He had built this structure himself, even if it was long ago, and though he could barely remember its bricks and beams when he entered, he knew its deep inner blueprint as he did his own hands and hide.

Ruth pointed out a low bench next to the table for him to sit at and asked evenly — as though his presence made sense to her—“What brings you this way?” There was such determination and so little revealed in her voice that it pointed to a knot of the spirit cord that held her and would not unravel even for this man who was once hers and stood here again after more than half a decade away.

“Ah, Ruth,” Merian said, standing and moving toward her, “is that the only welcome you got for me?”

“More than I had from you all these years,” she rebuked him. “You got nerve, man. I will give you that.”

He tried to explain to her that he could not just pick up and travel when he wanted, then began to tell how he had been hounded but found respite in Carolina. He stopped and settled on saying simply that everything got beyond him.

“Yes, it is,” she said. “Even if all you telling me is true, I know. …” Her voice trailed and her mind lit on to something that had been stoking there ever since he started talking. “Who is she?”

She halted as soon as the words tumbled from her mouth, when she sensed her betrayal and anger were revealed for him to appraise, and she didn’t want to give him anything more in that moment.

Merian did not answer for a while. He had not thought jealously of her in years, but her accusation planted its own counterweight in his mind, which pressed upon him. “What about you?” he asked.

And even after she had replied in the negative, “No one,” he would not believe it, because the curve of desire he found to be permanent and sturdy as lignum vitae.

“Stay and see who else comes here then,” she said, but he still would not let it go.

Just like that they found themselves embroiled in domesticity again. While the pair sat staring each other down, the door flew open and a child burst in, running to clutch Ruth around her legs. “Mama!” he screamed with delight, as if having waited for her all day.

“What are you running from?” she asked sternly.

“Nothing,” he swore.

“Hm,” she said, unbelieving. “Look who’s here,” Ruth instructed then, turning him toward his father. “Look who came all this way just to see you.”

It was a leap of faith that the boy made when he ventured—“Papa?”—waiting anxiously after that as his voice passed through the room.

Merian picked the boy up and hugged him. “That’s right,” he said, holding the child in his arms. “That’s right, Ware. Your papa has come to fetch you.” He looked over the boy’s head at Ruth as he spoke.

Ruth turned away to the cooking fire. “Don’t fill him with fool’s talk,” she reprimanded coldly.

“Here you go, Ware.”

Jasper gave the boy a hard candy he had thought to bring and put him back down on the floor.

“I mean it.” He turned to Ruth. “I promised it when I left here, and I came back to do it.”

“Magnus, go outside for a little while.” She shooed the child, calling him by his other name. The boy left grudgingly and went to sit in the dirt in front of the cabin as the two of them began at it again inside.

“What are we going to do, go back and live with you and your new woman?” Ruth asked indignantly.

As they argued there vigorously, someone knocked at the door, and Ruth opened it to a small crowd gathered out front of the cabin. “We heard Jasper come back,” one of the men asked. “Is he really?”

“There he is.” Ruth opened the door the rest of the way to show Merian, still seated on the low bench by the table. He rose as he looked out on all those faces he had not seen for so long, which filled him with a warmth of familiarity he had lived in the wilderness without. This is who he belonged to, he thought.

What his wife would not give to him by way of praise the neighbors did, telling him how well he looked.

A simple feast was produced then, with everybody contributing something, and he ate thankfully, thinking how long it had been since he had eaten the foods of his youth. He sat with the boy balanced on his knee. The child devoured glass after glass of milk, which had been brought out for the whole room, and pressed hard against his father’s chest. He was enthralled and said excitedly, to anyone who would listen, “My papa came back for me and Mama.” Those close enough to hear smiled at him with warm uncertainty.

Ruth commanded the boy to be quiet, shooting Merian an accusatory look. Merian for his part lifted his hand to his mouth and filled it again with food, as a couple of men began singing a bawdy song he loved and the party spilled over into the night. It is what he promised and intended, he told her beneath the din.

When the neighbors had gone Ruth took up their argument again. “I told you not to go filling his head with all of that.”

Merian did not want to argue with her, but neither would he be deterred. “You’ll set up somewhere near me,” he said. “It will work out fine.”

Ruth told him in her turn that she was going nowhere with him, even as he went on, trying to inveigle his way into their old bed. “Don’t be so stubborn,” he said at last. “You know, you’re so stubborn, woman, I named a mule after you.”

“No you didn’t give my name to a mule, man,” she cursed. “If you did, I’ll skin you and your mule alive.”

She turned her back on him, as he laughed, then started in with more of his beguiling talk.

She listened to him skeptically, trying to resist his advance, even as she half wished for all he said to be true. More than that. She wanted all of it to be all true, all of her wanted that, but she knew she only had less than half a man and wondered what that was worth if you followed it somewhere. “This is what you leaving cost the two of us.”

“It’s not me going, it’s being bonded to begin with,” he answered.

She did not respond but allowed him to draw in closer as they negotiated whether it would be a night of greater or lesser rest.

In the morning, before Ruth set out, there came a knock at the door. When she opened it a small child blurted that Mrs. Sorel said Merian should come by the house and say hello.

Ruth looked at Merian and asked whether he had heard.

“Tell her I’ll be there directly,” he answered. He had thought fitfully about how he would encounter the Sorels on his ride from Stonehouses, but the scenarios always pushed against, then overflowed, the boundaries of his imagining. Now, once it was put to him, he tried to assume the best possible mood. He finished dressing and went up to the house as commanded, mindful of his original purpose in coming.

In the kitchen he greeted the new cook cordially and sat down familiarly to wait for his audience with Mrs. Sorel. Sitting there he felt like a younger version of himself and tried to remind himself of all that had changed for him since he lived here.

Nothing proved changed, though, when Hannah Sorel entered the kitchen. He found himself standing promptly then as on any day in the past to greet her.

“Jasper, Mr. Sorel is at Richmond,” she said, sweeping into the room. “He will be upset to have missed you.”

Merian’s breath stopped in his chest but he was quick to mask the fact, asking how she had been and admiring how much the place seemed to be prospering.

“It is not the same since you left,” she answered. “I’m almost sorry we let you go.”

“Well, I’m almost sorry I left,” he replied, playing in this game with her.

She asked him again how he was getting on and then whether he had been keeping up with church. “You haven’t joined with those Congregationalists or any nonesuch out there, have you?”

“I hardly know what that is,” he said, assuring her he kept much to his own company as he had always done. He asked again when she said Mr. Sorel would be getting back. “Because I actually wanted to speak to him, if I could, about Ruth and Magnus.”