[It had been a long summer. He wouldn't come to the house any more; he wouldn't phone. The days disintegrated into one another, hot and dry, and she excused him. It was a long way to come, she told herself, looking at the hard, blue sky. As for herself, there was an eternity to go.
The frogs that lived in the pond beneath the eucalyptus died one after the other. Their dessicated corpses were impossibly light, and had holes where the eyes should have been. She left them in the grass. There didn't seem much else to do.
It was a very long way to come, she thought. After all, he must be busy, and the country wasn't to everyone's taste. In many weathers, the road could be treacherous. His car was old. Really, it was a very long way to come just for an hour or two of conversation, even if she made something for lunch, even if they could sit in the shade and look out at the too-bright landscape and sip iced tank water and simply enjoy being there. Together.
The truth was something else. The truth was that she couldn't matter—that was the rule. The more he hurt her, the more he hurt himself; the less she appeared to matter, the less discomfort he could justify. She knew this. But in the heat and the slowness of the brittle, humming afternoons, the truth became impossible. It was too black to be real, too anguishing to comprehend.
Instead, she let the wilderness convince her of her own distance, and sipped the cool water alone.]
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