If a fawn needs her mother, she bleats to call out to her. Those does that do not have young, either because they are barren, failed to produce a fawn, lost a fawn to a predator, or are too old, are sometimes referred to as “dry does.” Sometimes Myra believed she had stayed because of the call of the loon, the howl of the coyote, and the doe with her fawn, standing in the dew-strung garden in front of the cottage. It was such a beautiful place—in the summer, at least. The truth wasn’t quite as simple. It was this: She stayed because she loved Johnny. She stayed because she never gave up hope. She tried to convince herself it didn’t matter to her that he was never going to be able to love her back because he was the kind of man who was a little frozen on the inside, even if on the outside he seemed gregarious. She had once read a Leonard Cohen poem and thought of him: “I’m just another snowman standing in the rain and sleet, who loved you with his frozen love, his secondhand physique.”
