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"Not me," said Mr. Rose.
Before he put the tractor away, Angel spoke with Rose Rose. He told her that if she was frightened about staying in the cider house, she could always stay with him--that he had an extra bed in his room, or that he could vacate his room and make it into a guest room for her and her baby.
"A guest room?" Rose Rose said; she laughed. She told him he was the nicest man she ever knew. She had such a languid manner, like someone who was used to sleeping while standing up--her heavy limbs as relaxed as if she were underwater. She had a lazy body, yet in her presence Angel felt the same potential for lightning-quick movement that surrounded her father as intimately as someone's scent. Rose Rose gave Angel the shivers.
At supper, his father asked him, "How are you getting along with Mister Rose?"
"I'm more curious how you're getting along with Rose Rose," Candy said.
"How he's getting along with the girl is his own business," Wally said.
"Right," said Homer Wells, and Wally let it pass.
"How you're getting along with Mister Rose is our business, Angel," Wally said.
"Because we love you," Homer said.
"Mister Rose won't hurt me," Angel told them.
"Of course he won't!" Candy said.
"Mister Rose does what he wants," Wally said.
"He's got his own rules," said Homer Wells.
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"He beats his daughter," Angel told them. "He hit her once, anyway."
"Don't make that your business, Angel," Wally told the boy.
"That's right," Homer said.
"I'll make it my business!" Candy told them. "If he's beating that girl, he'll hear about it from me."
"No, he won't," Wally said.
"Better not," Homer told her.
"Don't tell me what to do," she told them, and they were quiet; they both knew better than to try to tell Candy what to do.
"Are you sure it's true, Angel?" Candy asked.
"Almost sure," the boy said. "Ninety-nine percent."
"Make it a hundred percent, Angel, before you say it's true," his father told him.
"Right," Angel said as he got up from the table and cleared his dishes.
"Good thing we got all that straightened out," Wally said when Angel was in the kitchen. "Good thing we're all such experts at the truth," he said as Candy got up from the table to clear her dishes. Homer Wells kept sitting where he was.
The next morning Angel learned that Rose Rose had never been in the ocean--that she'd picked citrus in Florida and peaches in Georgia, and she'd driven up the East Coast all the way to Maine, but she'd never stuck so much as her toe in the Atlantic. She'd never even felt the sand.
"That's crazy!" said Angel Wells. "We'll go to the beach some Sunday."
"What for?" she said. "You think I gonna look better with a tan? What would I go to a beach for?"
"To swim!" Angel said. "The ocean! The salt water!"
