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that.”
    â€œIt’s all right. She went out just like she lived, mean as a cat.” She eyed me for a long minute. “I bet you are tickled to death to get this house done. To get out from under Esme’s little beady eyes.”
    I started to laugh again but thought better of it. “She’s been good to me.”
    â€œYou must be something, then. That old woman don’t like many people.”
    â€œHer bark is worse than her bite,” I said.
    Serena wasn’t listening to me. Aaron and the fiddler had quit playing. The guitar player was gently strumming, and a great hum had arisen over the gathered crowd as they laughed and told big tales. At first I thought she was looking at her husband again. Her eyes were narrowed, a deep line etched across her forehead.
    â€œHe’s got it bad, don’t he?” she said finally.
    â€œWho?” I asked.
    Still she didn’t take her eyes away from the porch. “Aaron,” she said. “Your brother-in-law. He’s watched you this whole night.”
    I looked at him, and I felt as if somebody had poured ice water over me—the way my mother had sometimes done Daddy when he got too drunk. Aaron was looking right into my eyes while his long fingers rested on the frets of the banjo. His straight, white teeth seemed to be saying something improper to me. I could feel my face going to ash. At the same time, I thought to myself that this couldn’t be true. Even though I had felt it myself, and now had somebody else saying this, too, I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. When I had first come to God’s Creek, I had knowed he had a little crush on me, but I thought he had outgrowed it. Surely Aaron didn’t look on me that way.
    â€œHe’ll get over it,” Serena said. Only now did she let go of my hand, as if she had just realized that she was still holding it. “He’s about too pretty to be a man, and he never has been right. He’s always been younger than his age, if you know what I mean. Not slow,but sort of behind. No wonder, the way that old woman’s petted him to death. And Saul’s spoiled him worse than her.”
    â€œHe’s probably just drunk,” I said. When I looked back to him, he was talking to the fiddler, discussing their next song.
    â€œHe’s too old to be making eyes at his sister-in-law,” Serena said, like I hadn’t even spoke.

Five
    A s winter started to set in, I began to see something very clearly. It was as if I had been working on a quilt and suddenly the pattern had taken on its shape and meaning. I seen that I had married a very quiet man, the opposite of myself, of my own daddy, of my own people. He was the opposite of
his
own people, in fact, for Esme could outtalk any preacher, and Aaron was all the time going on with his notions and daydreams.
    Maybe it was the time of year that made me notice it. The weather seemed to give me hints. Rain showers in the summer had come in with rumbling thunder, sheets of water pounding against the tin roof, wind that bent the trees low and set the leaves to chattering. But cold rain fell straight down in November and December, quiet and soft, sometimes so gently that it seemed a damp mist you could walk through without becoming wet. The sounds of evening—crickets, frogs, katydids—were gone until spring. Even the creek seemed to silence itself somewhat. The last of the leaves fell with no more sound than a dying breath.
    And Saul was quiet, too. Still and silent. By the time the gray sky began to spit snow around Christmastime, I didn’t think I could stand it. Esme was a different person in the winter. She didn’t venture outside much and spent the colder days fooling around in her kitchen with a big quilt throwed over her shoulders. She wasn’t much in the way of company, since the only thing she wanted to talk about was her aching bones. She could always tell when a big snow was coming by