Every night Abel went to the rock and waited, and sometimes he would call out Rosie’s name and then he would listen carefully when he’d flushed a deer or a wild turkey with his crying, and he’d hope until dawn came and showed him the emptiness of the woods; even the crows and the blackbirds had gone, and he could hope no more until lured back by the mysterious darkness of another night.
Abel abandoned his home, taking nothing with him, and lived in the woods, eating wild things that he caught in traps and wandering the paths made by deer. He traveled farther and farther, following the river and visioning women in the stones that sparkled beneath the rushing sunlit water and the clouds that drifted across the stars at night. His mother, he saw just shy of clarity and Rosie, as if she stood right in front of him, so clear he could imagine her chest rise and fall with each breath, and hearing his own deep breath, he would mistake it for hers and call her name softly, but hearing his own voice loud in his head. And then one night when the moon was full again, he saw her sitting by the river. He watched her lit by the gleam of the moonlit water in the night as she stood and wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and walked to a cabin. He did not see the cabin or where she had disappeared to until she lit the lamp inside, and he could watch her through the window as she built a fire and ate something for supper and went to sleep. He wondered at this and couldn’t tell if she was alone or not, and so he waited for the day.