Alice Munros Best

she was a poet she would write a poem about something like this. But in her experience the subjects that she thought a poet could write about did not appeal to Leon.
    CARLA HAD NOT heard Clark go out but she woke when he came in. He told her that he had just been out checking around the barn.
    “A car went along the road a while ago and I wondered what they were doing here. I couldn’t get back to sleep till I went out and checked whether everything was okay.”
    “So was it?”
    “Far as I could see.”
    “And then while I was up,” he said, “I thought I might as well pay a visit up the road. I took the clothes back.”
    Carla sat up in bed.
    “You didn’t wake her up?”
    “She woke up. It was okay. We had a little talk.”
    “Oh.”
    “It was okay.”
    “You didn’t mention any of that stuff, did you?”
    “I didn’t mention it.”
    “It really was all made-up. It really was. You have to believe me. It was all a lie.”
    “Okay.”
    “You have to believe me.”
    “Then I believe you.”
    “I made it all up.”
    “Okay.”
    He got into bed.
    “Your feet are cold,” she said. “Like they got wet.”
    “Heavy dew.”
    “Come here,” he said. “When I read your note, it was just like I went hollow inside. It’s true. If you ever went away, I’d feel like I didn’t have anything left in me.”
    THE BRIGHT WEATHER had continued. On the streets, in the stores, in the Post Office, people greeted each other by saying that summer had finally arrived. The pasture grass and even the poor beaten crops lifted up their heads. The puddles dried up, the mud turned to dust. A light warm wind blew and everybody felt like doing things again. The phone rang. Inquiries about trail rides, about riding lessons. Summer camps were interested now, having cancelled their trips to museums. Minivans drew up, with their loads of restless children. The horses pranced along the fences, freed from their blankets.
    Clark had managed to get hold of a large enough piece of roofing at a good price. He had spent the whole first day after Runaway Day (that was how they referred to Carla’s bus trip) fixing the roof of the exercise ring.
    For a couple of days, as they went about their chores, he and Carla would wave at each other. If she happened to pass close to him, and there was nobody else around, Carla might kiss his shoulder through the light material of his summer shirt.
    “If you ever try to run away on me again I’ll tan your hide,” he said to her, and she said, “
Would
you?”
    “What?”
    “Tan my hide?”
    “Damn right.” He was high-spirited now, irresistible as when she had first known him.
    Birds were everywhere. Red-winged blackbirds, robins, a pair of doves that sang at daybreak. Lots of crows, and gulls on reconnoitering missions from the lake, and big turkey buzzards that sat in the branches of a dead oak about half a mile away, at the edge of the woods. At first they just sat there, drying out their voluminous wings, lifting themselves occasionally for a trial flight, flapping around a bit, then composing themselves to let the sun and the warm air do their work. In a day or so they were restored, flying high, circling and dropping to earth, disappearing over the woods, coming back to rest in the familiar bare tree.
    Lizzie’s owner – Joy Tucker – showed up again, tanned and friendly. She had just got sick of the rain and gone off on her holidays to hike in the Rocky Mountains. Now she was back.
    “Perfect timing weatherwise,” Clark said. He and Joy Tucker were soon joking as if nothing had happened.
    “Lizzie looks to be in good shape,” she said. “But where’s her little friend? What’s her name – Flora?”
    “Gone,” said Clark. “Maybe she took off to the Rocky Mountains.”
    “Lots of wild goats out there. With fantastic horns.”
    “So I hear.”
    FOR THREE OR FOUR days they had been just too busy to go down and look in the mailbox. When Carla opened it she found the phone bill, some promise that if they subscribed to a certain magazine they could win a million dollars, and Mrs. Jamieson’s letter.
    My Dear Carla
,
    I have been thinking about the (rather dramatic) events of the last few days and I find myself talking to myself but really to you, so often that I thought I must speak to you, even if – the best way I can do now – only in a letter. And don’t worry – you do not have to answer me.
    Mrs. Jamieson went on to say that she was afraid that she had