"Third Tuesday of the month. Afternoon. After her lunch, before her nap. That's when she's best."
"Third Tuesday."
"October twentieth," Ludie said. "I already looked."
Daria put her face in her hands for a moment, then took it out again. "She already looked," she repeated. "Of course she did."
"I'll write it down," Bonner said. "In your grandma's notebook too, if your mom says I can."
"I already wrote it," said Ludie. "In Grandma's notebook. On the page after yours. I wrote, Ondine, he's coming back October twentieth, it's okay, Mom said. And then I made Mom sign it."
"I signed it," said Daria. "God help me. I signed it."
They walked him out to the bike. The morning was cold and enormous, the sky that hard pale blue that comes only in high desert in the fall, and the Schell Creeks were pink on top where the first light had touched the old snow. He put on his jacket, and checked the saddlebags, and took the key out of his shirt pocket where it had been all night, unbuttoning the pocket with fingers that were not quite steady.
"Mister," said Ludie.
He turned. She was holding out a folded square of notebook paper. Green-lined, this time, from a different notebook. The edges were tucked into each other in the old way, the way that would hold itself shut.
"This one's from me," she said. "You can read it here. You don't have to wait."
He opened it against the tank of the bike, in the cold, in the same place he had opened the first one. The handwriting was a child's, large and round, pressed so hard into the paper that he could feel the letters from the back.