When Amy squeezes my hand again, the sky has already lightened to a deep color that I can't quite put a name to. Bluey charcoal, maybe, faintly glowing with the kind of half-light that plays tricks with your eyes. In the next minutes, time and again it plays the same trick with mine. I glimpse a shape at the edge of my vision and think it's alive, only to have it turn out to be a boulder or shrub.

Once, the glistening tops of the grass in front of me wave and part and then close back up but the animal passing through stays hidden.

And then, just as Amy starts to say something, I hear a soft snap like a twig being stepped on. "Listen!" I whisper.

"To what?"

"I'm not sure."

Once more, a shape near the tree line seems to move, and this time I recognize the up-and-down lines of legs. And then I make out the dark silhouette of a head and neck.

Amy clutches my arm as a large doe steps from the sheltering forest. Hie doe stops to listen and then moves farther into the meadow. Again she halts, and this time she makes a hoarse noise: a raspy sound like wind whistling up her throat.

And, suddenly, another doe and three fawns are in the clearing with her.

Oh... I'm sure I just thought the word, but the lead doe looks my way alerted, ears cocked forward.

She takes a few stiff-legged steps toward us, stamps a hoo£ and takes another step.

She blows air out her nostrils in a breathy snort, and the other deer lift their heads. And then the big doe turns and bounds into the forest, moving so quickly she seems to just disappear.

Right away, the others follow, all but the littlest fawn.

Confused, it steps this way and that and then runs toward us, halting a few feet away. It looks right at me.

I see its frightened eyes and its muscles too tense to move, and I hear the little animal make a sound of its own: a tiny, high-pitched bleat.

And then from the woods comes that snorting, breathy call again. The fawn leaps toward it, and the last glimpse I have is of the white underside of its small, flagging tail.

Amy whispers, "I was afraid he was going to get left. But did you hear him, Tess? Did you hear?"

"I heard," I answer not trusting my voice to say more. I think of that scared bleat and picture how the little guy stood too frightened to move, too little to be alone. Tears fill my eyes.

They spill over and in the damp, cool, mountain morning, I begin crying.

"What's wrong?" Amy asks.

"I don't know," I answer choking a little laugh into the words. "I just need to cry."

"Okay," Amy says, and she sits with me while I cry and cry and cry.

AS WE WALK bade to our tent, Amy asks, "Why were you so sad? The fawn went back to its mother."

"I know it did. But for a moment it was so lost and so scared."

"And that's all?"

"I was thinking about some other things, too."

"What?"

"Mostly stuff I wish I could do over again. Do differently."

"The concert?"

"That's one of them."

"You're still glad you came here, aren't you?"

"That's been the best thing to come out of it."

Amy looks pleased. Then she asks, "But what was worst?"

"I guess the people I let down. In Germany and afterward. When I got to New York I didn't even call my violin teacher or Ben."

"You just left? You didn't say good-bye? How come?"

"I was ashamed. And also I knew if I was around them, I'd be around music, and I thought I wanted to get away from it. Only ... Amy, I miss it so much." I try to make my voice light, but I'm only partly successful. "Sometimes I feel as lost as that fawn looked."

Amy studies me solemnly. "I knew you were crying for it."

She thinks awhile, and then she announces, as though she's just made a major decision, "If the fawn had needed me to, I'd have helped it. I wouldn't have let it down."

"I know that, sweetie," I tell her "I don't doubt it for an instant."