Pete told his parents he would accompany Lucy down the coast partway on her journey back to San Francisco and stop to visit a friend in Crescent City. Gordon and Dot were too preoccupied to ask more than perfunctory questions. Pete sat in the seat across from her, wearing dungarees and a snap-button cotton shirt, a bandanna loosely knotted around his neck. Lucy turned from the forest outside and watched as he looked into his rucksack and then closed it again, practically hugging himself in satisfaction. Who knew it was possible to find so much happiness in packing? Lucy wished she could feel so pleased. While Pete made arrangements at the station she had a strange conversation with Able Dodd, and she was still unsettled from it. She’d said good-bye to Whitsun and Snickers and was just gathering her nerve to say the same to the Knightlys’ handyman when he cut her off. “Take nothing that is not given,” he’d said in his stern, preacher’s voice.
