"There's a way of talking folks have around here. You don't hear it outside these three or four counties, and you wouldn't notice it if you wasn't watching for it. Take my word for it, those folks was born and raised not fifty miles from here."
"Well, just to be on the safe side, you'd better check to see that they're not wanted criminals," I said. "Amnesia would make a good dodge for a criminal."
"I've already done that," he said quietly. "They're not."
Wyn and Summer weren't missing persons from anywhere in our section of the state, either. Gus looked into that angle very thoroughly during the next few weeks, and reported failure.
Wyn got a job as clerk at McClellan's Dry Goods Store and, for reasons he did not confide to me, enrolled in night classes at Slayden College. He and Summer soon were established in the neighborhood as "that nice young couple that Don Gracey brought in from somewhere out West." How the townspeople got started on that Western origin theory, I don't know; I suppose it's natural for people to tack some sort of an origin on strangers.
I confess that their origin soon became a matter of minor importance to me, although I remained curious about it. I found Wyn extremely likeable; we became very close friends, although I estimate that I am ten to fifteen years older than Wyn. And, as I say, I was in love with Summer, although it was a long time before I admitted that to myself.
I told myself I felt about Summer as I would my own daughter, if a bachelor like me could say such a thing; and I felt toward Wyn as though he were my son. There was a good deal of accuracy to that description of my feelings, but there was a mystery about Summer that drew me powerfully.
I think the unattainable in woman is always irresistible. Summer had the most peculiar air of unattainability about her I ever have experienced. It was as though, when I touched her, it was a fleeting touch; when I looked at her, I was constantly beset by the feeling that she would, the next instant, shimmer into insubstantiality.
Talking with her heightened this illusion, rather than lessening it. A conversation with Summer was a unique experience. It was a little like two people trying to talk at once, each talking, then each hesitating to let the other have his say. Our words crossed each other, like scissor blades that do not quite meet. She might answer a question before it was asked, or take the conversation off on tangent after tangent. Disconnected, discontinuous—those adjectives describe our conversations.
Except for his amnesia, dating back to the night in the park, Wyn was perfectly normal. After some time, he confided that he, too, was concerned about Summer's strangeness. I got the impression from him—though he did not go into great detail—that it extended beyond her conversation, to her actions.