“You expected time to stand still?” Mama asked, when he’d commented on how foreign the island seemed.

She’d taken him up to her studio to see the painting she’d done of him. “I do believe it’s one of my best,” she’d said, and Leon had bitten his tongue to avoid asking her how much she thought she’d get for it.

Islanders probably still talked about her selling that beautiful painting of Brigitte to some guy who took it to his home in Michigan. Still, Leon had to admit, it was a terrific portrait of him. He thought of asking her not to get rid of it because he liked looking at it. There was something about the brushstrokes that made him imagine himself small again, Mama cupping his chin in her hand, bending down and looking into his eyes, saying something funny, affectionate. Maybe some memory of before.

No, of course he hadn’t expected time to stand still. But he’d thought the world he’d returned to would be, somehow, more welcoming.

Marion, for instance. God, how he had longed for Marion during that long nightmare in France. He’d given up trying to understand why. Maybe it was the way he pictured her looking up at him, completely open, adoring without the slightest fear or suspicion. So tender. And now…

It wasn’t that she was afraid of him. She was actually less timid now, no longer apologized for every other breath taken. But there was a distance, even when they fucked. He kept thinking maybe sex was the answer, maybe if they kept doing it, he could recapture how it had been before when they were in bed together and she seemed to dissolve underneath him.

She never said no, but it wasn’t the same at all. She was wiser, more solid, in spite of the things she still didn’t know. And for all her innocence, she was no longer something of his he’d brought into the house, but a Duday, conversing fluently and seriously in French with Mama and Papa, almost as an equal.

He, Leon, was the newcomer now.

He wished Lamont would come back. He’d never truly appreciated his brother. When Lamont came home, Leon was going to take him out and they would tie one on, spend a drunken night talking man-to-man, the way brothers should. They would be friends at last.

Two weeks after Leon returned, Papa summoned him into his study to deliver his list of “you wills.”

“You will go to the Town Hall tomorrow and find out about the GI Bill. Etienne is expecting you at 2:00. Be on time.”

Okay.

“You will consider carefully what exactly you intend to do with your life, what course of education you intend to follow, and we will discuss it when you have decided.”

Righty-ho.

“You will above all exert some control and act as a considerate and restrained husband to the fine, gentle young lady you practically kidnapped away from her family and you will not make a pig of yourself at her expense. IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?”

Yes, Papa.

He went to see Etienne. It wasn’t too bad.

“You know, Leon,” Etienne said, as Leon rose to leave and they were shaking hands. “Maybe you should consider getting out of that house.”

“I go for a run at least once a day.”

“That’s not what I mean. The GI bill covers mortgages. Maybe you and Marion should think about finding your own place. Not immediately, of course, but once you’ve settled on what you want to do with yourself. Marriage can be hard enough without living with your parents.”

That actually made him feel a little better.

He’d need to see how things stood between him and the moon first.

Before his plane went down, he could handle it. That’s one thing he owed the old man, all those agonizing hours of training. He’d hated his father for it, the blows, the lashings, the horrible crackling magic, but by the time he was seventeen a full moon just meant he was a jerk. An obnoxious, arrogant, aggressive, horny jerk, but one who walked on two legs and could at least think like a human being.

Full moons had even helped him on bombing runs, not only increasing visibility but sharpening his will, hardening him into the single-minded killer he had to be.

Perfect for a bomber pilot. His victims were far enough away that the smell of blood wasn’t too strong –just a distant, lovely whiff after the payload was dropped. Not enough to make him lose control.

But on the ground, after his friends were dead, his plane crashed, it had been different. That red tide seemed constant, probably because he was frightened most of the time. And he’d become even more afraid it was going to carry him away forever, like the currents around Touperdu. Every year there was at least one strong swimmer who vanished.

He could feel himself devolving out there. Another year and all his humanity would have been gone; he’d have been some snuffling, grunting animal, leaving dead bodies and pools of runny shit all over the countryside before someone finally figured it out and molded the right kind of bullets. He’d found out later some of the villagers thought “the dog” was a protective spirit, killing only the enemy, never hurting the French, a force for justice. They were wrong.

The villagers had had a tough war.

The Nazis were better fed.

Twice he’d had to endure full moons while he was in the hospital. He’d managed to avoid a transformation, but it had been tough. The doctors just noted he’d seemed “agitated and irrational.” Being home might help — or it might make things worse. He wished he knew for sure.

Lately, Leon had been thinking about the time before. What kind of a kid had he been? He’d liked reading back then. Afterwards he’d been too restless to concentrate on books.

Marion loved books. He was always finding her bent over a novel.

One day, instead of taking it away from her and carrying her to bed, he asked her about it.

She smiled at him — a real smile! And she spent almost half an hour telling him about the book. Forever Amber, it was called. There were some hot passages, but it didn’t sound very interesting, a silly historical romance. It was just soothing to see her relaxed beside him, to hear her talking to him. “What kind of books do you like?” she asked him.

“I don’t read much anymore. But when I was a kid, Uncle Greg gave me a set of Sherlock Holmes. I read the whole thing in a week.”

She looked so fiercely solemn as she listened he decided to make her smile again. “Devoured it, in fact. The paper was nice and lemony, but the glue tasted awful.”

She laughed. “You sound like your brother!”

“Really?”

“It’s the kind of joke Lamont tells. So you like detective novels. We should go to the Browsery together and see what they have.”

They did, and it was wonderful to do something so normal, shopping together just like being any other married couple. After he and Marion consulted a bit, he’d picked out a James M. Cain novel. Double Indemnity. Liked the writing.

Thinking about Sherlock Holmes reminded him of something else from before. Uncle Greg had been teaching him chess. He had to give up, after, because Leon kept getting angry and turning over the table and once would have bitten his uncle badly if Greg hadn’t backhanded him halfway across the room. Greg wasn’t around anymore. But he knew Papa sometimes played.

Late one afternoon, while Marion was fixing dinner (for Christ’s sake!) and Mama was up in her studio, Leon asked Papa if he’d refresh him on chess. Papa couldn’t quite seem to believe him. He asked Leon to repeat the request twice. “Well… all right,” he’d said.

“Understand, I’m not as good as your uncle,” Tel said as they sat down. “Nobody on the island could beat Greg. Artie Macana said he did once, but nobody believes him.”

“I remember our lessons. He was a good teacher. I think maybe, if I play a little, I’ll pick some of it up again.”

“He said you were very promising.” Papa said, looking down at the board and setting the pieces up.

“Greg said that?”

“He did. He said he thought you would make a very good player. And Greg wouldn’t have said that if he didn’t mean it.”

Papa looked at Leon and smiled. “Let us begin.”

It was a start.