"Why tell them?" Michael asked. "You don't look pregnant."

"I don't lie," Janet spoke quietly. "And I don't ever again want to hear you suggest such a thing. Is that clear?"

Michael squirmed and his eyes shifted away from hers. "I didn't mean you should lie…" he began, but Janet didn't let him finish.

"Not telling the truth is lying, Michael. It doesn't matter if someone doesn't ask you a question. If you know something that's important to a situation and don't say anything about it, that's lying. And you know it, so let's end it right there." She paused for a moment, and settled herself back into the sofa. "The point of all this is that I can't get anything more than temporary work right now. and won't be able to for at least a year, maybe more. And we can't live in New York without me working. Can you understand that?"

There was a long silence, and then Michael nodded. "I guess so." Then, a moment later: "But what about all my friends?"

"You'll make friends here," Janet assured him.

Michael left the rocking chair, and went to gaze out the window. "What if I don't?" he asked, and in his voice Janet heard all the doubts that she herself had not yet been able to put aside.

"But you will," she insisted, and immediately wondered if her reassuring words were for her son or for herself.

For a long time, Michael stared silently out the window, and then abruptly turned to face her with the question she had least expected. "Why didn't Daddy ever tell us we had a farm?"

Janet searched for an answer, but found none. None, at any rate, that wouldn't tarnish Michael's memory of his father, and she wasn't willing to do that. "There was no reason to, really," she said at last. "Daddy wasn't a farmer, and never wanted to be. And there aren't any universities around here where he could have taught." She brightened, as an idea came to her. "Perhaps it was his idea of insurance, in case anything ever happened to him. Something to leave us. Not only a home, but a family, too. What if he'd told me?" she improvised. "I'd have talked him into selling it, and buying something closer to New York, and now, instead of having something we own, we'd have a mortgage to pay, and no family around to help us. Maybe Daddy was smart never to tell us about the farm."

If only, she thought to herself, I could believe that. But I don't. Not a word of it.

Michael, however, seemed to accept her words at face value. "Where is it?" he asked.

Janet stared at her son, then burst into laughter for the first time since Mark had died. Michael looked at her oddly, then glanced uneasily away. "What's so funny?"

"You know what?" Janet gasped. "I don't even know where it is! Here I've made up my mind to move us onto a farm, and I never even asked where it was, let alone what it looked like. Let's get your grandparents and go see it."

But the Halls refused to take them.

"Tomorrow," Anna insisted. "We'll show it to you tomorrow."

"But why not today?" Janet asked.

Amos grinned at her. "If you saw it today, you'd never move in. By tomorrow, it'll be cleaned up and at least habitable."

"But I don't care if it's a mess," Janet protested. "You don't have to hire someone to clean it up. Michael and I can do that."

"Hire someone?" Anna asked. "Why would we do that?" Then suddenly she understood what Janet meant. "This isn't like New York," she said. "Out here, everybody knows everybody else and helps them out. It's just like having one huge family. We'll take care of you. That's what we're for."

Janet's eyes flooded with tears, and she leaned down to hug the elderly woman. "Thank you," she whispered. "You've no idea what all this means to me. Ever since Mark died, I've been so… so frightened."

Anna gently patted her back. "I know, dear. I know just how you feel. But everything's going to be fine. Just fine," she said, as her eyes met Amos's beyond Janet's shoulder.

"Do you know Mr. Findley?"

The sun was high, and Michael and Ryan, yesterday's fight forgotten, had taken shelter from the heat under the enormous cottonwood in the Shieldses' front yard. Ryan, to Michael's disappointment, hadn't been at all surprised by Michael's news. In fact, when he'd told his cousin that he and his mother had decided to stay in Prairie Bend, Ryan had only grinned and said that if he thought that was news, he was wrong-there probably wasn't anyone in Prairie Bend who didn't know they were staying. Now, however, he looked at Michael curiously.

"He's crazy," he said at last. "How'd you hear about him?"

Michael ignored the question. "Who is he?"

"He's an old guy who lives all by himself. Everybody says he's crazy and ought to be locked up, but nobody ever does anything about it."

"Crazy how?"

"Just crazy. You know. He talks to himself all the time, and never lets anybody near the place, except Dr. Potter. I heard the only reason Dr. Potter ever goes out there is to see if old man Findley's still alive or not."

"Do the kids ever go out there?"

"What for?"

"Just to see what's going on."

Ryan glanced at his cousin with suspicion. "Nothin's going on. And if you go out there, he shoots at you."

"Bullshit," Michael challenged.

"Bullshit, nothin'. Eric Simpson lives out that way, and he saw old man Findley shoot at someone."

"Then how come they didn't arrest him?" Michael demanded.

Ryan frowned. "I don't know," he reluctantly admitted.

" 'Cause he didn't do anything, that's why," Michael told him with a certainty he didn't really feel. "I bet he was just shooting at an animal or something. If he'd done anything, they would have arrested him."

"That's not what Eric says, and he saw it."

"What did he see?"

"Why don't you ask him?"

"I don't know him."

"Well, let's go out there," Ryan suggested. "Then you'll know him."

Ten minutes later they were riding out of Prairie Bend and east along the river road, Michael on an old Schwinn that Ryan had dragged up from the Shieldses' basement. He was straining to match his cousin's ease with the machine, but it wasn't easy. Unlike Ryan, Michael had not grown up on a bike, and the one time he had risked Ryan's no-hands technique, he had nearly lost control.

"Whatcha going to do about school?" Ryan suddenly asked, braking his bike so he fell back alongside Michael.

"What do you mean?"

"Aren't you going back?"

Michael shrugged. "I guess not."

"Then what grade will you be in next year? Will they pass you?"

"Why wouldn't they?"

"Don't you have to take tests?"

"Our school doesn't have tests," Michael replied. "It's an experimental school."

Ryan's look was one of disbelief. "No tests? How do they know who to pass?"

"Everybody passes." Suddenly, Michael slowed the bike and called out to Ryan, "Is that Findley's place?" He pointed off to the right, where an old farmhouse, its paint peeling and its porch sagging slightly, huddled in a grove of scraggly elms at the end of a rutted driveway. A barn loomed twenty yards from the house, and between the two buildings some chickens scratched at the dusty surface of the unkempt and unfenced yard. As he looked at the place, a man appeared on the front porch, dressed in overalls, cradling a shotgun in his arms.

"Let's get out of here," Ryan said. Without waiting for a reply, he pumped hard on his bike, spewing a cloud of dust into Michael's face. Michael paused a moment longer, his eyes leaving the figure on the porch and concentrating on the barn. For a second, he thought he'd seen something- something he couldn't really identify-but as he studied the barn there was nothing. And yet, even as he rode after Ryan, something tugged at him, an ill-formed thought-a feeling, really-that made him look back once more. The man on the porch was gone, and the barn looked exactly as it had before.