The Overstory

by Richard Powers

She sighs long and slides down into the way things need to be. “It’s good to be cooked for.” But everything is so much less spooky than she could have supposed. So much lighter. He says, “What if we kept our separate places? And just . . . came to each other from time to time?” “That . . . could happen.” “Did our work. Saw each other for dinner. Like now!” He sounds surprised to make the connection between his wild proposal and what the present already holds. “Yes.” She can’t yet believe that luck might extend so far. “But I’d want to sign the papers.” He peers out into an opening in the western firs, where the sun has undeniably started to set. “Because then, when I die, you could get the pension.” She takes his shaking hand in the dark. It feels good, like a root must feel, when it finds, after centuries, another root to pleach to underground. There are a hundred thousand species of love, separately invented, each more ingenious than the last, and every one of them keeps making things.