out when I get back.”
“Mom,” Lucy practically shouted. “Get…a…clue. Your marriage is over.”
Cindy inhaled slowly, preparing to be patient. “Sweetheart, it’s more complicated than—”
“Complicated my ass, it’s simple. He’s got Pattycakes, you’ll find someone else, but what about me? I can’t just go out and find another set of parents. I’m the one who’s fucking screwed here.”
“Lucy!” Her voice burst out in breathless shock—more shock, God please have mercy—her face hot, a strange buzzing in her ears. “Your language.”
“Good, Mom.” A hysterical giggle, thick with misery. “My life is falling apart and you’re worried about my language.”
Cindy couldn’t do more than work her mouth. Speech seemed out of the question. There was too much to take in. She wanted off the phone, she wanted to bury herself in her bed, pull the covers over her head the way she had as a little girl, waking in the middle of the night with a splitting headache, starved for oxygen. She wanted to wake up now and find the fantasy mother she often dreamed of at her bedside, stroking her hair, telling her she was silly to be afraid of a bad dream, that she was loved more than life itself.
“I’m sorry.” Lucy was crying in earnest now, then taking deep breaths, fighting again for control. “I’m sorry, Mom. This is just so hard.”
“I know.” She managed a whisper, guilt deep and dark inside her. She and Kevin had done this to Lucy. Their problems had grown so much bigger than just the two of them. “I promise you, it will all work out. Your father seems to need to…explore right now, but it won’t last.”
“Mom.”
“I know him, honey. Better than you do. Just trust me on this. Okay?”
A sniffle. A sob. Quieter then, her breath slowing. Cindy’s smile spread. Reassuring her daughter made her feel calmer too. Everything would be okay.
“Thanks, Mom. I gotta get back to work.”
“I understand. And you’re welcome. Now don’t worry. Promise me you won’t.”
“Okay, Mom. I’ll try.” She hung up before her mother’s I love you could make it over the line.
I love you. Cindy sat motionless until the phone startled her with its bomp-bomp-bomp chastisement. She put the receiver carefully back in place, feeling like she was in a post-earthquake landscape, waiting for the aftershocks.
Lucy had to be mistaken. Kevin wouldn’t install his mistress in her house. Especially without asking her. Even he wasn’t that bad. It was a mistake. That was all.
She felt her insides unlock and allowed herself a breath and another smile. A mistake. That was all.
A light tap at the door made her sigh. Betsy was the warmest, sweetest person she’d ever met, but Cindy couldn’t bear to talk to her right now. Betsy would want to know what the conversation had been about. She’d give Cindy that concerned look and ask her all kinds of probing questions that would make Cindy sound like an idiot for believing in her husband and in her marriage. Max had faith in her no matter what she said. Maybe she should find out if there were any way she could become a dog and move to a kennel.
“Cindy?”
Cindy lifted her head. The voice was male. “Yes?”
“Can I come in?”
Patrick. What could she say? Only if you don’t make me feel ridiculous. “Yes. Of course. Come in.”
The door opened a few inches and his head appeared around it, as if he were afraid he’d catch her in some embarrassing moment and have to withdraw quickly. “Betsy had to leave for a while. She told me you were on a call from your daughter. It got kinda quiet in here, so I thought I’d check. Make sure you were okay.”
She smiled at him, even though her insides still felt cracked and unstable. “I’m fine.”
He glanced at her hands, then into her eyes, which were undoubtedly broadcasting her troubled feelings, which made her nervous, so she looked down at her hands, and found them twisted and tight. He knew she was lying about being fine.
“Take a walk with me? I want to show you something you’ll like.”
She looked back up at his fine strong face and wondered if he’d been planning to show Ann the same thing that morning, or if this was special, for Cindy. And then she realized that was a completely juvenile and pointless thing to wonder, the kind of thing she wondered about boys in grade school, where she spent so much time dreaming of the day Boy X or Boy Y or Boy Z would find her irresistible, which none of them ever had.
“I think I have a class right now.” She couldn’t remember what. Her brain seemed only to be able to hang on to useless, meandering thoughts at the moment. She was probably acting like someone with Alzheimer’s. If she could sleep at night, people might not think she was such a ditz.
“So?” He grinned and bent down to whisper close to her ear. “Play hooky with me.”
“Oh.” She laughed nervously. Something about the way he said that had sounded sort of naughty. Or would have from the lips of a guy who liked women. “That sounds fun.”
“Then let’s go.” He gestured her out through the comfortable blue-green living room, then out through the door on the opposite side of the cabin so they were walking up the gentle hill away from the sea. They crossed a mown field to another narrow path of matted grass and then, when they entered the woods, of soft leaves and moss.
As Cindy walked, the phone call with her daughter kept looping through her mind. Patrick could show her the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, complete with sprightly leprechaun, and she’d just nod. Lucy couldn’t be harmed in all this, Kevin had to see that. He shouldn’t let his trampy girlfriend into their house, shouldn’t let her answer the phone and upset everyone. But then that was Kevin—and most men from what she gathered—doing what he wanted and expecting everyone to accommodate him. She’d spent a lot of her life accommodating Kevin, done it mostly happily out of love, but in retrospect that made her part of what was now hurting Lucy.
“Here.” They’d left the path, and Patrick held back a spruce branch for her to pass into a small mossy clearing strewn with rocks, ferns, and downed trees so old they squished into moist splinters under her feet. Ahead, dangling from a branch, she saw a strange lantern-looking object with yellow plastic flowers pasted around it, half filled with a bright red liquid, like the lone decoration left on a Christmas tree.
“Hummingbird feeder.”
“Hummingbirds?” She turned in astonishment and found him directly behind her, so she stepped back into the prickly embrace of a spruce, and had to rebound with a quick sidestep. “I thought hummingbirds were tropical.”
“Not all.” He gestured to a flat stone roughly chair height, mostly bare of moss, and they sat there, so close together their shoulders touched, and their hips, and all along their thighs, because there wasn’t more room than that. She expected to feel awkward, and did a little, but actually it was nice being next to him, since Patrick could hardly take the contact sexually. He smelled good. Not expensive and sophisticated like Kevin, but manly in a different way that seemed to have been absorbed from the woods rather than dabbed on.
“Will the birds come, do you think, while we’re here?”
“I’ll tell you what.” He held his hands up, palms away, fingers spread, sort of like a photographer framing a shot. “If we only allow the possibility that they will show up, then we’ll affect the universe in a positive way, and make it easier for them.”
Cindy’s heart started to beat a little faster. Something in her personal universe that had always felt off seemed about to click into place. She wanted to look at Patrick but was pretty sure the sight of his handsome face this close would unnerve her, and she had to say this before the chance passed without her grabbing onto it: “That’s how I think. That’s how I feel about the world.”
“It took me a long time to learn. With all I went through…” He chuckled, though not bitterly, as she might have expected. “No wonder I clung to the negative. It becomes a habit, you know? But in Thailand, with the monks, I learned how I, myself, was playing a part in my own downfall. So I totally let go, all the bad thoughts and expectations and worry. After that, boom, only a matter of time until my life turned around.”
“Oh.” Cindy’s breath caught in a small gasp. “No one else…well, other people don’t get it. At least not the people I know. They think I’m silly.”
“They’re jealous.”
“Jealous?” Cindy put a hand to her chest, delighted just by the idea. “Of me?”
“Not that many people can throw off the negativity surrounding us.” He was looking at her intently, she could feel it, but she kept her eyes on a daddy longlegs exploring the world of a lichen-covered stump, drinking in every syllable of every word. “It’s safer to be cynical, Cindy. It’s easier to hate, to point to misery in the world and then use that hate and misery as a sign that we can only expect more.”
“Yes.” That was Kevin. In a nutshell. And her brilliant parents. In an even smaller nutshell.
“It takes courage to be vulnerable. To say ‘I love. I like. I am happy with who and how I am. Good things will come to me. I deserve them.’”
“Yes.” Now her eyes were drawn to his, because there was nowhere else she could look and be satisfied. What he described, she’d tried to do all her adult life, without ever dignifying it with such beautiful, strong words. “Too many people don’t want to hear good things.”
“Worse, they want to destroy the words and attitudes that can make those good things happen.”
“Yes. Yes.” She knew she was saying yes too much, but she wanted to say it a thousand times more besides, yes yes yes! Tears rose, along with an absolute tsunami of gratitude for the man beside her. “Thank you, Patrick.”
“Hey, you’re welcome. For what?”
“Understanding.” She smiled, calm and peaceful, sure she could give Centered Betsy a run for her money. “My husband will come back to me.”
“He will.” His earnest and beautiful gaze took on a slight edge. “If that’s what you want.”
Of course it is was her automatic response, but she only thought it this time, staring into his deep gray eyes.
“He’d be a fool to lose you, Cindy.” He was nearly whispering, and was it her imagination or had he leaned closer? She should move back. She should, but she didn’t. She simply had the thought that she should and left it at that, as if her brain had lost control of her muscles.
“Most people…” She cleared her throat. “Most people think I’d be a fool not to lose him.”
“You have to follow what’s in your heart. Only you know what that is. You have to be at peace with you. No one else.”
He could not have spoken any more directly to her innermost soul. She wanted to seize this moment, bottle it forever so when she felt stupid and young and uncertain, she’d have his deep gray eyes and his validating words to bring back how she felt right now. “You don’t know how much it means to hear you say that.”
“That’s what I’m here for, Cindy. To help.”
She was going to say that she was pretty sure he’d helped her more in the past several minutes than anyone could for the next two weeks, but something buzzed by at top speed, like a bee, only too large and too loud, and Patrick’s eyes shifted past her. “Look. There, behind you. Turn slowly.”
She moved as carefully as she could, then let out an “Oh” no louder than a baby’s sigh. A hummingbird, the first one she’d seen except on TV nature programs. Not three yards away, drinking from the feeder as if it was the most natural thing in the world to be doing, while she couldn’t get past the idea that something so graceful and exotic should be feasting on brilliant fragrant rain-forest flowers, surrounded by voluptuous women in colorful dresses with more of those same flowers tucked behind their ears. Not here, in the browns and greens and grays of the Maine coast, putting on a show for Cindy, who wore Kevin’s Princeton sweater and jeans that were too short.
The bird’s wings beat into a blur, its green shimmery body hovering, undulating, liquid in the light, darting forward, back, forward, back, inserting its beak into the center of the yellow plastic flower each time, enchanting and endlessly thirsty.
“Ruby-throated hummingbird.” His voice barely sounded in her hair, tickled the strands above her ear. The warmth of his breath made her shiver. “Isn’t he amazing?”
“He?” she whispered back.
“Patch of red at its throat. The females are all green. Look. There’s another. A female. To the left.”
She nodded. She’d seen it. And couldn’t stop looking, feeling the warmth of Patrick at her back, the chill of the stone seeping through her pant leg, the cool stillness of the woods and the faint whirring buzz of the birds as they darted back and forth, occasionally resting on a branch gnawed bare by porcupines, then feasting, fast-motion, again.
“They remind me of you, Cindy.” He put a hand on her shoulder, heavy and secure. “Full of energy, exploring their surroundings, bright and beautiful.”
She bent her head, unsure how to respond, half ready to dissolve into sentimental tears, half ready to get up and dance from the sheer joy of his compliment. His hand left her shoulder, began massaging her neck, working on the tight muscles, which barely got to relax anymore, even at night. Cindy closed her eyes and gave herself over. At home, her massages were administered by a dark, silent woman in an exclusive salon in Fox Point. But this was just as good, if not better, for the deep connection between them.
She’d been after that connection when she brought home a massage video for her and Kevin to practice, but while Kevin had lain blissfully still while she massaged him, when it was his turn, he’d become irritated and uncomfortable, and she’d spent twenty minutes lying rigid with guilt while he grunted in annoyance, until she finally thanked him and said she’d had enough. Which hadn’t been a lie.
But Patrick’s hands felt sure and strong, melting her muscles, making her realize how much tension she’d been carrying. And the more she relaxed, the more her deprived body craved sleep…
“I’ve met a lot of women in a lot of places all over the world, but I can tell that you’re a very special lady, with a lot of power inside you.” His other hand joined the ecstasy on her neck, then both moved slowly outward to treat her shoulders—then down, where they remained still, firmly cupping her upper arms, making her stifle a groaning protest. “I’m looking forward to getting to know you a lot better in the next couple of weeks. I know you’ll keep going in a positive direction. I’m proud of what you’ve already done.”
“Thank you.”
He was proud of her. She wanted the feeling from those words to go on and on and on, so she stayed, head down, not moving, as if his hands clamped on her arms had bound her to the stone beneath her. The hummingbirds had flown away or gone silent, the woods still except for faint noises down from the camp. An occasional voice or screen door slamming, the rhythmic thump of tennis balls against the backboard.
“Turn around, Cindy.” His whisper broke the silence.
She obeyed, helped by the pressure of his hands urging her into an embrace against his chest. His lips touched her forehead; she closed her eyes and let herself register as precisely as possible every sensation. The grassy smell of his shirt, the smooth muscle underneath it, the strong encircling protectiveness of his arms. This too her memory would want to call back up in the days ahead.
Because the difference with how it felt when Kevin held her was immediately obvious and immediately shocking. Kevin’s touch was dutiful, paternal, part of their familiar and admittedly stale marital ritual. While Patrick, a man she’d known barely a day, held her like he meant it.