I knew where to go. I sensed it more than knew it. My mind wanted to go straight to Jude's house and ask his father what happened to make him run. But my heart was telling me something very different. It led me in the direction of Mr. Black's house, but it stopped when I reached the area where the old stump was. There, if anywhere, was where Jude would be. I knew it inside.

At first, I didn't see him. I circled the stump, seeing only the glowing mushrooms. My footsteps were silenced by the pine needles, but I knew that if Jude was listening hard enough, he would have heard them, and he would have hidden. He didn't know that it was me who had come in search of him, so I called his name quietly into the deep darkness of the forest. "Jude," I whispered as loud as seemed right. "It's me . . . Nat."

I remembered with sudden shame that he had every right to avoid me. In fact, I wouldn't have blamed him if he didn't come out at all. He did, though, and I wanted to cry at how thankful I was. At first, I thought that Jude had stepped right out of the stump itself. It took a minute for me to realize that he'd just rounded the side of it. He stood there pale and dark at the same time, staring hard at me.

If I wanted him to talk to me, I would have to talk first. I knew that, but it was hard to start. "I'm sorry," I said after some hesitation. We weren't standing on top of the stump, but the thought didn't even cross my mind that it would be easier to talk up there. "I shouldn't have ripped your picture. I didn't mean to do it . . . And I also shouldn't have told you to . . . to put it away." I turned to the side, ashamed at remembering my own meanness.

Jude didn't answer right away. When he did say something, it didn't have anything to do with what had taken place the day before. "They'll come looking for me here again," was what he started with. "I have to go somewhere else. I know where. If you come with me, I'll tell you everything I know about her."

I was certain that by "her," he mean Rebecca Black, his mother. By this time, I trusted Jude. And there was no way I could go back to my house. Not after what I'd said to my family – not after running away, just like Jude had. We were more alike than either of us realized. The only place to go was with him, so I did. I followed him toward Mr. Black's house. It was a route we had taken many times, but Jude changed his direction at the end. We didn't go straight to the house; we turned right and started toward Moss Lake. We sneaked along the pebbled beach, taking cover in whatever bushes we could find. Leaves had fallen off of most the plants, but there were a few that still offered some hiding places.

Soon enough, we came across a small blue, metal rowboat. There were two wooden oars resting inside, and it was directly next to the water. I suddenly knew where Jude wanted to go. All we had to do was push it into the lake and get in; we'd be afloat in no time at all.

"I want to go down the river," said Jude quietly. "I want to leave."

The notion of leaving Mosspond was kind of scary, but it also glittered with promise. What it promised, I didn't know. "Won't they see us if they come to look, though?" I asked. I had my doubts. If a search party came up to Mr. Black's house, they'd spot us on the lake in no time at all. Moss Lake was wide, and it would take at least half an hour to row ourselves out of sight, to the parts where it became a river. "And all Mr. Black would have to do is look out his window. He'd see us right away."

Jude wasn't going to worry about that. "The weather is changing. It's getting foggier. I bet that by the afternoon it's going to just be mist on the lake. We'll be covered up by it. And Mr. Black can't do anything to stop us. He's just a coward."

"Shouldn't we wait until the fog comes, then?" I asked him.

He didn't want to wait, but he knew that I was being more sensible than he was. With a grudging nod, he replied, "Fine. But if I hear any noise – like they're starting to come – then we have to go." I agreed. We'd wait until the fog came.

Jude and I sat in the bushes for some time. It was midafternoon before the clouds in the gray sky began to lower, coming closer and closer to the ground. They got to the water faster than they reached the land. When they finally settled across the lake like some gentle giant had opened his colossal hands and delicately blown the clouds downward, Jude turned to me. We hadn't spoken much at all the whole while we had sat there, so his words shattered the silence when he said, "We can go now."

I stood, feeling an ache in my legs from not having moved in a few hours. Then, with the same caution as we'd used before, we crept to the boat. Nobody had been around the lake all day. Maybe Mr. Black wouldn't even let search parties on his property. Still, we wanted to be careful.

I got into the boat first, grabbing an oar and moving to the front of it. While Jude pushed from the bank, I stuck the oar deep into the lake bottom and tried to pull the boat forward. We didn't have to put much effort into the task; Jude jumped in at the back and the rowboat slid easily onto the water. In very little time at all, we were floating toward the middle of Moss Lake. Mist enveloped us in wisps. We were on our way.

Or so we thought.

The fog was certainly good cover, but (and I was embarrassed not to have realized this earlier) it was impossible to see where we were going. The bank disappeared into the haze only a couple of minutes after we left it, and then we were entirely lost in the gray.

Jude noticed the problem too. He sighed. "I can't believe I was so stupid. We can't even see what direction we should be going."

I didn't say anything about our predicament other than, "Maybe it will clear off by the time it gets dark. Then we can see where we're going, but they still won't really be able to see us if they come looking. Right now we can just float here; it's the best hiding place we could ask for."

"You're right," he replied.

Falling silent, Jude looked to the bottom of the boat. I felt more confident, now that we were out on the water. "Tell me now," I told him. "Tell me what you know about . . . her."

I waited patiently for him to begin. We had all the time in the world. Soon enough, Jude did start to talk, but he kept his head down while he did. He wouldn't look up at me. "I didn't know much until yesterday. I never knew her. She died when I was really young. I just had her picture. But my father told me more after you left. He knew so much the whole time . . . but he never told me.

"My father didn't grow up here. He came through town once and met Rebecca Black. He fell in love, and they wanted to get married, but Mr. Black didn't like my father. He didn't like anybody who wanted to marry his daughter. So she ran away with my father and they were married. Then they had me, and my mother wanted to return to Mosspond and tell her father about their marriage and about me, too. But she knew that if she took us – my father and me – with her, Mr. Black wouldn't listen. So she went alone. The rest is just what my father knows from the newspaper articles that ran in the papers. She went to see Mr. Black but left the house upset. She disappeared, and not much later, they found her here, in this lake . . . dead.

"My father never told me anything. We moved here when I was little, and we've lived here ever since. I never knew . . . I never knew any of it. Nothing."

"Mr. Black didn't know?" I asked in disbelief. "He never knew you were his grandson, the whole time you've lived here?"

Jude shook his head. "No. My father said Mr. Black bought all the newspapers he could and burned them. He even went to the place where they wrote the papers and got them. He didn't want to remember, and neither did my father. That's why he never told me – because he would have to remember if he did. So both of them shut themselves up. Neither one of them talked to the other, and they'd never met each other anyway. My father said that the only reason we're here is because he wanted to live closer to her . . . my mother."

A sudden sharp, biting emptiness filled me. "My mother moved here because it was farther from my father." The irony hurt.

"Why?" asked Jude, looking up at me for the first time. "Where's your father?"

That's when I realized it. He didn't know anything about me at all. The whole time I'd been trying to help him, I hadn't told him anything about myself. Jerking the little pieces of heart left in me together into one lump, I replied, "He's gone. Just gone."

Jude turned back to look at the bottom of the boat. He played uncomfortably with his fingers. "Maybe . . ." he started to say, but he stopped. "I'm tired."

"Me too," I said, glad to allow my thoughts to scurry back into the recesses of my brain before they turned into more words. Lying down against the back of the boat, I stared upward into the deep mist above. Swirls moved close to my face, mingling with the advancing darkness of night.