“Coffeepot?” Richard asks.

He used to cook when he first came calling on March. He and Alan’s wife, Julie, had a great time of it, she as his amicable assistant, he willing to try any new recipe. Once they fixed pasta with a maple syrup topping; another time they tried something called bootheel pie, made out of turnips and celery and onions.

“Filters?” he asks.

Gwen sits on a stool, her legs pulled up. She has spent this afternoon with Hank, walking Tarot all the way into the village and then back again. When Hank kissed her, the horse tried his best to come between them.

“Forget it, buddy boy,” Hank teased. “She’s mine.”

Just for that, Gwen kissed the old racehorse on his soft nose. His breath was surprisingly sweet, like new hay.

Hank had let out a groan. “I can’t believe you did that.”

“Would you ever lie to me?” Gwen had asked then.

“What are the circumstances? Is it that I know you’re kissing a horse who has terrible breath? Or is it that I know there’s going to be a nuclear war and we have only twelve hours to live, and I have to decide whether to ruin the last twelve hours of your life with fear, or let you enjoy the little time you have left?”

“Nuclear war.”

Gwen had climbed onto the stone wall, then had pulled herself onto Tarot’s back, where she stretched out, as though the horse were an extremely tall and comfortable couch.

“I’d tell you.” Hank had grabbed the lead and they’d begun a slow walk back to the Farm. He didn’t even have to consider; that’s what impressed Gwen most. “What about you?” Hank had asked. “Would you tell the truth?”

Tarot had stumbled then, and Gwen had been forced to hang on to his mane: then she’d jumped off, so that Hank could lift Tarot’s rear left leg and see to the problem. There was a tiny, sharp rock wedged into the frog of the horse’s hoof, which Hank removed with a penknife. Gwen never did get to answer. Just as well, since she hadn’t known what to say at the time. But now, in this kitchen, watching her father crouch down to search the cabinets under the counters for coffee filters, it has all become quite clear. It’s not the lie that’s the problem: it’s the distance the lie forges between you.

“Daddy, don’t bother with the coffee.” This is what Gwen has to say, even when she sees the look on her father’s face. “She won’t be back until late. She never is.” Gwen swallows; but it doesn’t help. Words such as these always hurt when you say them. “She’s with him every night. She may not come home at all.”

Richard blinks, as if by doing so he could bring into focus a vision other than the one Gwen is offering.

“I’m sorry,” Gwen says. She feels as though everything is her fault. She’s only fifteen, why does she have to feel so damned responsible? She can’t even tell her father about Hank, for fear he’ll disapprove. When her father leaves the room, to make a fire in the fireplace, Gwen decides to finish the coffee he started, and she brings him a cup, with a little milk and a little more sugar, the way he likes it.

Richard gratefully accepts the coffee, and for one delightful instant he has the sense of being fortunate. She is a good girl, he sees that. Gwen pulls up a stool for herself beside the easy chair where he’s settled. She’s a good person.

Sister sits by the window and barks, and Richard finds himself wondering if Gwen is wrong about March, if perhaps that’s her at the door now. The visitor, however, is only a rabbit, one who brazenly sits on the porch in order to escape the bad weather.

“We never had rabbits around here when I was growing up,” Richard tells his daughter. “There were too many foxes for that. If you walked through the woods at night, you’d see them. Especially at dusk. At first you’d think you were imagining footsteps.”

Sister has forsaken the door and come to join them, stretching out on the braided rug.

“Everything would be gray, even the horizon. And then you’d see it, all at once.”

“A fox.” Gwen smiles.

Richard nods. “Once in a while, in the winter, after a snow, you’d come upon a dozen or more of them, and then you’d know something was happening that no human could understand, or even recognize. They call it a foxes’ circle, a meeting held as if there were a board of directors of the woods. I think about the foxes’ circle when I do fieldwork. There’s world upon world out there, with different rules.”

“I wonder why they all disappeared.”