Fall at Kitigan has sharp edges.

My parents' house lies midway down a hillside, tucked into trees on the driveway side and with a great tongue of grassy landscape lolling down from the back. In spring it is bucolic; the tumbling swath of lawn is soft, furred, dotted with wildflowers. The trees are delicate with their blossoms and fruit, and the light is high and bright, the whole rambling acreage bathed in cheerful sun.

Not so in fall. In fall the ground is covered in a dark litter of mottled leaves, and what remains on the trees looks bewildered and forlorn. Limbs and boughs take on points and angles, pricking at the gray sky.

No longer muted by the watercolor wash of sun, the house looks low and mean, crouched tightly where normally it sprawls.

More still now, when I have simply shut it like a tomb, sealed it with all the artifacts left inside, as though for someone else to find.

Ace met me at Kitigan because it is remote, and my family home and therefore the last place anyone would expect to find the two of us together.

We walked down through the leaves to the pond primarily in silence, the afternoon bitter around us.

I had guessed a great deal. There was more on the wire than he wanted to know about.

He trusted me to pretend I knew nothing.


Both of us knew he had already made his decision.

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