They had lived there since forever; maybe this was why the village had never got to know them. "There is always tomorrow," the old man used to say. "There are an infinite number of tomorrows ..." And he would gaze with satisfaction over the plains, as though, just then, he held all of them and their potential between his eyes, and by deferring things nothing could be wasted or used up.

But after the old man died, mother and daughter sold up to move east, and, seeing them there in the yard, with their belongings piled about them, they suddenly looked lost and out of place. No one knew how real had been the life they left behind them, nor the one for which they were bound. Even as they said their goodbyes they seemed to lose direction, passing and repassing the yard, as if something might yet change and surprise them. Then finally they drifted away, like footnotes to some text so long implicit it no longer made any sense. For a few months letters continued to arrive in their absence, and were sent on across the desert to different, hazy addresses. Then those too ceased; the new people moved in; they pulled down some walls and put up something in the garden. And though the daughter was very pretty, and though her mother could cook a famous steak pie, no one ever heard of them again.