“Are you okay?” Hank asks when he brings his dishes to the sink. He insists on washing his own plate and coffee cup.

“I have to go over to Fox Hill and meet Ken Helm, and I guess I don’t feel like it.”

Hank offers to drive her over. He’s had his license for ages, he explains, and he never gets to drive because Hollis doesn’t allow him use of the truck. Hank has been saving every cent he manages to get hold of for a car of his own, although whatever he could afford wouldn’t even be half as good as March’s beat-up Toyota. As they leave the house, March tosses Hank the keys; then she grabs two letters she plans to leave for the letter carrier to pick up when he makes his delivery. One envelope is addressed to a jewelry shop on Newbury Street and the other to a craft store in Cambridge. March sent both shops photos of her bracelets, and neither has responded, so she’s giving it one more try, suggesting to both that she display some of her pieces on a commission basis. At this point, March is seriously broke. If she wanted to buy a package of hair dye, she’d have to put it on Hollis’s tab at the pharmacy. Last week she had to ask Hollis for ten dollars so she could give Gwen her weekly lunch money, and although he was more than generous, she hates to be one of those people who can’t pull their own weight.

“Do you mind dumping these in the mailbox for me?” she asks Hank. “I’ll let Gwen know we’re going.” As Hank heads for the mailbox, March walks toward the pasture, waving. “We have to go up to Fox Hill to look at a sick tree,” she calls.

Gwen looks up and blinks. She sees Hank on his way from the mailbox to the Toyota. “We?” She’s so used to her mother’s recent detachment, her interest only in Hollis, that Gwen is too startled to do anything more than nod.

“We’ll be back before you know it.”

Hank has started the Toyota and now drives over to pick up March. “That threw her for a loop.” March laughs when she gets in. “You and me together.” March notices that Hank is too tall for the Toyota and has to scrunch down in his seat. He looks so serious and so young that March feels moved. He’s shy and uncomfortable about making conversation and he hasn’t had much practice driving. When he least expects it, he has to swerve to avoid hitting a rabbit, and they nearly barrel right into a stone fence.

“Sorry,” Hank tells March.

“It’s all right.” March says. He looks amazingly like Alan, had Alan been sweet-tempered. “Those rabbits think they own the place.”

Hank nods. It’s awkward being with March, and he’s relieved when they reach the house on Fox Hill to find that Ken Helm is already there. These woods were once filled with chestnut trees, but in forty years the species has been all but destroyed, and now it seems this old specimen will meet a similar fate.

“Drastic measures,” Ken says grimly as they join him to study the tree. “That’s what we need.”

He’ll cut off most of the limbs in the hopes of salvaging the trunk, even though he’s doubtful that the tree can be saved. March tells him to go ahead and do as he sees fit, still, she worries about the doves who are peering down at them from their nest.

“They’re going to have to move,” Ken tells March as he goes to get his saw and ladder from his truck.

“I want to make sure nothing happens to them,” March calls.

“I’ll do my best,” Ken says. “I can’t do more.”

Hank has been leaning against a small maple tree, looking at the empty house. He has almost no memory of ever living here, except for the day of the fire. He remembers more than most people would guess; that the fire seemed liquid, for instance, that it looked so pretty he wanted to reach out and touch the flames, but his mother wouldn’t let him. She told him no.

“Let’s go inside and see how the place looks,” March suggests.

“I don’t think so,” Hank says.

“Oh, come on. Let’s take a peek.”

March goes on ahead, and Hank finds himself following. The house hasn’t been unoccupied that long, but the pipes have been drained, and it’s colder inside than it is out. Aside from a few big pieces of furniture-the dining room table, the couch-it’s empty. They can hear an echo as they walk through the rooms, like the past coming right back at them. Hank goes to the doorway into the kitchen; he knows exactly what he’s looking for. To the right of the frame, where the wallpaper is worn, he can see charred wood. He found this one day when he was visiting Mrs. Dale, and after that he always felt he had to revisit the spot, as though paying his respects.

“I’ll be outside,” he calls to March.

“That was a stupid suggestion of mine,” March says later when she comes out to the porch. “You must be upset when you come here. You must think of your mother.”

“I’m fine.” Something has caught in Hank’s throat, and he coughs. “But if it’s all right with you, I think I’ll stay here for a while and help Mr. Helm.”

“Sure,” March says, and she pats his shoulder when she walks by.

She feels sorry for him, Hank saw it in her face. Well, pity is meaningless, that’s what Hank’s been taught. It’s what you do that counts, Hollis has always said, and in Hank’s experience, Hollis is right. He remembers perfectly well the day Hollis came for him. They were living down in the Marshes and it was freezing cold; there was ice in Hank’s hair. His father had passed out and the fire in the coal stove had died; there was nothing but embers. He remembers how light spilled into the room when Hollis opened the door. Hank’s father was on the floor, and Hollis rolled Alan’s limp body over with his foot, then bent down to peer into his face. Hank was not yet five, but he already knew it did no good to complain; hunger and cold were the facts of his life, so he didn’t say a word. He remembers, though, the look on Hollis’s face, the absolute certainty there. How curious a man of conviction had seemed to Hank, how rare.

“Get what you want to take with you,” Hollis had said. “Hurry up.”

Because of Hollis’s tone, because of the way he was standing there-and how tall he seemed and how completely confident-Hank never thought to question him. He got the stuffed bear the ladies from the library had given him on Christmas, and his wool sweater, and he didn’t look back when Hollis closed the door. But now, for the first time, Hank has questions; it’s what he’s been instructed to do that’s the problem. He’s supposed to keep an eye on March: If she goes somewhere, he’s to tag along, as he did today. If he sees her setting out mail for the postman, he’s to grab it and hand it over to Hollis. When he raised the issue of March’s privacy with Hollis, Hollis laughed out loud.

“You really think there’s such a thing as privacy?” Hollis had said. “That’s just some bullshit they hand out to keep people in line. If you love someone, you do what you have to. You don’t think about what other people might say.”

Well, Hank has done as Hollis asked, he has March’s letters in his jacket pocket right now, secured when she went to say goodbye to Gwen. He’s done what he’s supposed to do, and when he hands the letters over Hollis will pat him on the back. Usually that’s enough for Hank-just the tiniest bit of appreciation, a nod to a job well done. But this time is different. What Hank has done in stealing March’s letters is wrong, that’s the way he sees it. And the most awful thing is, once he’s begun to question Hollis’s motives on this, he has other questions as well, especially concerning Belinda.

“She was driving me crazy,” Hollis used to explain, whenever he and Belinda would fight. “Some people have to be taught a lesson,” he’d tell Hank. “You’ll understand when you’re older, when you’ve had to settle for what you never wanted in the first place.”

Now, when Hank thinks about the way Belinda looked after they’d had a fight, he feels sick. He thinks about the sounds he thought he’d only dreamed when he first came to live with them. Frankly, he doesn’t like the conclusions he’s reached.