CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
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Again it is dusk and again I am walking home. The jagged outline of the house comes into view, and I can see that Agnes has opened all the upstairs windows against the heat. The curtains wave out from the windows like white sails.
.
I stop in my tracks. Something has been left at the gate.
I blink. It is a figure. My breath comes out of me, a sound, some words, inarticulate: it is man sitting on a box, motionless in the dusk. My legs carry me without my command, my eyes see nothing else.
He turns his head as I approach and stands up, with the stiffness of someone who has been sitting and waiting a long time.
I had given up any hope of this moment. Now that it is here, I don't believe in it. I don't know what to do. I have only just barely begun to heal. He looks exactly as he did the first time he arrived: sunburnt, empty-handed.