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waiting to hear.
    By the next morning she was sitting up in bed and eating Georgie’s canned applesauce, which through its sweetness tasted slightly
     bitter, reminiscent of the witch hazel that still saturated everything — her skin, her thoughts, the walls of her room. Everything
     in Georgie’s house seemed to have been soaked in witch hazel, even Georgie, whose face had a wet gleam in the gray morning
     light.
    “It looks like the rain is here for a while,” she said as she watched Sally eat.
    “Mmm.”
    “Do you like it?”
    “The rain?”
    “The fruit sauce.”
    “It’s tasty.”
    “How are you feeling there?” She pointed to Sally’s breast.
    “Much better.”
    “That can happen in the first week, when your milk comes in,” she said gently. But Sally was more clearheaded now, and the
     comment made her feel suspicious, as though she’d just realized that she’d left a door unlocked — the door to her room full
     of secrets. While Sally had been disoriented from her ordeal, Georgie had gone inside without asking, and she knew all about
     what Sally was trying to hide.
    “What do you mean?”
    Georgie looked perplexed. She must have expected her guest to begin telling her story right then. But Sally, as grateful as
     she was, had already told the only story she wanted to tell: she’d fallen from the sky. She was Sally Angel, or Angel Sally,
     whichever the little boy named Stevie preferred.
    “Well…,” said Georgie. Her voice was timid, and yet Sally sensed a stubbornness there, even a wily ingenuity.
    “Well what?”
    “The same thing happened to me shortly after my boy was born, and I tell you, it was like a knife cutting through me.”
    Sally didn’t reply, just licked her spoon clean and replaced it in the empty bowl. She felt a disturbing impulse to be rude
     to this kind woman, to prove to her that she wasn’t as pathetic as she appeared to be.
    “Say, where are you from?” Georgie asked abruptly.
    “Rondo,” Sally said with equal abruptness, surprised and proud to have thought of an unreal place so quickly.
    “Where’s Rondo?”
    “Downriver.”
    “North of here?”
    That confused her for a moment, and she wondered if Georgie had a hunch that she was misleading her. Maybe she should have
     said
upriver
instead.
    “Sort of,” she hedged.
    “North along the Tuskee?”
    Sally had only a vague sense of the Tuskee. It didn’t widen into a significant river until the Southern Tier, and it didn’t
     figure in importance for the farmers in the Peterkin Valley.
    Sally shook her head no, then changed her mind and nodded yes.
    Rondo, huh? Georgie had never heard of it. She looked Sally over as though she were searching her, head to foot, searching
     her face, her scratched arms and hands, and the contours of the bedsheet for some indication that there was more to disclose.
    “Okay,” Georgie said with a shrug, either with real fatigue or just worn out by the effort to separate truth from lies. She
     lifted the bowl away from Sally and quickly exited the room, leaving behind the stark impression of her disappointment and
     with her absence giving her guest time to consider that by forfeiting this opportunity to confide, she was in danger of losing
     the best friend she might have made in Fishkill Notch.
    A child’s voice came to her then, traveling up from the porch below her window, rattling in play as the light rain dripped
     over the eaves, the mingling sounds reminding her of the gurgling creek she’d walked and slept beside, that clear, beautiful
     water and the music of its current. Chortling, gurgling, roar and giggle, words rattling, threats growled. Hurray, hurray!
     Don’t you come near! Quick, hide! Jumping, crawling, hiding, warring, cheering in play, in dream, in fever. The boy was the
     creek turning into a river — Georgie’s boy growing up in the close range of his mother’s eyes and ears. She was always watching,
     listening, ready to hear and respond to a