The end of summer was approaching and I faced the coming winter with dread. I didn't want to spend another winter with these people. Not one of them had lent me any consolation when I was crying for Daniel, when I was wanting to die because of something they had all known was a complete fabrication. No, instead there had been guilt, accusations of adultery on my part for still loving him, ridicule, and an incredible amount of shame. I couldn't bear the thought of another winter in close quarters with them. I didn't trust any of them anymore.

And then, one day I was in my room when someone told me Larry had brought a man with him this time. I went to see, to assess whether or not this man might be a prospective catch, a ticket out of there. I looked out the window. The man wore a cowboy hat, and he moved around a lot in an excitable fashion. He turned a little and I noticed that he had a reddish-blond colored goatee and a large mustache. He looked like something out of a western TV show. This was definitely not an average northern Idaho man!

When I got up the nerve to go outside, the man was standing on one of my garden beds, petting the leaves of my corn plants, stroking them upwards towards the sky and talking to them. I wasn't very happy that he was standing on the beds that I had worked by hand in order to improve soil texture and aeration. Even Laddie wasn't allowed to stand on the beds. And speaking of Laddie, he was nowhere to be seen... My cat, Johnny, had either died or been given away, and my latest cat, Missy, one of Muffin's kittens, was perched upon my shoulder as I walked out to the garden. She was smallish with long hair, and had been trained (by me of course) to launch herself onto my shoulder every time I approached the porch railing and ride around there as I did chores.

The man's name was Vincent. He was Larry's friend, was living up at Larry's for a while, and it soon became clear to me that he was sort of fanatical about his beliefs, too. Like Larry, he didn't use the sacred names. One of the first things he wanted to know, aside from the garden and plant questions, was why my head was covered in bloody scabs. Even with my thick head of hair, they could be seen. I was embarrassed, didn't really know what to say, so I more or less told the truth. Strangely enough, hearing about a girl who was so broken up about some other guy that she'd picked her own scalp that badly didn't seem to phase him much.

He had blue eyes, loved plants and gardening, liked animals, and like Daniel, he was of Norwegian extraction. Actually, he was one fourth Norwegian, but he had actually been to Norway and knew quite a lot about it, which gave him immediate appeal to me. He wasn't Daniel, but I decided that I was willing to give him a shot. Oh! And he had the coolest last name- Leaf.