The car snaked its slow way up the long S-shaped road just as morning broke over the summit of Starcross Hill and the pink and gray sky turned blue. It appeared on one turn, disappeared on the switchback, and then appeared again.

Rafe backed up as the car neared, backed all the way up to the porch, and waited. The engine turned off. He didn’t recognize the car, but he recognized the driver. He would have known him at five hundred yards in the blinding sun or the dark of night.

Jeremy got out. He paused briefly, then closed the door.

On the porch, the shoebox still in his hands, Rafe watched as Jeremy came toward him and stood at the bottom of the steps. He wore jeans and a black jacket over a white T-shirt and sported a neatly trimmed beard. What was Rafe supposed to feel now? Relief wasn’t right, but if not that, then what?

“What’s in the box?” Jeremy asked, nodding toward the shoebox. No hello. They were long past hellos. Rafe stared at him. He looked like Jeremy, except the beard was new, and his red hair was turning to the same rust color as the robin’s red bib.

“Robin,” Rafe said. “Hawk got him, but I accidentally scared her off. His wing’s broken. No time to talk. He’ll be lucky to make it to the bird rehab place alive.” He stepped off the porch and started for his truck. “Hang in there,” he said to the bird. “You’ll be all right.”

“Let me look. Please.”

It was quicker to give in than to argue, and had he ever heard Jeremy Cox say “please” before?

Rafe gave him the box.

Carefully, Jeremy lifted the lid, dropped it on the ground, and scooped up the bird with one hand. Still alive, Rafe saw. Jeremy tossed the bottom of the box aside and quickly unwrapped the bloody handkerchief from around the bird’s small gray body. Rafe wanted to stop him, but it was too late.

The robin sat calmly on Jeremy’s palm. It shook its head like it was waking from a dream, then spread its wings and flew away into the woods.

“It had a broken wing.”

Jeremy said, “You sure?”

Rafe had been sure. He would’ve bet his life on it two minutes ago. “Probably just in shock.”

“Maybe.”

In a huddle of pines, a robin began to sing.

Rafe looked at Jeremy. “Okay, so what the hell are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“No.”

Without a word, Jeremy turned and walked back to his car. Giving up already? Not likely. He opened the back door, took out a brown paper grocery bag, returned, and set it down at Rafe’s feet like an offering. He even held out his hands, palms up.

“I had a TV gig in Kentucky.”

Rafe toed the bag like a snake might be inside it. Glass rattled. He looked in and saw white bottle caps.

“Ale-8.” Rafe’s aunt lived with her husband and horses outside Lexington, Kentucky, and this was their local swill, as she called it. He’d spent every spring break with her as a kid, took Jeremy with him that one year they were best friends, and they’d drunk the stuff all week like water and wine.

“Remember when we drank so much of it that spring break, your aunt made us start buying our own?” Jeremy asked.

Not an offering then, but a bribe—the chance to taste being fourteen again.

“They make it in cherry now,” Jeremy said. “Wild, right?”

“God damn.” The memory of sweetness made Rafe’s mouth water. But still, he hesitated.

“Rafe,” Jeremy said. Just that. Just his name. But it wasn’t his name. Nobody called him “Rafe” but Jeremy. Bank tellers, teachers, and dentists called him “Ralph.” His mother called him “baby” and always would. And his dad had called him “son” in the same way people said “Mr. President,” because the office mattered more than the person holding it.

But he was Rafe, in his own mind anyway. When Jeremy called him that, it was like hearing his true name spoken for the first time in fifteen years.

“All right,” he said. “You can have ten minutes.”

Jeremy reached into the neck of his T-shirt and pulled out a silver chain with a small oval medal pendant. Rafe knew exactly what it was. A St. Hubert medal.

Then Jeremy reached out and lightly tugged the silver chain around Rafe’s neck, pulling the medal out from under his shirt. St. Anthony.

Caught like a robin in a hawk’s grip. They had traded medals in the hospital. Jeremy wore his. Rafe wore Jeremy’s.

He wanted to kick Jeremy out, send him packing, punish him for the silent treatment. But he couldn’t do it. In fifteen years, you can stack a very long line of dominoes, a line so long you can’t see where it will end. But someone has to kick the first domino over if only to hear that rapid-fire clickclickclickclickclick as they fall. They can’t stay standing forever.

The bear. The bird. And now Jeremy. Was everything falling down or falling into place?

Rafe said, “Okay. Fifteen minutes.”

Chapter Five

Rafe let Jeremy into his cabin.

“Be right back. I’ll put these away,” Rafe said. He carried the grocery bag to the little galley kitchen and stuffed it into the back of the fridge, hiding it from himself. He left the door open a minute more and breathed the chilled air into his lungs.

Jeremy was here. Here in his cabin. Here on his hill. Jeremy, who he hadn’t seen in person in fifteen years, was in his living room right now. He’d imagined this moment a million times, but now that it was happening, he didn’t know what to do. Punch him in the face for abandoning him? Kick him out? Hug him until it hurt?

He had to pull himself together. He’d terrorized three heavily armed poachers this morning and faced off with a black bear. He could handle one conversation with Jeremy Cox.

But whatever Jeremy wanted from him, Rafe told himself, he wouldn’t do it. Not unless Jeremy paid up in answers to the questions he’d asked fifteen years ago.

He slammed the fridge door shut and went out to the living room. Jeremy had found the postcards on the floor. He squatted and sifted through them.

“You kept the cards I sent you,” he said.

Rafe bent down, grabbed a thick handful of the postcards, and tossed them into the wastepaper basket by the closet. He wished he’d cleaned them up before Jeremy saw them. Not that it mattered. There was no hiding from Jeremy Cox.

“Selling them on eBay. Since you’re so famous now.”

“Funny. You know how hard it is to mail a postcard from Pitcairn Island?” He grabbed the postcard from the can, waved it in Rafe’s face, then tossed it back in the trash.

“I needed the shoebox for the bird,” Rafe said. “And you’re wasting your fifteen minutes.”

“Did it start already?”

“One minute ago.” Rafe pointed at his wristwatch. “So talk fast.”