The Back Door of Midnight

Good. You don’t trust me, and I don’t trust you, I thought, but it bothered me the way the light in his eyes had changed.

We went through the buffet line silently, then sat with three other couples at a round table. I found myself talking to the girl and guy next to me and avoiding conversation with Zack.

When I surveyed the room, I didn’t see the stalker or his friend.

Dinner was begun with a toast by Mr. Gill. Waiters had scurried around filling champagne glasses with bubbly fruit juice, then he stood up and asked us to raise our glasses in honor of the most beautiful seventeen-year-old in the world, the most wonderful of daughters, the best friend any of us could ever have, et cetera, et cetera.

The girl next to me whispered, “I’m glad this is before dinner. I’d hate to puke,” which made me snort my sip of bubbly stuff, drawing an unreadable look from Zack. It may have been the longest toast and the longest dinner I have ever endured.

Like a wedding reception, cake was going to be served much later. Erika invited us all to dance and told the guys that she expected one dance with each of them. Otherwise, it was a lot like any other event with music: girls dancing with girls, since the guys weren’t enthusiastic about it.

“Want to go out on the deck?” Zack asked.

“Okay.”

We had almost reached the door when Erika caught up with us. “You owe me a dance, Zack. And because you tried to escape, you owe me several.”

Zack smiled. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

“I’m ready now.”

“I’ll be outside,” I said.

Zack nodded and walked with Erika to the dance floor. It was a prime opportunity for me to float around and latch on to a conversation that would provide further information. But my feet stayed planted on the deck close to the doorway. I really didn’t want to, but like the other girls, I watched.

Erika was a video tutorial on seductive dance. Lesson 1: When the song is fast and everyone’s jumping around, dance as if the music is slow; it makes you and the guy seem like you are in a romantic world all your own. Lesson

2: Take off your shoes; drop back your head to gaze into the guy’s eyes, making him feel taller and making your hair longer, so it hangs down your back and touches his fingers.

Lesson 3: Loop your hands around his neck, pretending to be casual and easy, then use your fingertips to touch and tantalize. Lesson 4“It was the ‘green tunnel’ that I got,” said a girl behind me.

I turned my head and missed Lesson 4.

“Erika makes the early clues impossible,” a guy replied.

“‘Turn at the spring flower’? I didn’t even know there was a thing called a tulip tree.”

Tulip poplar, I thought. The tree that marked the road that ran through Tilby’s Dream.

“I didn’t either,” the girl admitted, “but my little brother calls tree-shaded streets ‘tunnels.’ When we got that clue, I could picture it. And then, when Erika sent out ‘Farmer’s dream

—’”

“Everyone got it then. This time, everyone beat the fire trucks.”

The pair moved past me, through the door and toward the dance floor.

I walked slowly to the edge of the deck and leaned on the wood railing, gazing out at the river, trying to piece things together. There was a game of riddles, starting with the more cryptic clues, hinting where the fire would be set.

Maybe the point was to text the riddle’s answer to Erika, then get to the site in time to watch her set the fire. Even if Erika deleted the incriminating texts from her account, the experts could retrieve them as well as the video of the fire. I had the evidence the police needed but, unfortunately, not the information and explanations that I wanted.

I really disliked Erika, but I had trouble imagining she knew that Uncle Will was in the trunk of the car. She was a party girl. Her goals in life were guys, clothes, and lots of attention. But she wouldn’t want the kind of attention you get with a corpse; and for her, an old man wouldn’t matter enough to bother with — unless he was seriously cramping her style. Maybe he had seen something and threatened to turn her in. Or maybe it was just bad luck that she had ended up with a charred body. Or maybe, someone who had an issue with Uncle Will and a real streak of violence had taken advantage of the situation. I wondered how many contacts were on Erika’s e-mail list. I wondered if Aunt Iris could

“sense” that kind of stuff.

“Thinking about taking a swim?”

I turned quickly, then turned back, facing the river; I hadn’t heard Zack’s footsteps approaching from behind. “Not at night,” I said.

“Why not? I love swimming at night.”

“Dark water is scary. You can’t see what lies beneath its surface.”

“But that’s what I like about it,” he replied. “It’s mysterious.”

“And dangerous,” I told him. “Nothing changes as much as water.”

“That’s my favorite thing about it.”

“At night the harbor in Baltimore is beautiful with all the city and dock lights reflected in it, but the reflections keep you from seeing the water itself.”

“If you are painting it, Anna, the reflections are the water.”

I turned to him. “But if you fall in, they’re not.”

He took my face in his hands and looked into my eyes; I felt as if I had slipped off a bank and was drowning in his gaze. I looked away.

“Do you want to dance?” he asked softly.

“It’s hot in there.”

“Out here,” he suggested.

“Most guys I know don’t like to dance.”

“Most guys I know want to dance, if it’s with the right girl.”

“Oops. Song’s over.” And it really was. But the music started again, with a slower beat.

“Come on, Anna. Why do you make things so hard?”

“Maybe you expect things to be too easy.”

He laughed and put his arms loosely around my waist.

“Come on.”

I kept my heels on, and I looped my hands around his neck. I didn’t try Erika’s touch-and-tantalize strategy, partly because I didn’t think I could pull it off, mostly because just feeling his arms around me was enough touching and tantalizing.

As we danced, Zack pulled me closer. I couldn’t see his face now. I thought — maybe I was wrong — I thought he spoke my name, as if he had said it silently but I heard it anyway. Then I felt his hand on the back of my neck. He leaned my head against his chest. I could hear his heart beating. In half a breath I could have raised my face to kiss him. I felt him lowering his head. In half a breathI got a bucket of cold reality. Through the door to the dining room, I saw Erika standing next to the DJ, watching us, her arms crossed, a satisfied smile on her lips. Zack was on assignment.

I pulled back. Zack stopped dancing. “What is it?” He gently touched my face, lifting my chin with just the backs of his fingers. I gazed into eyes the color of the creek at twilight. I don’t know what Zack saw in my gaze, but he quickly let go of my face and started dancing again, as if he were afraid to look any longer.

He ought to be afraid, I thought. His conscience ought to be cowering in the basement of his brain. Faker!

“Do you remember Monday night?” I asked.

“Monday. .”

“Do you remember what you said?”

He shook his head no.

“Well, you were right.”

“I was right?” he repeated. “About—?”

“You can fake it with anyone.”

He took a step back, staring at me as if I had just slapped him.

I turned, headed for the dining room, and moved quickly through it, using the crowd to make it hard for Zack to catch up. I hurried down the staircase. When I got to the first floor, all I wanted to do was run to the bathroom and bawl. I stood still in the hallway that led to the ladies’ room and shut my eyes, trying to keep the tears from slipping out. I was such a sucker!

“Are you all right? Are you all right?” a man asked.

I opened my eyes. Mr. Gill.

“You look very upset,” he said, his voice sympathetic.

“I’m fine.”

He kept staring at me. “I saw you hurrying across the dance floor. I feared that something was wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

He shook his head slightly. “You’re a friend of my daughter, but I don’t know your name.”

At first I thought it was kindness — unwanted kindnessand I tried to think of a polite way to tell him to get lost. Then I realized why he was so concerned and why he had followed me down the stairs. He knew my name — the name I was born with — and I knew his old phone number. “Anna O’Neill Kirkpatrick,” I replied, and watched Elliot Gill swallow hard.

“I’m not really friends with Erika. I arrived in Wisteria just a few days ago. I came tonight with Zack, who lives next door to my great-aunt.”

“Of course,” he said. “You came because of your uncle’s death.”

I explained once again how I had been responding to Uncle Will’s invitation and didn’t learn he was dead until I arrived. Elliot Gill never took his eyes off me. The way he listened, his mouth moving as if he were anticipating my words, as if thirsty for whatever I had to say, made me wonder if I not only looked like my mother, but sounded like her.

“Your aunt Iris,” he said, “how is she taking all this?”

“The way anyone who knows her would expect. She still talks to Uncle Will.”

“Crazy as a loon,” he remarked softly.

“Maybe.”

Mr. Gill raised a pale eyebrow. His eyes were gray, his hair a thin mix of gray and yellow combed across the large dome of his head. Erika must have gotten her dark beauty from her mother.

He pointed to a booth, the one where the stalker and his friend had sat. “Why don’t we sit and chat?”

I wanted to go home and cry my eyes out, but I pulled myself together. One of my reasons for coming to this stupid party was to ask him questions about my mother.

As soon as I slid into the private, candlelit booth, I wished I had insisted on a table in the center of the room. It was the way he looked at me. I wanted to keep reminding him, I’m Anna! Anna!

“You’re not staying with Iris, I hope?”

“What do you mean?”

“You should stay with me,” he said. “We have an extra room next to Erika’s. You will be safe with me.”

“Thank you, but I really like being with Aunt Iris.”

“Are you aware of the degree to which Iris suffers from mental illness?”

“I’ve never seen her medical records, but I have some idea.”

“Over the years she has been in and out of hospitals. As you may or may not know, your mother’s life with Iris and William was extremely difficult.”

“It would have been more difficult without them,” I replied, feeling the need to defend them. “It would have been hard for my mother to keep me and continue with school.”

“She had options.”

“She did? Like what?”

He didn’t answer.

“You mean there were other people she could have lived with.”

“Exactly.”

“What was Joanna like?” I asked.

He stared at the flickering candle. It took him a long time to answer. “Bright, imaginative, beautiful. . She was a young woman with big dreams. I had just purchased my first store — I’m a pharmacist by training — and hired her to work part-time behind the counter. Joanna was hoping to attend medical school, but after she became pregnant, she thought nursing a more practical choice. She was a healer by nature, intuitive about people.”

“She was psychic,” I said.

He went on as if he hadn’t heard me, his narrow fingers tracing a pattern on the tabletop. “She was so innocent, so full of life. I watched her fall in love.” His eyes rose to meet mine. “When a young woman falls in love, she looks a certain way, has a certain light in her face. She becomes irresistible.”

I folded my arms and sat as far back as I could.

“You move like your mother,” he said.

I unfolded my arms, as if I could undo that observation.

“You have the same eyes and hair. Joanna often wore red.”

“I don’t.”

“She loved reds and pinks,” he continued. “Of course, everyone told her she should wear green or blue. She wore red defiantly.”

I smiled. “Then we share that — defiance.”

“You should try those colors, perhaps just a pretty pink or red scarf. She loved to wear scarves. She loved anything that floated.”

I was glad Mrs. Gill wasn’t around to hear the tone in his voice. “Are you my father?”

“God above! No.”

“It seemed a reasonable thing to ask.”

“Joanna wouldn’t tell me or anyone else who your father was. He lived on the West Coast, traveled for work, and spent a lot of time on the East Coast — I know that much. He was married and didn’t tell her, not until she got pregnant.”

“Then left her high and dry — nice of him.”

“She had options,” he replied.

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“I offered to marry her and accept you as my child.”

“Oh!”

I tried to imagine it, living with this man in a manse on the river, wearing designer clothes, carrying the most expensive phone, driving a car that people envied. . I thought about it and decided that, if the choice had been mine, I would have preferred Joanna to shack up with Mom in our Baltimore town house. “Okay, I see now. Joanna said no.”

“William said no!”

“But it was her choice, wasn’t it?”

“Precisely,” he said, not understanding what I meant.

It seemed to me that if my mother had been anything like me — if she had been the kind to wear red defiantly — she would not have let Uncle Will dictate that decision. Maybe Mr. Gill just couldn’t admit she had rejected him.

He talked as if he were still in love with her. Her rejection must have hurt him deeply and made him angry. Erika had just turned seventeen, meaning she was eleven months younger than I. My mother had said no, and Elliot Gill had married someone else soon after.

“If Joanna had married me, she would be alive today.”

I glanced up. “Excuse me?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “She wouldn’t have been living in that wretched house when the place was robbed.”

There was a long silence between us. How angry was he? I wondered. Aloud I asked, “What do you think Uncle Will wanted to tell me about my mother?”

“I have no idea. We weren’t on speaking terms.” His hands were tightly clasped. The tips of his fingers twitched, then he said in a gentler tone, “I suppose he wanted to tell you what she was like. . I would very much like to see you with your hair up. You should wear a scarf—”

“I don’t have any scarves.”

“I’ll buy you one.”

I’d heard enough and started sliding out of the booth. As I was standing up, a woman with Erika’s hair and eyes, and Erika’s unfriendly expression, walked toward us.

“Elliot,” she said, “we are waiting for you.”

“My love, this is Anna O’Neill.”

She ignored me. “Erika wants to open her gifts.”

“Of course.” He rose to his feet, gesturing for me to join them.

“I’ll be up in a minute,” I said, and headed toward the ladies’ room. Before I had gotten to its door, they disappeared, and I left the restaurant.

ON THE OTHER side of the bridge, Scarborough Road became a country road with no streetlamps. When leaving the restaurant, I hadn’t thought about the fact that walking home at 10:45 at night meant finding my way down an overgrown driveway without the aid of headlights. At the entrance to the drive, the moon silvered the edges of the high grass and weeds, making it bright enough to see. But when I reached the trees, their dense foliage suffocated the light, and the humidity and darkness closed in around me.

As I walked, I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was hidden in the trees, watching me.

I heard a rustling sound, like a person brushing against leaves, and I stopped, turning my head slightly. The sound had come from somewhere ahead of me and to the right.

Reluctant to go on, I looked over my shoulder, but I was already too far down the driveway — I couldn’t discern a clearing either behind or ahead of me. I took two more steps. Again I heard the sound, this time directly to the right.

Cats, I told myself. The cats are out hunting. Sweat trickled down my neck. I moved quickly, hoping to get past whatever it was.

Reaching the front door, I found it unlocked as usual. I hurried inside, closed the door, and leaned back against it.

Then it occurred to me: Someone else could have done the same — the house was no safer than the woods. I felt for the wall switch, flicked on the hall light, and glanced around.

“Is that you?” Aunt Iris called from upstairs.

I let out my breath in relief. “Yes. It’s Anna. I’m home from the party. Sorry I woke you up.”

“You didn’t.” She sounded as if she were standing directly above me, in the hall outside her bedroom. “I just got home myself.”

“Aunt Iris, would you mind if I locked the door tonight?”

“The front door? Not at all, as long as you keep the kitchen door open.”

“I meant all the doors.”

“No, don’t do that,” she called down. “I lost my key.”

“Well, how about if we lock the house just during the night?”

“No, I lost my key.”

I sighed. “Okay. Remind me to look for it tomorrow.”

“Five years ago,” she said.

I told myself that it didn’t really matter. It was impossible to make the house secure; the old screens and windows could be worked open by a child. I checked the charge on my cell phone, then climbed the steps to the second floor. I heard my aunt scurry into her bedroom and shut the door, as if afraid I’d catch a glimpse of her.

“Is everything okay?” I asked, reaching the hall.

“Yes,” she called from behind her door.

I walked toward her room. “Can I get you something before I go to bed?”

“No. No, I’m perfectly well.”

“May I open your door?”

“Please don’t.”

I hesitated.

“I just need a little rest,” she said.

I gave in. Everyone needs privacy. Besides, with no mirror left to break, she might launch a missile at me. “Okay.

Good night.”

When I reached my room, I turned on the fan, snatched up my nightshirt, and headed back down the hall to the bathroom. A long, lukewarm shower cooled me. I was rubbing my hair dry when I heard the phone ringing downstairs. It hadn’t rung since I had been there, and it sounded loud and foreboding.

“If it’s William,” Aunt Iris called from her bedroom, “I can’t speak to him now.”

That made me laugh, and I ran downstairs to get it.

“Hello?”

“You’re home.”

Zack.

“I’m home,” I said stiffly.

“You left without telling me.”

“I thought it was pretty obvious.”

“You were rude.”

“Really!” I said. “Well, let me tell you what I think is rude.

It’s using a girl. It’s acting like you want to be friends when all you want is information. It’s going along with another girl’s plan, because you can fake it with anyone.”

There was a long silence. “How do you know that?” he asked at last.

“I just do,” I said, and hung up.

Anger is better than fear, I told myself as I climbed the steps again. But it was anger and hurt that I felt. I combed out my hair, yanking on a knot. Get over it, Anna.

It was a relief to return to my little corner in the attic, where I had once felt so safe. Then I saw the books.

At first I didn’t know what bothered me about them. They were on the floor next to my bed, where I had left them the other night. I stretched out as I had when reading and reached down to them, resting my fingers on the top of the pile. The angle was wrong; it would have been awkward for me to set the books down that way. But it would have been quite natural if I had stood facing the bed. Had someone picked them up, looked at them, then carelessly put them back?

I glanced around the room, then walked over to my bureau. When I opened the top drawer, everything in it looked the same. Still, my fingertips tingled, as if they sensed the touch of hands other than mine. So Aunt Iris got a little curious, I told myself. I had peeked in her room; why shouldn’t she look in mine?

As logical as that was, I couldn’t sleep until I checked the rooms below. Not wanting to disturb my aunt, I crossed the attic to the stairs that led down to Uncle Will’s den. As soon as I turned on his desk lamp, I saw that someone had been there. I knew I had closed the drawers tightly, not wanting Aunt Iris to know I had been snooping. Someone else had been careless or rushed. I checked behind the books where I had hidden my mother’s client book. It was still there. I hurried upstairs and unzipped the front pocket of my suitcase. The cell phone was missing. My evidence against Erika and her friends was gone. I checked the large pocket again: so was Uncle Will’s letter to the police and the article about my mother’s death. Why?

If Aunt Iris had been the one searching, she might have found the phone and realized it was the one she had picked up at the fire site. She had buried it the first time and may have wanted to do it again, for whatever crazy reason. But why would she take the letter and article? Maybe she thought she could keep me from asking questions and opening old wounds. Or maybe she didn’t have time to look at the contents and, seeing that the envelope was from Uncle Will and addressed to the state police, imagined that Uncle Will was “reporting” her to them. Her broken mirror had proven just how paranoid she was.

There was another possibility. Everyone who had seen me at Erika’s party would have counted on me staying at the restaurant for several hours. I hadn’t seen the stalker at dinner. Had I made him nervous enough to check out my things? If the stalker was one of the kids who’d harassed Uncle Will, he might have seen the state police address on the missing envelope and assumed the contents implicated him.

My skin crept at the memory of walking down the dark driveway and hearing something — someone — moving through the trees. I turned out the light, then went from window to window, peering out of all six windows of the attic and those in my mother’s room as well. The words I had heard the night of the fire floated back to me: Anna, be careful.

Careful of what, Uncle Will? Careful of whom?

Next morning, with the sun back up, I was ready to take on everybody. I ate breakfast quickly, listening for my aunt’s footsteps. Her bedroom door had been closed when I got up and her car was parked outside, so I assumed she was home. After breakfast I went upstairs to check on her.

“Aunt Iris?” I called, knocking softly on the door. I called a second time, more loudly, and finally banged hard. I heard movement within the room, a creaking of floorboards. It sounded as if she had been standing at the door the entire time I was knocking.

“It’s Anna. Would you open the door, please?”

“I’d rather not.”

“I’m going to work. Before I leave, I’d like to see you.”

She didn’t reply. Last night I had respected her privacy, but I didn’t think it smart to let her isolate herself for this amount of time, especially since someone other than she may have been searching the house.

“I am going to open your door,” I warned her.

“You can try, but it’s locked.”

I did, and it was. “Aunt Iris, when I got home last night, it looked as if someone had searched my room and Uncle Will’s study.”

She didn’t make a sound. It frustrated me that, unable to see her face, I couldn’t tell if this was news to her. “Was anyone else here last night?”

“I don’t remember.”

“There was a cell phone in my room, in my suitcase. It’s gone.”

“It wasn’t yours,” she said.

“Where is it now?”

“I don’t remember.”

“There was a newspaper article about my mother’s death and a draft of a letter to the police, asking for information about it. Did you take them?”

She didn’t answer.

“Somebody did,” I said.

“I’m glad they’re gone. William was being foolish.”

So she knew about the documents. “I want them back.”

“The past is the past. I tried to tell William that. He wouldn’t listen to me. We can do nothing about the past.”

“We can understand it!”

I strode down the hall to the room with the blue-flowered wallpaper. It was time for me to face the contents of the mahogany bureau, to learn whatever I could from the bits and pieces left behind by my mother.

I entered the room and, after a moment of hesitation, slid open the small top drawer of the bureau. Combs, hair fasteners, and several pairs of earrings — simple, inexpensive ones, like the kind I would buy — lay with a note written in my uncle’s hand: These are for Anna. I liked the necklace next to them, a chain with a pendant. I touched it gently, then held it up to the window light, admiring its clear golden drop — amber, I thought. I fastened it around my neck and felt the way it rested against my chest, as if it belonged to and had been waiting for me.

I opened the next drawer and found underwear, ordinary stuff. In the next were T-shirts. I held them up to me, wondering if my mother and I were the same size; we were.

In the next drawer I discovered jeans. Straightening up, I held them against me. Yup.

I opened the last drawer. It was filled with scarves — red, pink, purple — some plain, some with geometric shapes. I picked up a filmy pink one and draped it around my neck.

Footsteps sounded in the hall, and I turned quickly to see Aunt Iris standing in the doorway. She cocked her head to one side, studying me, then stepped into the room.

“You would look so much better, Joanna, with your hair out of your face.”

Anna, I was about to say, then caught myself. Maybe, if I pretended to be Joanna, she would talk as if we were in the past and tell me things I needed to know. I opened the top drawer again, picked up a comb and an elastic band, and pulled my hair up on my head.

“Better, much better,” she said, “but don’t let it hang like a horse’s tail.”

I twisted my hair into a bun and pinned it in place, feeling a little creepy, knowing that this was what Mr. Gill had wanted me to do.

She nodded approvingly.

I tried to think of something to talk about that would seem natural coming from Joanna. “I have appointments with two clients today.”

She sighed. “We have plenty of money. You should focus on your studies.”

“But you have clients,” I argued.

“Mine can be trusted,” she replied. “It’s yours that bite.”

I laughed, trying to be agreeable. “I like helping people, the same way you like helping animals.”

“You must be careful whom you help,” she said. “Forget about Mick.”

“Mick?” I asked.

“Let go of the past. It’s over now. Nothing can be done.”

“Mick?” I repeated.

Her eyes sparked. “Stop pretending, Joanna! I know what you’re up to!”

I wondered if Mick were my father. “You mean my. . my lover,” I said tentatively.

She looked stunned. “Your lover?”

“Well, who else’s?” I replied, frustrated.

My aunt shook her head. “You should have married Elliot Gill when you had the chance. He would have provided for you and Anna.”

“Because he is Anna’s father,” I responded, not trusting what Mr. Gill had told me last night.

My aunt took a step back. “He is? That’s not what you told me.”

I played with my scarf, afraid that if I said much more, she would realize I wasn’t Joanna.

“You said he was from California,” Aunt Iris went on. “You said he lied about himself, gave you a false name, and never told you he was married.”

Their stories matched. “That’s right,” I replied. “I was joking about Elliot. But I can’t stop thinking about Mick,” I added, hoping she would explain why she wanted Joanna to forget him.

She said nothing more, but I had observed her response, the way she flinched at his name. As soon as possible, I would check my mother’s appointment book to see if I could find a reference to him, although the initial M began a lot of common names. Maybe Erika’s father would know who Mick was. I would call him at work.

Work! “Oh no, I’m going to be late!” I said, dropping the scarf on the bureau and rushing past Aunt Iris. I grabbed my purse from my room and dashed to my car. Flying up the rutted driveway, I sent cats racing in all directions.

“NEW HAIRSTYLE, VERY professional,” Marcy observed when I entered the shop that morning.

“It’s cooler this way.”

“It’s perfect with that necklace, pretty and professional.

The fact is, people like pretty women and pretty things, and it’s foolish for a businesswoman not to use those assets.”

“I guess.”

She laughed her tinkly laugh and turned back to the display she was creating.

The shop was busy through lunchtime, then the crowd dwindled at the usual hour — three o’clock. Marcy gave me a list of names and addresses to enter into the store’s computerized database while she worked on her laptop. We drifted in and out of conversation, and I kept waiting for her to bring up last night’s “date.” To my relief, she didn’t.

At three thirty she rose to stretch, then glanced out the front window. “I was wondering when he’d show up.”

“Who?”

“I’ve been biting my tongue,” Marcy admitted, “trying not to ask how it went last night.”

“The party was nice.”

She lowered her head to look at me over her reading glasses. “Zack was not exactly his charming, cheerful self this morning.”

I nodded but said nothing.

“I’ll stay out of it,” she said. “Given my track record before I met Dave, the last thing you want from me is romantic advice.”

She returned to her computer, and I retyped a misspelled address — three times. Zack entered the shop.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

If the normal “hi” were sung the length of a half note, we held ours for just a sixteenth.

“Hello, Zack,” Marcy said. “How is everything with your father?”

“Fine. I was hoping to talk to Anna. Can she take a break?”

“She has earned one,” Marcy replied, “but it’s up to her if she wants to take it now.”

Zack turned to me. “We need to talk.”

“I’m listening.”

“I mean outside.”

I glanced at Marcy. She had walked behind Zack, pretending to be adjusting something on a shelf, but turned her head toward me and gave a slight nod.

“All right,” I said, saving my work.

I led the way out of the shop and stopped when we reached the brick sidewalk.

“Away from the shop,” Zack directed, then added with less certainty, “Okay?”

“Okay.”

We walked all the way down to the river. I would have cracked a joke about how acute Marcy’s hearing was, but I wasn’t going to be the one to start the conversation. We reached the public landing, a square wharf that had benches for sitting and pilings for temporary docking. On this hot, sticky day it was deserted. Two sailboats rested motionless on the Sycamore, pinned to a sullen sky.

“You were at the fire site the other night,” he said.

I didn’t reply.

“I was careful,” he went on. “I made sure no one followed us. But you were there.”

What was I supposed to say? Part of me was there, but my body was home in bed.

“You got there before Erika and I did.”

He searched my face, looking for answers. He must have realized that, standing in the clearing, he would have seen anyone close enough to hear their conversation.

“Maybe I’m psychic,” I said. “Or maybe I’m just a good guesser. It doesn’t make any difference. The fact is, when you asked me out, you were using me.”

“If you were really psychic, you’d know better!”

“Erika told you to dance with me. You were following instructions.”

“Sometimes girls do that, tell a guy to dance with another girl. Girls like to play matchmaker.”

“Matchmaker! Then Erika needs to work on her skills.

Most guys aren’t attracted to ‘freckled little carrots.’” Zack flushed and muttered two swear words, for which I was grateful. It made me laugh. I’m sure he had no idea how close I was to tears.

“Anna, listen,” he said. “Things are complicated. Erika did some really stupid stuff. She broke the law, but she didn’t kill your uncle. She told me she torched the inside of the car, the seats, but she never opened the trunk. She had no idea his body was in there. She thinks someone framed her. She’s scared and trying to figure out who’s behind it. The thing you have to remember is that she hasn’t done anything to hurt you personally.”

“She could do a lot more to help,” I replied. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that the person who put my uncle’s body in the trunk could have known about Erika’s game? She needs to go to the police and give them the list of people she texts.

One of those kids or someone who has access to their phone or e-mail accounts might have seen the arson as a perfect opportunity for covering a murder.”

He nodded. “I’ve thought of that, and I’ve been trying to get her to do it. She’s afraid if she does, she will get everyone else in trouble.”

“Oh, spare me!” I said. “Erika’s a self-centered drama queen, worried about nobody but herself. Anyway, you could go to the sheriff. Why don’t you send McManus a copy of her list?”

“I don’t have it.”

“Just type the stupid names!” I exploded. “Don’t act so helpless. Make a list of the people you’ve seen at the fires.”

“I’ve never gone.”

I stared at him. “What?” I couldn’t believe it. “Are you crazy? Why would you even try to help—?”

“She’s a friend.”

“Well, then, you’ve got lousy taste in friends.”

We stood a foot apart, staring at each other. Zack turned away first and sat on a bench facing the water, resting his forearms on his knees. I began to pace.

“Someone searched my room last night.”

He straightened up. “When?”

“While I was at the party. Searched my room and Uncle Will’s den.”

“How do you know that?” he asked.

“The searcher wasn’t very careful.”

“Was anything taken?”

“Erika’s cell phone.”

“You have her cell phone?” he asked, surprised.

“Not anymore.” I continued to pace from one side of the landing to the other.

“Where did you find it?”

“Aunt Iris found it, at the fire site, I guess. She buried it in the backyard with what she believes are Uncle Will’s ashes, which I got curious about and dug up. By the way, what is the name of Wisteria’s friendly neighborhood stalker?”

“Carl. Carl Wiedefeld. Why?”

“I didn’t see him while we were eating dinner. He may have left the restaurant.”

“Was anything else taken?” Zack caught my arm as I passed. “Anna, would you stand still?” He reached for my other hand and pulled me around the bench. “Please sit,” he said. “Is your aunt okay?”

“Meaning is she the same as before — a crazy-but-stillfunctioning kind of okay? As far as I can tell.”

“And you’re okay?”

I looked away. “Of course.”

“Was anything else taken?” He was talking in that gentle voice he used with Erika: I guess I was his friend too. It was a good thing I wasn’t skilled enough to cry and look beautiful; I might have been tempted to pull “an Erika.” But this was just a passing moment of weakness.

“A news article and a letter my uncle had planned to send to the state police.”

Zack was quiet for a moment. “Why the state police rather than the sheriff? What was it about?”

“The death of my mother.”

He frowned. “I thought that was a long time ago. Marcy said she died when you were a baby.”

“I was three.” The humid river air had made it impossible for sweat to evaporate, and an unexpected breeze gave my damp skin goose bumps. I rubbed my arms like a person with fever and chills. Zack laid his hand on my back for a moment, then shifted his position as if uncertain that I wanted to be touched.

“How did she die?” he asked quietly.

“In a robbery. The police believe she surprised the intruder. It was a blow to the head. I read it in the article that was taken from my room.”

“The sheriff said your uncle was struck on the head.”

Two people from the same family killed in the same way — I had avoided making that connection as long as possible, reluctant to connect the dots to Aunt Iris’s inclination to smash things when she was angry. Had Uncle Will questioned the theory about my mother’s death? Was his murder a successful effort to silence him? My imagination was running away with me!

“Anna, be careful,” Zack said.

“Careful of whom?” I asked. “Aunt Iris? Carl? How about Erika’s father?”

“Her father?”

“He wanted to marry my mother — Joanna — and he blames Uncle Will for coming between them. I look like her.

Aunt Iris keeps talking to me as if I’m her. Last night the way Mr. Gill looked at me creeped me out. He told me he’d like to see me wearing the colors Joanna wore. He wanted to buy me a scarf, the kind that she liked.”

Zack shook his head. “I don’t know what to think.”

“That makes two of us.” I glanced at my watch. “I should get back to work.”

He stood up with me. “I’ll walk you there.”

“Please don’t.”

He pressed his lips together.

“It’s just that I–I need a few minutes by myself.”

He studied my face, then nodded. I left him staring at the river.

I was grateful to Marcy for biting her tongue a second time that day. When I returned to the shop, she looked at me curiously but refrained from asking questions. Before leaving work on Friday, I looked up pharmacies in a county phone book. Mr. Gill owned four, which would make it harder to locate him away from home, but I had to talk to him again, and I didn’t want to do it around his wife or Erika. I had to find out who Mick was.

The closest pharmacy listed was on the corner of Scarborough and Crown, which was just one block over from High Street. I drove the short distance, parked behind the store, and went in to ask about Mr. Gill’s schedule.

Our pharmacy in Baltimore is in the back of a 24/7 grocery store with bright aisles, piped-in baby-boomer music, and great smells wafting in from its deli and bakery.

This place was silent. It smelled like Vicks VapoRub and plastic. The boxes of candy, wrapped in cellophane, looked as if they had been sitting next to the canes and commodes since my mother worked there.

“May I help you?”

The woman behind the prescription counter listened to my request and was copying down my name and cell phone number on a message pad when I saw a venetian blind flip in the office behind her. Reflections off the glass made it hard to see in, but a moment later the office door opened, and Mr. Gill emerged.

He smiled at me. “Anna. You’ve come.”

I tried not to squirm at the warmth in his voice. “Yes, I have a question.”

“It’s wonderful to see you.”

“Thanks. This won’t take long.”

“Should I lock up now, Mr. Gill?” the woman asked.

He nodded. “Thank you, Myrtle.”

“Oh. Oh, sorry,” I said quickly. “I didn’t realize it was closing time. I’ll come back when you’re open.”

Being alone with him in the store would be even creepier than chatting in the restaurant booth. He had probably enjoyed being alone here with my mother.

“No, no. I’m happy to answer your questions. Come into my office.”

I hesitated, then told myself to stop being paranoid. When I entered the small room, I chose the chair that was close to the office door rather than the one he gestured to.

“You’ve worn your hair up,” he said. “You look lovely.”

“Thanks. I would like to know—”

“The pendant. It’s quite perfect on you.”

My hand went up to my chest, touching the teardrop of amber that I had taken from Joanna’s bureau that morning.

Did he think I was dressing like her to please him?

“I gave it to her,” he said.

“Oh. . Oh, I see.” I reached for the necklace’s latch. “Do you want it back?”

“No. I enjoy seeing it on you.”

Well, I no longer enjoyed wearing it, and no amount of small talk was going to make me comfortable with him. I cut to the chase. “Who’s Mick?”

“Mick,” he repeated softly. “Mick Sanchez. He didn’t mean to cause any trouble. All he did was die. How has his name come up?”

I told Mr. Gill what little I knew.

He nodded. “Mick Sanchez was married to Audrey. They worked for the Fairfaxes, whose home — one of their homes — is on Oyster Creek. You may have seen it.”

“Next to the Flemings’,” I said. “Marcy was a Fairfax.”

“That’s right. Perhaps you have already met Audrey, who works for Marcy now.”

“Yes. So why was my mother supposed to forget about Audrey’s husband?”

“He died suddenly, several months before Joanna.

Audrey held your mother responsible for his death. I suppose that Iris was telling Joanna to forget about all that.”

“All what?” I did the math, subtracting fifteen years from Audrey’s current age. “He must have been a lot older than my mother. They weren’t having an affair, were they?”

“Lord, no.”

“How did he die?”

“In a car accident, on Scarborough Road, I believe, a few miles after it crosses Wist Creek.”

“Did my mother cause it? Did she run into him?”

“No, she simply didn’t foresee it. Audrey was a frequent client of Joanna’s and—”

“A client of my mother’s?” I interrupted. “But Audrey thinks psychics are tools of the devil. She thinks all of us O’Neills are going straight to hell.”

“Now she does. At that time, however, she was your mother’s steadiest customer — she was dependent on her, really, couldn’t do anything without first consulting Joanna.

She asked for readings so often, Joanna felt uneasy. But when her husband was killed, Audrey turned on your mother.

She blamed her for not foreseeing Mick’s accident, for not warning them.”

“That’s crazy,” I said. “I understand wanting to blame someone at first — you’re upset and everything — but eventually, you think clearly again. Anyway, I can’t understand how Audrey could have changed that much.”

“In essence, she didn’t,” he replied. “She simply exchanged one extreme belief for another. Audrey is the kind of person who can’t stand feeling uncertain about things. People like her feel safer when they latch on to something that makes them feel like they’ve got the answer, makes them feel like they’re in control. The first way let her down, so now she is trying another.”

“Did my mother blame herself?”

“She felt very bad about Mick’s death. She felt Audrey’s anger and pain, felt it keenly.”

How angry was Audrey Sanchez? Angry enough to kill?

But how could someone so religious justify that?

The theory I had spun for Aunt Iris could be applied to Audrey: Angry, she had struck my mother, never intending to kill her. Afterward, she had panicked and ransacked the house to make it look like a robbery. Years later her bizarre religious beliefs justified her action against my “evil” mother.

She had gotten away with it, until Uncle Will began to reexamine the case. .

But if she or Aunt Iris had killed Uncle Will, who had put him in the trunk of the car at Tilby’s Dream? He wasn’t a large man; both women were strong, and either of them could have backed her car up to the car that was burned.

Still, how would she get him from the place of the murder into her car andA light brush of fingers on my cheek sent me leaping out of my chair.

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Gill said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I would never hurt you, dear. You just look so thoughtful and concerned, so much like Joanna.”

I remained standing. “Was Mrs. Sanchez angry enough to hurt my mother?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was she angry enough to strike her, to accidentally kill her?”

“Certainly they must have told you. Joanna was killed in a robbery. They never caught the man who did it.”

“How do you know it was a man?”

His eyes grew wary. “I simply assumed it.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have.”

He paled, his face turning the color of skim milk. “This is the result of some peculiar idea of Iris or William. It is natural for you to have questions about what happened, but there is nothing that can be learned so many years after.”

“Maybe,” I said, edging toward the door. “I’ll call you if I have any more questions.”

He stood up. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

“Thanks, but I have a car.”

“Did you park out back?” Without giving me a choice, he walked me there.

I couldn’t wait to get inside the old Taurus. Mr. Gill leaned down, his face close to the driver’s side window. That window worked, but I pretended it didn’t.

“Buckle up. Drive safely,” he mouthed through the glass.

I turned the key in the ignition and waved.

Hours later, I’d think back to the small parking lot and remember a car with several guys inside, but at that moment, the observation registered as nothing more than relief that other people were around. Believing that I was driving to safety, I took off.

AS I DROVE home, I struggled to sort out what I knew. Was there a connection among the deaths of my uncle, my mother, and Mick Sanchez? Three sudden and suspicious deaths created a bewildering number of possibilities.

Because the first two occurred fifteen years ago, it seemed impossible to collect the information that would indicate these two deaths were something more than an accident and a robbery. But key bits of information were missing for the recent crime as well.

It wasn’t even clear if the use of the abandoned car was evidence of a murderer’s plan or a murderer’s desperation.

Perhaps placing a corpse in a car that was about to be incinerated in a game was a sign of good planning: After all, any evidence indicating where Uncle Will died and how his body was transported to the old Buick would have been driven over by the cars of Erika’s friends, and then by the heavy fire trucks. Important clues would have been burned and washed away. On the other hand, if the abandoned car on Tilby’s Dream was a location that was easily recognized in a riddle, then it was a location known by most locals. So it could have popped into the head of a murderer who had done no planning at all, a person who had accidentally killed someone and was desperate for a place to dump a body. I was back to square one.

I knew of two people angry enough to get into a fight with Uncle Will: Aunt Iris, fearing he was going to put her away, and Audrey Sanchez, believing he was in league with the devil. Elliot Gill had once been very angry, but why would he hurt Uncle Will after so many years? And then there was Carl, who was obviously worried about the police finding out who was at the fire and who seemed a likely candidate for the earlier harassment of Uncle Will. But even if I came up with solid reasons for these suspects to intentionally or accidentally strike the blow that killed Uncle Will, it wouldn’t matter without evidence. The most likely place to find evidence was the site of the murder, which the police didn’t seem to know.

But maybe I did. Somehow, before I even arrived in Wisteria, I had seen where the car had burned; some part of me had visited the place. In my second O.B.E., I began somewhere else and ended up at the fire site: What if I was seeing the place where my uncle was struck on the head?

Maybe in that O.B.E., I made the journey with him from the time of the attack to the disposal of his body. If I saw the actual place where he was killed, would I recognize it the way I had recognized the fire site?

I pulled into the area at the top of Aunt Iris’s driveway, waited for a car to pass, then made a U-turn on Creek Road. Driving to where it forked off Scarborough, I headed away from town toward the large tulip poplar. A storm was brewing. The sky, which had been sullen all afternoon, was growing darker in the west, and when I got to the landmark, its leaves looked pale against the threatening clouds. I turned onto the road that ran through Tilby’s Dream and drove between fields of soy and corn. Their vibrant green yellowed in the pre-storm light.

My plan was to check the immediate area, working my way outward from the fire site. I couldn’t remember anything at the actual site that looked like a wall with notches in it, but I remembered how Erika’s clues, her riddles, were metaphors; maybe the images in my O.B.E.s worked in a similar way. Having turned at the “spring flower” in the riddle, I finally spotted the “green tunnel” and parked my car at its entrance.

I jogged down the dirt road. The old trees and overgrown brush were gloomy, the air oppressive. I was glad to reach the clearing. It was still cordoned off by the yellow police tape. To the left were fields that stretched to the horizon. To the right was a small, uncultivated field hemmed by pine. I walked a ways into the pine trees, perhaps a quarter of a mile, and saw that the wood and its soft floor of needles seemed to go on and on. At that point I stopped. If Uncle Will had been killed here, there would be a limit to how far his body could be easily carried, and the space between the pines was too narrow to drive.

I returned to the burn site, then headed down the road that ran in the opposite direction from which I had come, walking through an identical avenue of trees and passing through open fields. The route curved until I found myself back on what I thought was Scarborough Road, although far enough from the big poplar that I couldn’t see it. I turned and retraced my steps.

It occurred to me that, for the murderer, convenience might not have been possible — or even necessary. Given Aunt Iris’s habit of coming and going any time of day or night, and her state of confusion, there would be time to kill Uncle Will and move his body before anyone thought to ask where he was or wonder why she hadn’t reported him missing.

Since convenience didn’t limit the murderer, the crime could have been done anywhere that Uncle Will might go.

Obviously, I needed the help of someone familiar with the town and the area around it, someone who would recognize the images in my O.B.E. and guess the riddle they presented.

I wanted to trust Zack, but I couldn’t because of his loyalty to Erika. Marcy would be even more familiar with Wisteria and the area around it, but I would have to think of a reason for asking about an image like a notched wall. I could say I had seen the place in one of my mother’s photos and I wondered where it was.

When I reached the fire site again, I heard a rumble of thunder. In the open country, it seemed to roll and roll, like a bowling ball thrown down an endless lane. I knew underneath trees were dangerous places to hang out in a storm, but despite what they said on the Weather Channel, I wasn’t inclined to seek out a low-lying rut in a field. I crossed the burn site and started through the avenue of trees that led to my car, hoping to beat the storm.

A second peal of thunder sounded closer, and I broke into a jog. The thunder was followed by silence, a long, ominous quiet. A fluttering of birds broke the spell. Wind gusted and branches tossed. I saw a streak of lightning through the trees on the right. I never saw what was coming from the left.

I was hit hard from behind and slammed to the ground.

The breath was knocked out of me — I couldn’t scream, couldn’t fight back. Facedown in the road, I gasped for air.

Branches and shells ground into my skin. My mouth got gritty with sand.

I tried to pull my knees up under me, tried to get leverage to stand up, but the person holding me down was heavy. I struggled to cover my head with my arms — all I could think of was Uncle Will struck from behind. But the attacker grabbed my hands and pinned my arms to the ground, bending my wrists at odd angles over the ruts in the road. Now I had my breath again, now I screamed, screamed in pain and fear. I got a knee thrust in my back.

“Listen to me,” a male voice said. “Listen, if you don’t want to get hurt.”

I continued to struggle and got my hair pulled hard. I howled like a beaten puppy.

They laughed. There was more than one.

“Are you listening?”

“Yes,” I hissed.

“Stay out of Erika’s business.”

I strained to pick up my head. “It’s my uncle’s business I care about.”

My face was pushed back in the dirt.

“Stay out of it,” said a male voice different from the first.

“Your uncle’s dead. Don’t make us stuff you in a trunk.”

Their laughter was drowned out by a crack of thunder and a sound like wood splitting. The pressure lightened on me for a second, then I was shoved facedown again. It was raining hard even under the trees, turning the road beneath me into a river of grit. I had to shut my eyes to keep out the splashing sand and mud.

“We’re going to let you go, but don’t move. We’ll be right back on you. Count to a hundred. Do it nice and slow. Don’t get up till you’ve reached the end. Then walk real slow back to your car. Don’t tell the police. Don’t tell anyone. We’ll know. And we won’t be so friendly next time.”

I was released. As soon as I heard the slap of their racing feet against the road, I lifted my head. I watched the fleeing figures, three of them, until they were erased by rain. I rose shakily to my feet.

I walked slowly, not because they had told me to, but because I was stunned by the attack. I was shocked at how easy it was to overpower me, how quickly I had found myself facedown on the ground and unable to fight back. I walked in a daze, hardly hearing the storm, and finally climbed into my car, soaked to the bone. Lightning flashed over and over; I sat staring up at it dully, as if I were waiting for a traffic light to change. At last I switched on the ignition and headed to the house.

When I pulled into Aunt Iris’s driveway, the rain had nearly stopped, but the trees were dripping heavily. My headlights shone like two ghostly beams through the ground mist. I parked and walked toward the front steps. I longed for a shower, not to get rid of the mud, but to clean off the touch of my attackers. I longed for my family.

“Anna.”

I jumped a mile.

“Whoa! It’s just me.”

Zack was standing under the covered porch, backlit by the hall light. I stopped at the foot of the steps, and he started down them. “We need to talk and — my God, what happened to you?”

I backed away from him. When he reached toward me, I put up my hands, instinctively shielding my face. He took my wrists, encircling them with his fingers, holding them gently but firmly. “What happened?”

“I met up with some of your friends.”

“Not my friends,” he said.

“Okay. Erika’s. Three of them.”

He turned my hands, examining my scraped palms. “Let’s go inside.”

“I’ll go inside. You go home.”

“Did they knock you down?” He crouched to check my knees.

“Obviously.”

“Did they do anything else?” His voice sounded as thin and tight as mine.

“Just held me there while they delivered their message.”

“Which was?”

“To keep my nose out of Erika’s business.”

He stood up, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

“Did they have a weapon?”

“A knee in my back, and my hair — that made a nice weapon; they kept yanking on it, then pushing my face in the road.” My voice broke.

“Oh, Anna.”

I stiffened and took a step back. Zack was her friend, just like they were her friends.

“Where did it happen?”

“Near the fire site. On the dirt road.”

“I’ll drive you to a doctor.”

“I don’t need one.”

“You should be checked out,” he insisted, and took a step closer.

I turned sideways. “I’m just a little rattled.”

He laid his hand on my back. As gentle as it was, I winced.

He winced too. “Sorry. I’m sorry. Anna, I am so sorry.”

“Go home. . please. I just need. . a few minutes by myself.” That line had worked the last time.

“Not this time,” he said.

I had no energy left to argue. I turned toward the kitchen entrance, and he followed me. The weather and the trees made it seem like twilight. He searched for the wall switch and flicked it on. “Your aunt’s car is gone,” he observed. “I guess she’s out.”

“She wanders off at different times. I don’t know where.”

“Maybe you should put on some dry clothes. I’ll help you upstairs.”

“No.” I lowered myself onto a wooden chair very gingerly.

“Could you have broken any bones?”

“Everything moves. I’m just bruised.”

He nodded, then began searching the kitchen cabinets. I watched without asking what he was looking for. I felt as if one huge sob was building in my heart.

Returning with a bowl of water and several soft cloths, he pulled a chair close to mine and began to clean the cuts on my arms. I sat still, watching his hands, the way I used to watch my mother’s when I’d had a bad day at dodgeball.

“Did you see the guys who did this to you?”

I shook my head. “Just the backs of them when they were running away. They warned me not to go to the police. They said not to tell anyone. I guess that would include you. They said they would know if I told and they wouldn’t be as friendly next time.”

I stared at his neck rather than his face and saw him swallow hard. He stood up, brought back fresh water, lukewarm, and gently washed my forehead and cheeks. He knelt on the floor in front of me and examined my knees.

“Looks as if you went down on your right one,” he said, wetting a clean cloth and touching it lightly to a large brush burn. I stiffened my leg, fighting the instinct to yank it away.

He glanced up. “I’m going to pinch your calf. Just a few pinches, okay?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a guy goose me on the calf,” I replied, trying to joke my way out of the pain.

He did what he said, cleaning the cut and pinching at the same time. “This is how my dad used to do it when I’d come home banged up. The theory is that the pinch sends signals to the brain that help drown out the pain signals from the wound. I thought it was worth a try.”

Zack finished cleaning the other leg, then sat back on his heels. “How do you feel?”

“Okay.”

“Is there a first-aid kit around, something with an antibiotic ointment?”

“I have a kit in the back of my car. I’ll get it later.”

“I’ll get it for you,” he said.

“I’m not helpless.” I sounded angry.

There was a moment of tense silence, then he tapped me on the foot. “If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that you are not helpless.” He rose and rinsed out the rags, washed out the bowl with soap and water, and laid everything on the drain board.

“Why did you go back to the fire site?” he asked when he was done.

“I was looking for the place where my uncle was murdered.”

“The police must have already searched the area,” he replied. “The farm is large, with acres of it leased out to other growers, but I’m sure it’s been searched thoroughly.

When a body is found, everyone starts looking.”

“Have you ever seen a place that has a wall with notches along the top, like the wall of a castle? There’s a door in the wall or some way to get through. There are pathways and a statue of a rabbit. Have you ever seen anything like that?

Outside of Disney World,” I added, aware of how silly it sounded.

Zack shook his head no, then looked at me thoughtfully.

“But you have. You see things the way a psychic does.”

“At night, when I sleep”—I hesitated, but he’d already figured out that something strange was going on inside my head—“I have these things called O.B.E.s, out-of-body experiences.”

Zack sat on the kitchen chair next to mine. “You mean like people who are resuscitated? The ones who say they have floated outside their bodies and watched a medical staff working on them?”

“According to the books I’ve been reading, some people have O.B.E.s even when they’re not dying. Last Wednesday night, I thought that I was dreaming about a fire. Kids were there. I heard them laughing and throwing bottles. Then there were sirens and everyone ran. I heard my uncle’s voice calling to me, telling me to be careful. A few days later, when I came to Wisteria, I found out he was dead and his body had been burned in a fire that same night. When I went to the site, it was the same place I had seen while sleeping.

The night I heard you and Erika talking about me, I was in bed, but somehow, I was there at the fire site, too.”

Zack’s only response was to blink.

“I’ve had three O.B.E.s, each time visiting the fire site. But during the last two, I started out in a different place, the one with the wall and the rabbit, and I’m wondering if that is where my uncle started — if somehow I’ve connected with him and am visiting the place where he was murdered.”

“Have you said anything to the sheriff?”

“No. He’d probably think I’m just a crazy O’Neill. I want to try to find the place first. Do you know anything about—” I was about to mention Audrey’s husband when two cats raced past us and hurled themselves against the screen door.

Zack spun around. “What was that?”

“Aunt Iris is coming,” I said, getting up to let out the cats.

“How do you know?”

“I don’t; the cats do. They line up on Uncle Will’s truck and wait for her. I don’t want to tell her what has happenedthere’s no telling how she’ll construe it in her head. I’m going to run upstairs and figure out some explanation for my scrapes. You had better go now.”

Zack peered through the screen door at the cats.

“Unbelievable! It’s as if they are waiting for a performance.”

“Stay clear of the driveway,” I advised. “She stops for nothing but the house.”

He reached for the door handle, then turned back. “After Iris gets inside, lock all your doors.”

I didn’t argue that securing this place was impossible.

“Is your cell phone charged?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Keep it on.” He looked around, found a pen, and wrote his number on a paper napkin. “Write down yours.”

I did so quickly. I was dangerously close to tears again.

“Anna?” He rested his hands on my shoulders.

I couldn’t look at him.

“Anna, you can trust me.”

I bit my lip to keep it from trembling.

“You can trust me,” he repeated. “But I can see you don’t.”

He turned and left.

I hurried upstairs. The truth was, it was myself I couldn’t trust, my eyes from betraying my heart.

I DIDN’T STOP in my room, but headed straight to the bathroom. Ten minutes later, stepping out of a steamy shower, I found ointment and a box of adhesive bandages in the bathroom cabinet. I took care of my cuts, then checked out a row of prescription bottles belonging to Aunt Iris. All of them contained the same prescription and were filled nearly to the top. The dates of all but one were expired; she had missed an awful lot of doses.

I wrapped myself in a towel and peeked out the door.

Aunt Iris’s door was closed, with a bar of light shining beneath it. Balling up my muddy clothes, I tiptoed down the hall, waiting until I was in Uncle Will’s room to call good night to her. As soon as I entered my attic space, I shut the door behind me.

It took a minute to find the knob of the small lamp next to my bed. I turned it on, then took a step back. Stones had been placed on my bed, smooth stones painted with black Xs or crosses. They were laid in rows, in the same pattern as those placed on Uncle Will’s “grave.”

Was this a warning — what happened to William can happen to you?

I found myself reluctant to touch them. They’re just painted rocks, I told myself; their power exists only in the mind of the one who attributes it to them: Audrey. What a stupid prank! Having regained my common sense, I reached for a stone on the pillow. She was afraid of methat’s all that this meant. She saw me as another O’Neill, a psychic, a tool of the devil. This was her way of “keeping” me in my place, a safe distance from her.

But if that was her intention, why not put the stones along the gate between the two properties? This arrangement seemed more personal. My bed resembled, a little too closely, a long, narrow grave. How far would Audrey go to make herself safe from the O’Neills? And what was she really afraid of — a family of “evil psychics” or people who might figure out she had killed my mother? Was she the one who had searched the house last night?

I draped my towel over a straight-back chair and pulled on my nightshirt. As ridiculous as it was, I couldn’t sleep with the stones nearby. I found a wooden crate, piled them in there, and carried it down to Uncle Will’s den. Tomorrow I would confront Audrey with what she had done.

Returning to my bed, I stretched out, physically exhausted but far from sleep. Picking up one of the psychic books, I reread the chapter about induced O.B.E.s, then skipped to the section about how an astral traveler can shape an out-ofbody experience, directing himself to certain places. It occurred to me that if I could direct mine, I might be able to pause at the wall, stop next to the rabbit, perhaps even keep myself from “going down the hole” that seemed to take me to the fire. If I could control my journey, and continue to ask to see more clearly, I might discover details that would tell me where that place was.

For the next hour I attempted to induce an O.B.E. My efforts were useless: If there was a psychic part of me, it would not let me control it. The author of the book talked about “letting go,” but the more determined and frustrated I became, the harder it was to let go. At last I gave up and turned out my lamp.

I lay back and tried to think about happy things — the games I played with Grace, Claire, and Jack, our senior class trip, Ring Day. . My eyes closed. Mental pictures became disjointed, floating by in fragments. My mind had almost shut off.

Suddenly, I sat up. Someone was watching the house.

There hadn’t been a sound; I didn’t know how I knew — I just did. I rose quietly and walked to the window nearest my bed. Kneeling there, I scanned the yard. The weather was beginning to clear, but the grass and trees were soaked, their wet surfaces shimmering with moonlight. Clouds dodged the moon, creating liquid shadows.

There! In the shadow of the big tree something moved. I waited, barely breathing. The edge of the shadow separated from the tree’s darkness and became the figure of a man: Elliot Gill.

He gazed up at the house. He was too far away for me to see the expression on his face, but his head was raised, the angle of his body attentive, like that of a worshipper at a shrine — or a hunter sighting his target. My skin crept. Was he obsessed and pitiful, or obsessed and dangerous?

He started walking toward the house. I should have listened to Zack, I thought; at least I could have made it harder for someone to get in. If I started locking up now, Mr.

Gill was sure to hear me. Did I want him to know that I saw him? If I turned on a light, would it deter him or draw him to me?

I wondered how long it would take the sheriff to respond to a call. Then I remembered: My cell phone was charged, but it was in my purse, in my car. Aunt Iris’s landline was in the downstairs hall.

Keeping the lights off, I hurried through Uncle Will’s room to the hall. I didn’t know how Aunt Iris would react and decided that I’d wake her only as a last resort. I crept down the stairs. The front door was closed, and I quietly turned the latch to lock it. The back door of the hall was open, a rectangle of moonlight shining on the floor, nothing but an unlocked screen between me and Mr. Gill.

I found the phone and lifted the receiver. It was old and did not have a lighted pad; I felt the keys, reminding myself where the numbers 9 and 1 were — bottom right and top left corners.

I was reluctant to call the police. Aunt Iris was just paranoid enough to imagine that they had come to carry her off to “the crazy-people place.” I could call Zack. His cell phone number was. . upstairs in the pocket of my muddy pants.

The dial tone changed to a ring, then a recorded voice, “If you would like to make a call, please hang up and—” In the silence of the house, the voice sounded loud. I quickly put the receiver down and looked toward the screen door. My heart stopped. Elliot Gill was standing ten feet from the house, looking up at the second-floor windows, unaware of me watching him from the floor below. I pressed 9. My finger hovered over the 1.

Then he turned abruptly, looking to the right. Something had caught his eye, movement on the other side of the yard.

He craned his neck, as if trying to get a better look, then took off, moving parallel to the house, as if he intended to run around it.

I dropped the phone and raced to the back door to close and lock it. Someone else passed by, moving fast. I couldn’t see who. I hurried to the living room, but the bushes blocked my view, both at the side and front windows. I crossed the hall to the dining room. Knowing the kitchen door was probably open, I looked out the window before going any farther.

Zack. Stopping by the cars, he turned on a large flashlight, shining its beam up the driveway.

He must have followed Mr. Gill around the house. If Mr.

Gill, realizing someone was watching him, had fled the property, his only choices were the path to the Flemings’ house or the driveway; the scrubby bank up to the bridge would be difficult to climb, especially in the dark.

After a minute of watching, Zack directed the beam at his feet, where a cat rubbed his legs. He sat down next to the cat, sharing his blanket with it. In the halo cast by the flashlight, I saw a stuffed knapsack and the gleam of a long, cylindrical object — a thermos. Zack was keeping watch over me.

Tears ran down my face before I could stop them. I went upstairs, lay down in bed, and, feeling safe, fell sound asleep.

When I awoke Saturday morning, Zack was gone. Before going downstairs, I took aspirin and tried to work the stiffness out of my body with stretching exercises. Glad that Marcy kept her shop so cool, I put on a long-sleeved shirt and pants and left my hair loose so it would swing forward and make less noticeable the scrapes on my face.

Aunt Iris was already in the kitchen, wearing one of her billowy dresses and a pair of flip-flops. “G’morning.”

“I prefer your hair up,” she responded. Having poured dry cereal into a coffee mug, she was “drinking” it.

“Aunt Iris, when I got home last night, I found some stones on my bed.”

She chewed and said nothing.

“They were painted like the ones Audrey placed over the hole where you buried Uncle Will’s ashes. I put the stones in a box and left them in the den. When you’ve finished your cereal, will you come see?”

“I know what they look like.”

“They were arranged on my bed,” I went on, “in the same pattern as those placed on the ashes.”

Aunt Iris raised her mug of Cheerios to her mouth and gazed at me above the rim.

“Do you know why?” I asked.

“No.”

“Well, can you guess why?”

“I don’t wish to.”

I turned on the teakettle, then tried another tactic. “What do stones that are painted like that mean?”

“Whatever you want them to mean.”

“I don’t want them to mean anything.”

“Then why did you ask?”

She tipped the mug and made small mouse noises, crunching on her cereal. I felt like banging my head against the kitchen cabinets.

I carried my tea to Uncle Will’s den and sat for a few minutes, studying the stones that had been laid on my bed.

They were obviously hand-painted. I carried two of them outside to compare them to the ones that had been set on Uncle Will’s plot — they were very similar — then headed toward the Flemings’ house, hoping Audrey would answer the door.

When I reached the gate between the two properties, I saw Clyde racing toward the creek in an effort to catch up with his duck friends. Audrey stood on the patio, watching him, her arms crossed.

“Mrs. Sanchez,” I called. “Mrs. Sanchez!”

She cocked her head and looked about.

“Can I talk to you?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m coming.” She walked briskly toward me, meeting me halfway between the gate and the house.

I held out the rocks. “I found these on my bed last night.”

She stared down at them. “You found these — on your bed, you say?”

“They’re like the ones you placed on Uncle Will’s plot of ashes.”

She frowned.

“I saw you the night you put them there.”

She glanced up at me, her brow knitted with concern.

“Why did you put these on my bed, Mrs. Sanchez?”

Audrey’s tiny upper teeth pressed into her lower lip. “Iris must have.”

“But I saw you do it! I saw you put them on my uncle’s plot.”

“I mean Iris must have put them on your bed. She’s imitating me — I don’t know why.” Audrey looked toward the house and shook her head. “You must be very careful, child,” she said, moving away from the stones, as if she thought it unwise to stand too close to them. “Don’t let what happened to me happen to you.”

“Meaning?”

“I was lured into believing in them, in their special powers.

They will betray you.”

“They. . who?”

“You know who I mean.”

“But I don’t,” I insisted. “Are you referring to my mother?

My great-aunt? I know that you were a client of my mother.

You depended on her, then you blamed her when your husband died. You thought she should have foreseen the accident and warned you.”

Audrey’s lips pulled over her tiny teeth. “Psychics are the tools of the devil. Joanna tempted me with knowledge not meant for human minds, and I was punished. So was William, but his debt is paid now. Better fire here than fire hereafter.”

“The fire here was set by kids, people who didn’t know he was in the car.”

“Willing or unwilling,” she replied, “knowing or not, any one of us might be called to do God’s work. Joanna’s killer saved her soul, ending her life before she could delve too far into evil.”

I stared at the woman in disbelief. “You’re saying her soul was saved by a thief and murderer?”

“Sometimes the least among us are chosen for holy work.”

I shook my head. People who attributed events that they desired to God’s will were crazy — and dangerous.

Audrey reached for me. Her fingers felt dry and papery on my arm. “You look upset, child. You see what Iris is trying to do, don’t you? She is telling you these things to turn you against me. She fears I will convert you.”

“It was Elliot Gill who told me.”

“Elliot.” She said the name with distaste. “Do not trust him. He was obsessed with your mother, and obsession does not come from God.”

“How about forgiveness?” I asked. “Where does that come from?”

“I will give Elliot a little credit,” Audrey said. “He contacted Social Services and told them what was going on in that house and that a child’s life was in danger.”

“Meaning me.”

“After your mother died, he called Social Services, and you were finally moved out of there. William hated him for it.

It is true that Elliot’s reason for doing that was revenge — he was still angry at William for discouraging Joanna’s affections. But all’s well that ends well. You were out of that house of evil. You see now why I feel I must help you leave again, before you come under her influence.”

I saw now a lot of things: the intense dislike between my uncle and Elliot Gill; the extreme views of Audrey that would allow her to sanction even acts of violence; and the longterm mental problems of my great-aunt. What I couldn’t see was which of these things had led to the death of my uncle.

AFTER LEAVING AUDREY, I considered dumping the stones in the creek, but I changed my mind and left the crate in Uncle Will’s den. As soon as I had time, I would get a magnifying glass and compare the two sets more carefully to see if there were telltale differences, enough to suggest that Audrey was telling the truth. When I passed through the kitchen, Aunt Iris was gone, her mug of cereal left behind. I ate a quick breakfast and headed for work.

Marcy greeted me with a preoccupied hello, followed a moment later by a quick survey of my outfit. “Am I keeping the temperature too cool for you?”

I faked a laugh. “No, I haven’t had a chance to do laundry.

These are my only clean clothes.”

It was a lame excuse, but I thought she believed it. Fifteen minutes later, when we were ready for business, she leaned over the glass counter where I was standing and pushed back my hair, revealing the long scrape on my cheek. “How did it happen?” she asked. When I didn’t respond immediately, she added, “What are you hiding beneath your long sleeves?”

“Just a few bruises.”

“How did it happen?” Marcy repeated.

“I fell. Tripped, actually. Aunt Iris doesn’t like to keep lights on. The house is really dark at night.”

“How many times did you fall?”

I hesitated, and she didn’t wait for me to fumble into a lie.

“There are scrapes on both sides of your face, widely spaced scrapes, close to each ear.”

Which meant, of course, I had to fall at least once on each side — kind of clumsy, even for me.

“I want a straight answer, Anna. What happened?”

“I ran into some kids who don’t like me.”

Marcy tilted her head to one side, her light eyes studying me. “You’re not a girl inclined to get into that sort of trouble.

You’re too smart.”

“You would think so.”

“What are you afraid to tell me?” she asked. “Were you molested?”

“No,” I replied quickly. “Just knocked down.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t know. They pushed me down face-first. I saw their backs when they were running away, but it was raining hard.

It was during yesterday’s storm.”

“Where?”

“Tilby’s Dream.”

She frowned. “You went back there again — to the place of the fire? Why?”

“I just wanted to.”

She studied my face, then shook her head, as if I didn’t get it. “Anna, this may seem like a small, innocent-looking town, but we have some kids here who are spoiled rotten and bored. They’re out of control. They consider burning someone else’s property a party game.”

“I know.”

“You should have come over last night. You should have come to my house.”

“When I got home, Zack was waiting on the porch for me.

I told him what happened, and he helped me get cleaned up.”

“Then he should have told me,” she said, sounding frustrated. “He should have brought you to our house. You called the sheriff, I assume.”

“Not yet.”

“All right,” she said brusquely, “I will.” She reached under the counter and pulled out her cell phone.

“No, don’t! Please don’t.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, I was told that if I did, there are others who’ll come after me.”

“That line is older than Hollywood,” Marcy responded, and flicked open her phone.

“For another, it could mess up my effort to figure out what happened to Uncle Will.”

Her blue eyes held mine for a moment, her gaze long and thoughtful.

“The guys are friends of the person who set the fire. The arsonist communicates by texting. It’s important for me to find out who is on the contacts list. I think that one of the kids, or someone else who has access to their messages, used the arson as a cover-up for my uncle’s murder. I don’t want to stir up these guys, not yet. I don’t want them putting pressure on other kids to keep quiet. I need to research a few more things before I go to the police.”

“Anna, you’re in over your head.”

“Give me till Monday morning. I’ll go to the sheriff then.

Promise!”

She sighed, then closed the phone. “If you don’t make the call on Monday, I will.”

“Deal,” I said, hoping to argue her out of it on Monday, and if that didn’t work, to convince the sheriff I’d be more help to him if he didn’t take immediate action.

Five minutes later our first customer came in. Last night’s storm had cooled down the weather, and business remained steady through lunchtime. After lunch a tour bus passed through. The jingling of the door’s sleigh bells didn’t stop till Marcy flipped over the CLOSED sign. “I could use a few more days like this,” she said.

“Me too. I like it busy.”

She collected our purses from the locked cabinet. “Did Zack give you the number for our house?”

“Just his cell.”

She printed neatly on a piece of paper. “Here’s the landline. You already have my cell number. Try that first. If you have any concerns about your own safety — or about Iris — call me.”

“Thanks.”

She set the store alarm and turned out the lights.

“How is Iris doing?” she asked as we walked to our cars.

“Not so good. She gets the present and past mixed up, and I think I’m making it worse.”

“I’m sure your presence has stirred up a lot of memories.”

“She argues with Uncle Will as if she sees him, and some of those arguments are about whether or not to keep a child.”

Marcy squinted at me in the slanting sun. “Meaning you.

She must be reliving arguments that occurred after your mother died.”

“Sometimes she talks to me as if I ’m Joanna, which may not be so crazy — I look a lot like my birth mother. I wish I knew how to help her.”

“I know you are concerned about her, Anna, but right now you must look out for yourself. This research you are doing before talking to the sheriff, what does it involve?”

“Just reading old newspapers,” I replied.

Marcy opened her car door. “All right, then. See you soon.” She turned to look at me. “Promise to call me if a problem arises, day or night, no matter the time.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Sure,” she repeated with a wry smile, as if she guessed I wouldn’t.

I planned to ask Marcy about Audrey and Mick Sanchez, but not until I knew a little more. Loyalty was important to Marcy, and she might sugarcoat her answers to cover for the person who had always taken care of her. I hoped the newspaper that reported Joanna’s death had also reported Mick’s accident.

Both the public and college libraries were closed on Saturday evening, but it was possible that the paper’s archives were online. Parking my car at the top of High Street, I walked to the only real hotel in town, looking for Internet access. I got lucky with a café at the rear of the hotel, but unlucky with the website that belonged to the paper: Its archives ran back only a year and a half. There was one phone number and two e-mail addresses: editor@ and adverts@. I typed to the first: WHEN R U OPEN?

I was messaged right back. FOR AS LONG AS I’M HERE.

WOULD LIKE 2 COME BY. I thought for a moment, then typed the only bait I could think of: STOPPING @ TEA LEAVES. WANT SOMETHING?

1 DOUB ESPR + 1 REG COFFEE MED SZ W/2 CREAMS & 4 DNUTS. I’M UPSTAIRS.

Fifteen minutes later I stood on Heron Street in front of a shingled storefront with stairs running up the outside of the building. I climbed the wooden steps and knocked on the door.

“It’s open.”

With one hand balancing my tray of drinks, the other grasping the bag of doughnuts and door handle, I pushed the door open with my foot.

The man inside hopped up. “Oh, sorry,” he said, taking the tray and bag from me and setting them on a table. He held out his hand. “Tom Wittstadt. Editor in chief, editor in minor, editor ed-cetera.”

He was medium height with a full face, curly salt-andpepper hair, and a bit of a belly under his blue Hawaiian shirt.

“And this is Hero.” A black Lab, lying close to the chair where Wittstadt had been sitting, thumped his tail.

“Hello, Hero.”

The dog lifted his head, his nose quivering. His eyes were opaque.

“He can’t see you, so he sniffs a lot,” the editor explained.

“Usually he stays put. You okay with dogs?”

“Yeah, sure. Can I pet him?”

The editor nodded. “Just talk to him and let him know you’re coming.”

“How’re you doing, Hero?” I said, moving toward him slowly. “Are you the brains behind this paper?” Silently I asked, Do you like to be petted, or do you just put up with it?

Hero pulled himself to his feet and walked toward me.

“Whoa! You must smell good,” Mr. Wittstadt said.

Hey, buddy.

The dog nosed my face gently, then licked me in the crease of my neck.

You like salt, huh? Where do you like to be petted?

Those little dimples behind your ears? I scratched them.

“Are you by any chance related to Iris O’Neill?” the editor asked.

I sighed. “My hair?”

“No, the way you are with Hero. He likes Iris, too.”

I smiled. “I’m her great-niece, Anna. Anna O’Neill Kirkpatrick.”

“Nice to meet you, Anna. I’m sorry about William.”

The editor pulled out his wallet, then dug in his jeans for change. The office was littered with paper — piles of it, balls of it, odd-shaped scraps of it. A worktable occupied the center of the room, with ancient office furniture filling up the rest of the space. The gray walls were decorated with maps and several posters of old music icons; I recognized Bob Dylan. On a shelf above Wittstadt’s desk was a row of bobbleheads, most of them Ravens and Orioles.

“How’s Iris doing?”

“Okay.” I stood up and retrieved the iced tea that I had bought myself. The editor handed me the exact amount for his order.

“You know, I tried to interview her,” he said. “She went psychic on me.”

“Psychic or psycho?” I asked.

I watched him empty out a tall travel mug, giving a drink to a plant, then pour both the double espresso and the regular coffee into the mug. “Psychic. That wily old woman, I think she was faking it. Mind you, I’m not saying she’s a fake. I just think she was pretending at the moment, because she didn’t want to answer my questions.”

“Could be.”

“Has Iris told you what she thinks happened to William?”

“No.”

He sipped. “Got any ideas of your own?”

“No.”

“Doughnut?” he offered.

“No thanks.”

He pulled off a piece with his teeth. “Have you been in touch with McManus?”

“A few days ago, just to find out what the police know so far.”

“Which is?”

“Probably the same thing he told you.”

Wittstadt smiled. “So why are you here, other than to torture a newspaper guy with short answers, all of which he already knew?”

“I’d like to look in your archives.”

“Yeah?”

“I went online. They go back only a year and a half.”

He laughed. “Because I go back only a year and a half.

That’s when I bought this prestigious paper.” He led the way to a rear room. I followed him to stacks that were illuminated by old fluorescent-tube lights, the shelves labeled in a handscrawl that was yellowed over with tape.

“What date do you want?”

I told him the year. “I guess you don’t have an index.”

Wittstadt snorted. “Is there a particular thing you are looking for so we can narrow the possibilities? You know, like a fishing report?”

Despite his easygoing manner, he’d be checking the archives later to see what I was researching. He’d guess it was connected to the O’Neills. But if he was relatively new to Wisteria, he wouldn’t know anything about Mick Sanchez.

“An obituary.”

I saw the light flicker in his eyes. “Well, that’s easy. They are always on the second-to-last page. Always,” he repeated. “I’ve tried to redesign the paper, but each time I do, my advertisers throw a fit. I’m just lucky the old publisher stopped using ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ before I took over.”

I smiled.

“I’ll leave you to your search, Anna. Careful with the drink, okay?”

“Sure.”

Since the paper was a weekly and I knew the end date would be mid-August, a week after Joanna’s death, my first search wouldn’t take long. I found the article on her, the one Uncle Will had enclosed with his letter, and reread it. There was a copy machine in the office, but I figured that asking to use it would invite more questions from Mr. Wittstadt. When I retrieved a sheet of paper from a recycle bin and picked up a pencil on the worktable, he watched me but didn’t comment. I jotted down details, then worked my way backward through the weeks of July, June, and May.

In the May 8 edition I discovered a short death notice announcing Mick Sanchez’s services and burial. I turned to the first page and combed through the newspaper, but there was no mention of the accident. Figuring that the death had come as a surprise and Audrey may have needed extra time to make funeral arrangements, I searched the previous edition. On page 3, I found it.

FATAL ACCIDENT ON SCARBOROUGH RD.

On the rainy evening of April 27, at approximately 7:00 p.m., Miguel Sanchez lost control of his vehicle on Scarborough Road about 4.5 miles past Wist Creek Bridge. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The victim, on prescription medication for a heart condition for the last two years, suffered a cardiac arrest. Police believe the medical emergency precipitated the accident. Sanchez, known as “Mick,” came from Chincoteague, Virginia, and had been the gardener for the Fairfax family of Oyster Creek for the last 26 years. He and his wife, Audrey (nee Randolph), also a Fairfax employee, were married for 23 years and lived at the Oyster Creek estate. They had no children. His wife is his sole survivor.

After rereading it several times, I wondered why Audrey or Joanna would have been surprised by his death. People dropped dead from heart attacks without any kind of warning, and the man was known to have a heart condition.

This information was useless, just more evidence that Audrey got obsessive. Still, I copied down the essentials: April 27, 7 p.m., 4.5 miles / WC Bridge Chincoteague, VA. 23 yrs — Audrey Randolph

26 yrs — Fairfax garden — heart condition Perhaps it was the way I arranged the words on the page, or perhaps there was a similarity between my mother’s handwriting and my own, but my eyes, focusing on “garden” and “heart,” suddenly saw those words on a different page.

In my mother’s poem there was a garden shaped like a heart. I remembered that a snake wrapped itself around a heart of flowers, making the flowers wilt. It was a haunting image, a picture of a heart being constricted and killed — a kind of heart attack. Could the poem be about Mick’s death?

Mr. Gill had said that my mother’s failure to foresee Mick’s accident and warn Audrey had upset her. People write about things that really upset them. And she had placed the poem in her client book.

I quickly returned the stack of newspapers to the shelf, snatched up my tea, and said a hasty good-bye to Mr.

Wittstadt and Hero. I ran all the way to my car, impatient to get home and read my mother’s poem. When a psychic wrote poetry, what kind of truths were locked inside her images?

AUNT IRIS’S GOLD sedan was parked in its usual spot.

Climbing out of my car, I scanned the windows of the house, wondering which room she was in. The army of cats greeted me, some mewing and rubbing against my legs as if they wanted to be fed, but when I approached the kitchen door, they backed off and slinked away.

Entering the kitchen, I paused to listen for movement in the house. It was silent. I tiptoed to Aunt Iris’s office, eased the door open, and found the room empty. I was tempted to go straight to Uncle Will’s den and retrieve the notebook.

Then a loud crash made me spin around. I ran toward the noise, through the dining room to the center hall. Aunt Iris stood in front of a mirror that hung above the phone table.

Her face quivering with fury, she slammed a hammer against the glass again and again.

“Aunt Iris!”

With her bare fingers, she pulled at a shard of silver that remained in the corner of the frame, trying to free it. I saw a trickle of blood. She didn’t flinch.

“Aunt Iris, stop!”

She swung the hammer at the frame’s backing, though only the corner sliver was left.

“Stop!”

A large fragment of the mirror lay on the table. Seeing it, she raised her hammer and brought it down swiftly. Shards exploded, jagged pieces of glass flying everywhere.

I stepped back into the dining room. Part of me wanted to run; the other part was afraid to leave my aunt alone. I picked up a candlestick — as if a sane person clutching a candlestick would be a match against an insane one wielding a hammer! Entering the hall again, I found her banging a small piece of glass on the corner of the table, hammering it until the fragments were glitter.

“Stop it!” I screamed at her. “Stop it now!”

She froze. Her eyes traveled up my right arm, and she shrank from me. “Put it down,” she said, staring at the candlestick.

“After you put down your hammer,” I replied.

She licked her lips. She began to whimper: “Don’t do it.

Please don’t do it.” She dropped the hammer and ran upstairs.

I set down the candlestick, surprised, and then I remembered: When my mother was killed, two candlesticks were missing, and they never found the murder weapon. My hands shook. I had to sit on the steps for a few minutes.

Finally, I rose to sweep the hall. When the glass was cleaned up, I climbed the stairs to check on my aunt.

She had left her door open and lay motionless on her bed. With the press of trees outside her window and the shades pulled, it was nearly night in her room. I tiptoed toward her.

“Who’s there?”

I took a half step back. “Anna. Just Anna. How are you feeling, Aunt Iris?”

She didn’t reply. Her hands were folded and resting on her stomach. A loosely rolled towel covered her eyes.

“Do you have a headache?” I asked.

Still, she didn’t answer.

“What can I do to help?”

“Make them stop,” she said. “Make them stop talking.”

“They — who?”

“They’re talking their fool heads off.”

“You mean the voices?”

“They won’t leave me alone.”

I moved closer. “What are they saying?”

She didn’t reply.

“Aunt Iris, what are the voices saying?”

“I can’t tell you.”

She lay as still as death.

“Why did you break the mirror?” I asked.

“They were making faces at me.”

“You mean the voices — they have faces?”

She shuddered. “Every time I looked in the mirror, someone was making a dreadful face at me.”

What face could she have seen except her own? I thought. But perhaps a mirror was like a psychic’s glass, a crystal ball. Perhaps she could see ghosts of the past in it.

“Did you see someone — in the mirror — who doesn’t like you?”

She didn’t reply.

“Maybe you saw Uncle Will. Were you and Uncle Will arguing again?”

She remained silent. I felt as if all the answers I wanted were locked inside her head, and I couldn’t find the question to open the vault.

“I’m tired,” she said. “I want to be alone.”

“All right. Get some rest. I’ll be downstairs.”

I checked the other rooms for broken objects, then returned to the first floor and checked the living room. Given the number of candlesticks, heavy lamps, and knives in the house, I felt silly locking the hammer in the trunk of my car, but I would have felt even sillier if I had left it out and she used it again. Then I headed for the den, hoping that Aunt Iris would sleep for a while and give me time to study my mother’s notebook.

I found it where I had left it, behind a row of books, and carefully unfolded the old newspaper it was wrapped in. The journal’s entries started in January of the year my mother died. While other clients were listed only once a week or once a month, appointments for the initials A.S. appeared twice a week or more. About half of the entries, which I assumed were for Audrey Sanchez, had been marked

“Paid.”

I found an appointment for A.S. two days before Mick Sanchez’s accident. An appointment that had been set for the day after the accident was scratched out. Another appointment, four days after, was also crossed out. The final listing I found for A.S. was exactly one week after Mick Sanchez’s death. It was checked off, as were other appointments that Audrey appeared to have kept. I wondered if there had been a big blowup that day.

At some point I needed to examine the book line by line, but I was impatient to get to the poem. I carried them both to Uncle Will’s desk, sat down, and unfolded the paper to read.

The seed cracks open, the green sprout of a plant emergesa green snake.

The snake slides past a rabbit, glides past a cat.

Winding itself around flowersa garden shaped like a heartthe snake turns to me.

It wears a mask.

Flowers wilt.

I had remembered correctly the second half of the poem.

The sentence structure was inverted, but “snake” was the subject — it was the snake winding itself around flowers, winding itself around a garden shaped like a heart. I imagined a heart of flowers, something like a picture on a Valentine’s Day card, being wrapped and squeezed by a snake till all the flowers wilted. But what was this “mask” thing all about? Perhaps the snake was in disguise — or rather, the snake itself was some kind of disguise. This much I understood: Whatever was killing the heart of flowers, it was not what it appeared to be.

I backed up in the poem. The snake had come out of a seed. I imagined it looking like a green sprout from a germinating seed, but growing into a snake. So. . so what appeared to be good was really bad. What appeared to be as harmless as an emerging flower was really an evil snake.

I moved on to the other animals. Why had my mother bothered to include them? I stared at them, puzzled, then tried to think about the images the way an English teacher would. A rabbit was a symbol of fertility, as in the phrase

“breeding like rabbits.” It was a symbol of spring, as in the Easter Bunny. Rabbits were shy, gentle, innocent-looking creatures. Cats, on the other hand, were connected with witches and often perceived as sneaky predators in the natural world. Symbolically, they were not innocent. So what did this mean? A rabbit and a cat — innocence and sneakiness, prey and predator“ What are you reading?”

I jumped at the sound of Aunt Iris’s voice. She was standing a few feet from me on the other side of the desk, having entered the room as quietly as a cat.

“Joanna, what are you doing?”

So I was my mother again. “Checking through my appointment book,” I replied.

She stepped closer to the desk, eyed the notebook, then picked up the sheet of paper resting on it. “What is this?”

“A poem.”

She read it, her face tense with concentration. Then her eyes lifted slowly above the edge of the paper, locking on mine. “You’re working,” she said accusingly. “This is a reading.”

A reading — as in psychic reading, I thought. Maybe when a psychic saw images — in a crystal ball or anywhere elsethey weren’t necessarily literal images. They weren’t photographic glimpses, but symbols, like symbols on Tarot cards, like symbols in a poem. She had to interpret what she was seeing, had to read into them the way you read into a poem. Which is what my mother was doing, jotting down and mulling over images she had accessed psychically, trying to understand Mick’s death and how she had missed foreseeing it.

“That’s right,” I said, taking the paper from my aunt, laying it down on the book again. “I was thinking about Mick Sanchez.”

“But it was an accident. An accident!” she insisted, then snatched the paper and book, and ran out of the room.

I had seen the look in her eyes: one of fear. Not surprise, not anger. Fear. Of what? What didn’t she want meJoanna — to figure out through a psychic reading?

Her footsteps along the porch ended with the slam of a screen door. She was in the kitchen. I suddenly realized what she could do and raced after her. Entering the kitchen, I saw the stove’s blue flames leap up to the sheet of paper. It curled into a black leaf. She turned another knob on the stove, and I saw that the notebook was on the back burner. I rushed forward. Shoving her aside, I turned the greasy knob, but the book had already caught fire. I picked it up by the corner and threw it into the sink. Turning on the faucet, I let the cold water run over the book and my arm. The underside of my wrist felt burned. What was left of my mother’s book hissed into a crumpled mess.

“Why did you do this?” I cried.

“I told you before, Joanna, it’s dangerous to pry into the secrets of others.”

“What secrets?” I demanded.

“I warned you. Only animals can be trusted. People will turn on you.”

“People like Audrey?”

She put her hands over her eyes, as if she were trying to block out what she saw. “Forget about Mick. It was an accident.”

Her fear and insistence made me think his death was anything but.

I remembered her first mention of Mick and how puzzled she was when I, trying to play the role of my mother, had referred to him as “my lover.” I remembered the tone of surprise: “Your lover?” Of course, Mick was a generation too old for my mother. He was Audrey’s age; he was Iris’s age. What if he had been Aunt Iris’s boyfriend? Was this one of the secrets that she could never tell?

If I asked directly, she would probably deny it. I had to cast the question in another form. “Aunt Iris, why did Mick choose to marry Audrey?”

She stood still, her fingers gripping the knobs of the stove, and for a moment I thought she was going to turn it back on. I set my hands lightly on her arms. “Why didn’t he marry you?”

She pulled away from me. The large frame of her body bent forward and her shoulders sagged. I began to regret my question.

At last she spoke, her voice rough. “He said I was crazy.

He said I was sick. He said I was too sick in the head to raise a child. That’s what he said.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He was afraid of me.”

“I’m really sorry.” I lay my hand on her back, but she slipped away, withdrawing into the dining room, walking slowly down the hall, climbing the steps quietly.

I didn’t like Mick Sanchez. If I discovered that my greataunt had killed him, I wasn’t sure I would tell the police. But I had to know, because it looked as if Joanna had been trying to find out the same thing and had paid the price for it.

Picking up a pen, I jotted on a napkin the images and wording I could remember from the poem. As I wrote, I became aware of the stinging heat in my wrist. I got up to retrieve some ice from the freezer.

It had become a habit, reaching up to catch the large, speckled fish before it fell on my foot. But there was no fish today. I looked in the shelves and bins of the lower part of the fridge, then in the trash can. I’d have smelled the fish if Aunt Iris had cooked it. I looked out the back of the house.

Maybe she threw it into the creek. Maybe she thought it would perk up and swim away.

Returning to the kitchen, I wrapped a chunk of ice in a dish towel and held the cold pack against my wrist, studying the images I had written down.

Did the snake represent a sneaky form of killingsomething that masked itself as a naturally occurring heart attack? Were the rabbit and cat symbolic of other people who had been involved? The turbulent emotions of the last week and lack of sleep were catching up with me: Images shifted in my mind like the colored shapes in a kaleidoscope. I needed fresh air to clear my head. I went upstairs to change into shorts and running shoes. After checking on Aunt Iris, finding her asleep in her room, I grabbed an apple and headed out for a walk.

The gardens once kept by Mick Sanchez were a short distance away. What if there was a literal basis for my mother’s images, something concrete and specific that tied her garden symbols to Mick? Perhaps if I saw the gardens, the images would make more sense. With less than an hour of sunlight left, I hurried to the Fairfax estate.

FIFTY MINUTES LATER I stood scowling at the Fairfaxes’ fence, tall metal bars that ended in an earthy-smelling marsh. The ground had turned soft and wet beneath my feet, and with each step, I sank in deeper, my footprints becoming puddles. The high river grass was alive with whining insects.

I imagined that snakes liked it too.

I hadn’t been able to enter the property from the road. The estate’s large gates had been locked electrically. There was a keypad for punching in codes, and I had tried some obvious ones without luck. If there was a caretaker on the property, he hadn’t responded to the intercom button that I’d pressed repeatedly. So I’d followed the iron fence, thinking there might be a service or employee entrance, and discovered a smaller gate with a narrow driveway. But it, too, was locked electrically and didn’t accept the random codes that I’d tried. I’d peered through the bars; if there was a car parked inside, the landscaping prevented me from seeing it. The left side of the property was thick with trees, so I’d turned back and searched on the right side instead, moving toward the Flemings’ property. There was no break in the fence, not until it ended where I was standing now, in a marsh.

I did not want to wade any farther into the muck, not in the growing darkness. I realized that Marcy might know the gate codes, but she’d ask questions I didn’t want to answer yet.

And this time, I knew, there would be an immediate call to the sheriff. I would have to be patient and search again in daylight.

I took a shortcut across the Flemings’ property. No one was on the terrace. Ducks waddled fearlessly on the lower lawn. Beneath the dock light, the cabin cruiser and rowboat rocked gently. The rowboat!

I tried to recall the water approach to the Fairfax property.

The house sat on top of a hill, with all but its roof invisible behind the trees. The shoreline itself was crescent-shaped, the creek cutting into the land. As I remembered it, the drop from lawn to water was a steep clay and sand bank, a wall of erosion high enough to make climbing difficult. With the family gone, there was no place for docking and no wooden steps up to the lawn. But if the rowboat could be nosed onto the tiny strip of beach, I might be able to climb upespecially if Zack gave me a hand.

I walked quickly around the Flemings’ house to the front. I heard Clyde baying before I reached the porch. He stopped, as if silenced. As soon as I rang the bell, Audrey answered the door.

“She’s gone off, hasn’t she! I knew she would. These things work in cycles.”

“No, Aunt Iris is fine,” I replied. “May I speak with Zack, please?”

“He isn’t home. I knew it was going to be a bad night,” Audrey went on, her eyes peering into the darkness behind me as if she saw signs of evil hanging from the trees. “When I took the dog out, I heard Iris screaming like a banshee.”

I was curious now. “What was she saying?”

“It was gibberish, all gibberish. The devil’s language.”

“I see. Do you know when Zack will be home?”

Audrey shook her head. “He went out with that girl.”

“Erika?”

She nodded.

“May I leave a note for Zack?” I had his cell phone number, but I wasn’t going to call him, not when he was with Erika.

“Of course. Come in. We’ll talk.”

“Thanks, but I just want to leave a note for Zack.”

I saw the change in her eyes. Lips pursed in disapproval, she let me in and begrudgingly provided pen and paper, watching my hand as I wrote. I figured that even if my note were folded and taped, Audrey would read it, so I left out details, simply asking Zack to call me no matter how late he got in.

“Please make sure he gets this tonight,” I said, handing the note to her.

When I returned to the house, I found several of the cats lounging around the kitchen and a few nuggets of fresh food scattered around an empty platter on the floor. Aunt Iris must have gotten up and fed them. I checked out front and saw that her car was gone.

For a moment I considered calling the sheriff, but what could I say — that I was worried because Aunt Iris had smashed a mirror, laid down for a nap, and then gone out?

When I left her, the violent behavior appeared to be over.

And it was, after all, nine o’clock on a Saturday night, a time when a lot of people went out. Besides, she had left the house at stranger times than this.

Of course, McManus would come if I told him I had some ideas about Uncle Will’s death, but all I really had was a pile of disjointed theories. I paced for an hour, waiting for something to happen: Zack to call, Aunt Iris to return, the images from my mother’s notebook to fall into a pattern that I understood. Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer.

I searched the house for a stepladder, found a three-foot one, and carried it with a flashlight to the Flemings’ dock.

The moon, which had glowed yellow at its rising, shone whiter and more brightly now. For the next fifteen minutes I focused on the task of launching the boat and rowing it through the dark. It was hard to judge distance without being able to see the shoreline. I felt as if I had rowed miles when I finally caught the glint of moonlight on the rooftop and chimneys of the Fairfax house. I turned toward shore. As I rowed closer to the sandy bank, I pushed one of the oars straight down in the water to gauge the depth. I couldn’t touch bottom. I got goose bumps all over — I really don’t like dark water. But I continued to test every ten feet or so, afraid that if I ran the boat aground, I’d damage it.

When the depth dropped to two feet, I gingerly climbed into the dark creek. My wet shoes felt heavy on my feet and kept slipping on the river stones. The boat had an anchor, but I didn’t know how to make sure it would catch and hold in the creek bottom. I towed the boat a short distance, then carried the anchor to shore. I dug a hole, dropped in the anchor, and pushed the heavy sand over it.

By the time I had done that, the long line for the anchor had unreeled and the boat had floated away from shore. I waded out again, hating the way the currents swirled and eddied around my legs, imagining eels and other slimy things. I towed the boat a second time and shortened its rope with a knot. Then I carried the flashlight and ladder to shore and set the ladder close to the bank. Climbing to its top, I found the edge of the lawn was even with my shoulders.

I tried to pull myself up and over the edge, grabbing handfuls of grass. Tufts tore off, spraying sand in my face. I tried again and created a small landslide. Looking to either side of me, I saw that far down on the left, close to the area that became swamp, the bank dipped and was noticeably lower than where I perched. Unfortunately, the base of it was submerged, the moonlit creek lapping against it.

I climbed down and carried the ladder into a foot of water, gritting my teeth all the way. After stabilizing the ladder on the rough bottom and climbing to the top, I found I had gained only six inches on the bank. I pulled hard with my arms, my legs and elbows grinding into the sandy bank, and finally heaved myself onto the grass.

Standing up, I brushed off and climbed the hill toward a stand of trees that screened the house from the land below it. On the other side of the trees I was surprised to find a pond, obviously man-made, a perfect oval, a flawless mirror reflecting the three-quarter moon. With an entire creek below, I wondered why the Fairfaxes had bothered to put in an artificial pond.

They must really love their privacy, I thought. Then I remembered a story about wealthy people who stocked their ponds with exotic fish that they and their friends could enjoy catching. That’s when it struck me, not like a bolt of lightning out of the blue, more like a fish falling on my foot: the speckled one in the freezer, the one that didn’t look like the others Uncle Will had caught, the one that had disappeared recently. I started to laugh. What if Uncle Will had been poaching? What if, winter and summer, when the Fairfax family moved on to their other fabulous homes, he had come here to fish?

And what if someone else had made the connection and removed the evidence that Uncle Will hung out here? I stopped laughing. My eyes moved from the pond to the dark hedge set back from it. I couldn’t take my eyes off the hedge, a tall wall of clipped bushes, forty or fifty feet long. Its top, traced in moonlight, was artfully cut to form notches, like those in the battlements of a castle. My eyes dropped down to the base, where a rectangle was cut through the greenery: the doorway I had passed through two times in the last ten days. I glanced back at the pond and shivered. When the owners were gone, this was more than a peaceful spot to fish; it was a perfect place for murder.

Who knew that Uncle Will came here? Aunt Iris, and Audrey, even Elliot Gill could have known. Anyone who happened to be on the water at the right time might have seen Uncle Will arrive in his boat, especially if this was a regular habit of his. The police had found the boat adrift some distance down the creek. It had probably been cut free by his killer, so the police wouldn’t guess where my uncle had been fishing. Of course, it was possible that, as longtime neighbors, Will and Iris knew a way onto the estate that I hadn’t found; Audrey, too, as a former employee.

I passed through the door in the shrubbery and found myself in an enclosed garden, the hedge and two brick walls making three sides of the square area, the house making the fourth. Lights flicked on, outside lights — there was probably a motion sensor. I stood in the shadow of the hedge for several minutes, studying the house. Every window was dark. If there was a resident caretaker, it was likely that his windows faced the swampy or wooded sides, rather than the scenic view of pond, garden, and creek.

I surveyed the garden, which was divided by crushed stone paths into four sections with a gazebo at the center.

“Well, hello,” I said softly. To my right was a human-size rabbit, shrubbery sculpted into a tall rabbit with a humanlike stance. Next to him was another tall bush pruned into the figure of a cat, and on the other side of the garden were two more topiary figures, a caterpillar that appeared to be sitting on a mushroom and some kind of rodent — a dormouse, of course! He belonged, along with the Cheshire cat, white rabbit, and caterpillar, to Alice in Wonderland.

It was a children’s garden and, like a deserted playground, it felt lonely. While summer was in bloom everywhere else in Wisteria, these flower beds had only the headless stalks and papery leaves of dead spring flowers. I walked the garden paths, pausing to study the rabbit and the cat. Rabbit and cat! Amazed at finding the place that had figured in my O.B.E., I had momentarily forgotten about Joanna’s words: The snake slides past a rabbit, glides past a cat. The images she had “seen” could have been drawn from here. Topiary gardens, requiring years of pruning to create, were maintained for decades and longer.

It was possible that this garden had been kept by Mick Sanchez.

Walking the perimeter of the garden with Joanna’s images swirling in my mind, I tripped. A hose had been left out, a long rubber snake with a metal head pointing to the gazebo. I turned and strolled toward the wooden structure.

The gazebo had been designed like a child’s playhouse.

Four of its six sides had windows with shutters, each shutter carved with a heart. The other two sides, one facing the house, and its opposite, facing the entrance through the hedge, had doorways with a carved heart above each of them. I mounted the four steps up to the gazebo and stood inside, pivoting slowly, looking out at the garden. From this focal point, the pattern formed by each quadrant of dried stalks became clear: hearts.

Child-size chairs were pushed over to one side of the structure. I glanced down, then clicked on my flashlight to survey the floor. A film of dirt and pollen covered the portion facing the house, but the section facing the door in the hedge, and the steps down from it, had been washed clean.

I was about to turn off my light when I noticed a deep groove in the wood flooring. I traced it: a square, a door to storage beneath the gazebo. Was this my “rabbit hole,” part of myand Uncle Will’s — route to the fire site?

It was easy to imagine a murder scenario: Uncle Will holding his fishing rod, gazing peacefully at the pond, struck on the back of the head by someone he never saw coming; Uncle Will being dragged from the pond, through the hedge, past the topiary rabbit; Uncle Will’s body stored beneath the gazebo, the murderer waiting for a way to dispose of it. I figured that the hose had been used to wash down the bloody track left behind.

Although I had followed the path of Uncle Will’s murder during my O.B.E., I didn’t think I had actually been present at his death. I would have sensed someone else on the paths of this garden, the way I had sensed the crowd on the night of the fire. Somehow, for some reason, Uncle Will chose to lead me along the path he had traveled from his death to the fire. I gazed down at the door to the storage area. There could be evidence here: hair, threads from clothing, a weapon, somthing. I knelt down. Feeling around the edge of the door, I found an indentation that allowed me to slip my fingers under the boards and lift.

I stared in horror. The beam of my flashlight illuminated the lower end of a leg. The victim’s foot was bare, the skin pale and splotchy. My stomach heaved, and I thought I was going to throw up. Then the foot moved.

“AUNT IRIS. WHAT are you doing in there?”

She slowly shifted position, her face edging out of the shadow created by the gazebo’s flooring. “Get in.”

“No way,” I said.

“You must get in.”

She reached up to grasp my arm. I pulled back.

“You must do what I say.”

“I won’t.”

I shone my light into the dark hole, but I couldn’t tell how big it was or what it contained. Aunt Iris’s eyes shone back at me with a peculiar light. I wasn’t sure if I was gazing into the eyes of a psychic or a madwoman. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be the next one to die.

“Then you must get in, Anna.”

She’d spoken as if she had heard my thoughts, and she had called me Anna. The floodlights, which I had triggered earlier and which had begun to dim, suddenly flashed on again. Someone else is here, I thought.

Iris gripped my arms, pulling with all her strength. “If harm comes to you, William will never forgive me. Get in!”

The floodlights went off quickly, not fading, the way they had before. There was no time to reason through the situation. I climbed into the hole with her and lowered the door.

The area beneath the gazebo was about three feet deep and appeared to extend to the edges of the structure.

“Put out your light,” Aunt Iris said. “It’ll shine through the cracks.”

I did so with great reluctance. The moist earth smelled strong, a mix of something cloyingly sweet — mulch, I thought — and something rotten that I couldn’t identify.

Aunt Iris heard me sniffing. “What do you smell?”

“I–I don’t know. It’s cold in here.”

“He can’t help it.”

I did not find it reassuring that she believed Uncle Will was in there with us. After all that had happened, I was no longer certain that only the things I saw existed. I sat hunched, the wetness of the earth seeping through my shorts. When I rested my hands on the dirt beneath me, it felt sticky. Blood-soaked, I thought.

“His blood has dried,” Aunt Iris assured me.

“Dried here?”

“Yes. Be quiet. She’s coming.”

“Who?”

“Quiet!”

My ears strained to hear something. Minutes ticked by.

No one came. Still, something was going on with the outside lights.

“Aunt Iris, why are you hiding in here?” I whispered.

“I don’t exactly know.”

Oh, great, I thought.

“I knew I had to come here, just as you and she had to come here, but I don’t know which one of us is drawing the other two.”

I repeated her words in my head, trying to tease out their meaning.

“Anna?” The voice came from beyond the gazebo, from the direction of the house. “Anna, where are you? Are you all right?”

Breathing a sigh of relief, I pressed my fingertips against the boards above us to open the door. Aunt Iris’s powerful hands grasped mine and pulled them down.

“It’s Marcy,” I said.

“Of course it is!” she hissed.

“But—” I stopped. My aunt’s tone of voice was that of a frustrated teacher speaking to a student who was slow to catch on. I struggled to piece together events.

I had left a note for Zack. Marcy had probably read it. She considered me her responsibility. She probably had keys to the property, knew the gate code, and — no, wait — I hadn’t told Zack I was coming here. I hadn’t even mentioned borrowing the boat.

“She’ll look in here,” Iris whispered. “Push back as far as you can from the opening. I’ll go out and talk to her.”

I heard footsteps on the gravel. Marcy was approaching the gazebo, walking more slowly as she drew closer. Aunt Iris gave me a final shove with her bare foot, raised the trapdoor, and climbed out.

“Well, look who it is.” Marcy’s voice had a strange flatness to it; I couldn’t tell if she was surprised.

“Hello, Marcy. I was expecting you.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Same thing as you are,” Aunt Iris replied.

“I don’t think so.”

“Cleaning up,” Aunt Iris went on. “You’ve been sloppy, leaving the hose out, washing only half the gazebo floor. I hope you properly disposed of the weapon.”

“I did.”

“And his fishing gear?”

“Temporarily, but I will take care of it. Thomas isn’t due back from his vacation for another week. No one’s minding the place, so there was no need to hurry. Nor was it possible — I’ve had my hands full, keeping track of Anna.”

“I want you to leave her alone, Marcy.”

“Do you, now? Don’t tell me, you’ve become fond of her!”

There was something creepy about Marcy’s voice — an artificial cheerfulness. Then it darkened. “You foolish old woman, don’t you realize why Anna has come?”

“Because William died.”

“Because William was applying for guardianship of you.

We have discussed this a hundred times. Once he had guardianship, he would have legal control over your money

—”

“I’m not listening to you,” Iris said defiantly.

“Control over where and how you live, control over your health care—”

“I’m not listening!”

“Control over your entire life. And once he did, he and Anna would arrange to have you committed.”

“No!”

“He did it before,” Marcy reminded her. “Or have you forgotten those days with your special, sniffling, filthy-haired friends?”

“William promised he’d take care of me.”

“Of course. Of course he’d take care of you, by shipping you off to an asylum.”

“No! He promised he wouldn’t do that again. He — he swore it.” Aunt Iris’s voice, confident when the argument started, had begun to waver.

“It wouldn’t require much effort,” Marcy continued calmly, “not with his legal power and a bright young niece to support his claims. That’s why you killed him, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t.”

“Tell the truth,” Marcy challenged.

“ I didn’t!” Aunt Iris insisted, but her denial melted to a rough whisper. “At least, I don’t remember doing it.”

“You let it happen,” Marcy replied. “You knew I would try and you let me. Just like you let me kill Joanna.”

I shoved my fist in my mouth to keep any sound from escaping.

“I didn’t want you to,” Iris argued. “I didn’t mean for you to.”

“What else could you have intended? You told me Joanna was using her gift, figuring out how Mick died,” Marcy said.

“It wasn’t a matter of what you didn’t want to happen but, rather, what you wanted more: whatever was best for your little girl. I’ll always be your little girl. You’ll always love me best, Mommy Iris.” Marcy’s childlike lisp turned my skin to gooseflesh. “So, where is Anna?” she asked softly.

“I don’t know.”

“But you know what has to be done, don’t you, Mommy Iris? Perhaps you foresaw it.”

“I can’t stand any more killing!”

“Anna is piecing together our story, and she is not going to give up on it. There’s some family resemblance between her and me. We have the same approach to life’s little challenges, and I have found that unexpectedly enjoyable.

It’s unfortunate that we both can’t survive this.”

“I can’t stand the voices!” Iris cried. “I can’t endure any more ghosts!”

“Close your eyes, Mommy Iris, and you won’t see them.”

“I will always see them,” Iris replied. “Only a — a psychotic, heartless person would not.”

There was a moment of silence, followed by a sound that made my muscles tighten, a soft, fleshy thump.

“Don’t!” Aunt Iris cried. “Don’t!”

I pushed open the trapdoor. Aunt Iris lay sprawled on the ground. Marcy, with her hand still raised, turned quickly.

“Pop goes the weasel.”

“If you’ve hurt her. .,” I warned, starting toward Aunt Iris.

“I find it touching the way you two have bonded.”

The pale skin of Iris’s left cheek was darkening with a bruise, and the corner of her mouth oozed blood. I tried to raise her, but she was dazed, unable to sit up without my arm around her. If I ran for help, I’d have to leave her behind.

“There was no need to come to her rescue,” Marcy told me, resentment seeping into her voice. “I wouldn’t kill my own mother.”

“You killed your father,” I replied. “The image in my mother’s reading referred to you. You were the seed of Mick that produced a snake rather than a flower.”

“He hated me.”

“You killed him in the car accident. The snake was masked. I don’t know how you pulled it off, but his death only appeared to be a heart attack.”

Marcy laughed her bright, tinkly laugh. “Oh, it was a genuine coronary. Mick took heart medicine. I changed his pills for something a bit more exciting.”

She spoke in the same light and informative way as she did when explaining trends in holiday ornaments. Not a hair of her smoothly styled cut was out of place. Her pressed shirt was tucked neatly into casual pants. Did she have a weapon? The night was too warm, I thought, to be wearing that jacket.

“It was so easy,” Marcy went on. “I knew they wouldn’t do an autopsy, not in this backwoods place, not on a man with a serious heart condition whom everyone seemed to like too much to kill. The lack of bleeding after the accident confirmed their belief that he had died of a heart attack just prior to it.”

While talking, she moved herself between the garden exit and Aunt Iris and me, trapping us. I looked back at the house. Marcy must have entered the garden through the large double doors; it appeared that one was open, but it was dark inside. I thought about the way the outside lights were instantly extinguished: Had she cut the electric power?

Did she know how to turn off the security alarm? If I ran through the house, would the front gates open?

“Mick was an interfering old fool,” Marcy continued, “spying on me and telling my parents every little thing I did.

They came to hate me, thanks to him.”

I needed to keep her talking while I sorted out my options.

And I needed to separate myself from Aunt Iris. She could sit up on her own now.

“I don’t see how one employee could make parents hate their child.”

“True enough. My adoptive parents were inclined that way from the beginning — or rather, from the time my brother was born. Once they held in their arms the spitting image of a blond Fairfax, they wanted me out of their lives. They stuck me in a corner with Audrey. And they spoiled my brotherthey gave him things that I should have had.”

“Like what?” I asked, but she didn’t need encouragement.

“Whenever I got the opportunity, I took back. I took my share. Then Mick would go running to them, tattling on me.”

“Maybe he was trying to help,” I said, defending him, baiting her. “You were his child, and he wanted you to grow up right. I think it was Mick’s way of loving.”

“He feared me! I could see it in his eyes. He hated and feared me, and he persuaded everyone else to, with one exception: Audrey.” I heard the scorn in her voice. “Mick hadn’t a clue how to handle Audrey.”

“But you did,” I replied. “You’re good at manipulating people.”

“Thank you.”

I hadn’t meant it as a compliment. “It’s you, not Aunt Iris, who needs to be committed. You’re crazy.”

She laughed. “Well, I’m certainly not psychic. And you know the choice that we O’Neill women have.”

Psychic or psychotic. Uncle Will had known that too. The child whom he and Aunt Iris had argued about was Marcy, not me. What he feared had come true: Living close to her child had caused Iris great pain.

“When Uncle Will found my mother’s client book, he realized that you had killed Mick. He poached here, and he recognized the images in my mother’s psychic reading.”

“William always hated me. Last month, when he figured it out, he rather stupidly told Mommy Iris, told her what she already knew. It didn’t take much for me to discover why she was suddenly so upset. Have you decided what it is going to be for you?”

I looked at Marcy, puzzled.

“Psychic or psychotic?” she asked, her voice pleasant, as if she were inquiring about a preference for regular or decaf.

Aunt Iris, I said silently, if you can hear me, I need you to distract Marcy. Aloud I said, “I don’t think a person chooses to be either.”

“Perhaps not chooses,” Marcy responded, “but allows it, nurtures it.”

Aunt Iris, please help me. I need a running start.

“Who’s there?” Aunt Iris murmured, turning her head slowly toward the gazebo. Marcy and I followed her gaze. “Is it you, William?” she asked.

It’s me, Anna.

“William,” Aunt Iris murmured.

No. Anna!

“William, let it rest,” she moaned. She moved her head from side to side, grimacing, but kept her eyes fixed on the space above the trapdoor. With the bright moonlight reflecting off the gazebo’s roof, its interior looked dark and murky.

“William,” she groaned.

Her eyes shimmered in the silver light, then began to rise under the wrinkled tent of her eyelids.

“Stop it!” Marcy said.

“William. . William. . William!” Aunt Iris cried, her voice climbing higher each time she spoke. She rocked back and forth.

“William. . William. . William!”

The sockets of her eyes shone white, like those of a marble statue.

“Stop it, Mommy Iris!”

Her mouth twitched, stretched, had a life of its own. Then her eyes rolled forward again, and another face, a stranger’s face, looked out of my aunt’s.

“Stop it now!” Marcy demanded.

Run, Anna.

I blinked. What?

The stranger’s face retracted, grew back into Aunt Iris’s.

Her body shuddered, as if she were going to vomit whatever had possessed her.

Run, Anna.

I stared at her in amazement. This is for me?

Her mouth stretched again. She looked like a snake about to swallow something larger than itself.

Marcy crouched with fear. “Stop it, Mommy! Stop it!”

Run, Anna, run.

I took off.

I RACED TOWARD the house and found the door open. Behind me I heard Iris wailing and Marcy shouting at her. How long could Iris keep Marcy distracted? Long enough for me to get to the front door and up the driveway, that’s what I needed.

The moment I stepped into the dark house, I remembered that my flashlight was under the gazebo. There was no time to wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I plunged ahead. I didn’t know the floor plan, didn’t know even the basic shape of the house, having seen only the section of it that backed up to the walled garden. But big houses often had center halls. If the pond and the children’s garden were centered, it was likely that I had entered the hall that ran straight to the front door.

I ran straight into a wall. For a moment I was stunned, then I felt the surface in front of me — wood — a door. I groped for a handle. When my fingers touched the metal knob, I wanted to yank open the door, but I forced myself to turn the knob slowly, quietly, then I tiptoed through and closed the door again, just as slowly and quietly, not wanting to call attention to myself.

There wasn’t a pencil line of light visible. I moved forward steadily, trying to walk straight, my hands out in front of me. I felt as if I had stumbled into a room the size of a gymnasium.

In a house like this, the rooms could be large, I thought, and so could the halls.

I heard footsteps. Marcy had entered the house. I heard her walking in the room behind the door. I fought the urge to race through the house: I was a mouse in a pitch-black maze being pursued by a cat who knew the maze by heart.

The moment I made a noise, I had better be close to an exit.

I moved steadily forward, listening for Marcy, wondering why she didn’t burst through the door between us.

Because she knew other doors, other ways to get to me, I thought. She wasn’t going to give herself away, not until she had me where she could strike quickly and easily — from behind, her favorite method.

I kept walking. My legs felt strange and rubbery. With each step, my sense of direction became less certain. My hand touched something that felt like wood and was shaped like a thick rod. I felt to the right and left of it — the spindles of a staircase. The banister they supported was wide, like that of the main stairway of a large house. But the stairs weren’t straight ahead. They didn’t point to what I had hoped was the front door, or maybe they did and I had veered off course. I was confused.

Having nothing else to follow, I followed the stairway wall, losing track of the steps as they rose. I came to another wall with a door in it. Finding the knob, I turned it quietly, pushed against the door, and stepped through. I lurched forward, hanging on to the door handle and swinging wildly. Another set of steps. The door had saved me from tumbling headlong down them.

Regaining my balance, I took one step down and groped in vain for a railing. The walls on either side of me were close, like those of a stairway down to a basement, but the air didn’t smell like a cellar’s. I took two more steps, then jammed my foot against a level floor.

I was just four steps down, in a wing of the house, I thought. Wings were often smaller, at least in the historic houses I had seen; I reasoned that it would be easier to find an exit. I’d do it methodically, feeling my way around a room till I found a window. I quietly shut the door to my wing and moved along the hallway.

I felt a door frame and turned right, assuming that I was in the first room of the wing. I kept thinking I’d see a crack of moonlight somewhere, but it was so dark, I couldn’t see the hand in front of my face.

Starting with the wall immediately to my right, I felt a smooth wood surface and a vertical groove, then another smooth surface and another groove: paneling. I worked my way around a chair, then past a corner, continuing till my hand touched a wood ridge. My fingers followed the ridge up to a shelf about chin high and surprisingly long. I tripped on a rough surface: a fireplace. An outside wall! I thought triumphantly, then remembered that some houses had chimneys inside. I bumped into a table placed next to the fireplace and, taking a half step back from it, moved sideways till I reached a second corner in the room.

I turned the corner and prayed for a window. At last my hands grasped loose fabric. I felt behind it, shoving back what seemed like yards of material. The walls of the house were thick, the windowsill deep. My fingers searched for cool panes of glass but touched wood — a set of inside shutters. I felt for the center, tried unsuccessfully to pry the pair open, then ran my hands up and down the crack, hunting for a fastener. My fingers grasped a knob, and I pulled on it. It wouldn’t budge. I felt around the knob and discovered a metal circle with a jagged edge inside.

Terrific! — they had locks on their shutters, locks that required keys. This place was secure, even with the electricity off.

I sagged against the deep windowsill for a moment, then straightened up and listened, my attention caught by a sound that seemed to come from behind the fireplace. A heavy object was being dragged across the floor in the room behind the one I was in.

I should have realized then that if Marcy was ignoring me, it was because she had something more important to do at the moment. I should have stopped to think things through.

But when someone has made it clear she wants to kill you, the instinct to flee pushes out all other thoughts, and you keep moving.

After the window, I reached the corner quickly, which indicated I was in a small room. Turning the corner, I felt a built-in bookcase, shelves with binders and folders.

Expecting nothing but office materials, I got careless. My hand suddenly struck something tall and smooth to the touch. It crashed into the furniture behind me and shattered.

Through the fireplace wall, I heard a loud, raucous laugh.

Marcy knew where I was now. I backed into a chair and desk, turned myself around, and headed toward what I thought was the room’s exit.

I was back in the hall. I knew because when I took an extra step to the left or right, I could touch the walls. I felt the frame of a doorway and entered the next room, walking straight ahead this time, hoping for windows. I banged my shin on a low table. It was all I could do not to kick it aside. I had passed the point of daunting fear and was getting reckless and desperate. Then I heard the sound of a door opening, the door into the wing. Marcy was coming for me. I moved quickly around the room, hoping for a window with unlocked shutters. I prayed to God and to Uncle Will. I groped and found the mantel of another fireplace.

“Where are you, baby?”

Baby?

I felt for the tools usually kept by a hearth. There were none.

“Are we playing hide-and-seek, baby?” Marcy’s voice sounded high-pitched, peculiar.

I kept searching for something to defend myself with. Next to the fireplace my hand grasped a knob. I pulled on it — Yes! Stairs! Maybe the second-floor windows weren’t locked. I tiptoed up two steps and reached back to close the door behind me.

“All right, I will count, and you hide.” Her voice chilled me to the bone. “O-one, two-oo, three. .”

I scurried up the turning steps, hoping the door hiding the stairway and her loud counting would muffle the noise I made. At the top of the steps I stopped to remove my shoes so she wouldn’t hear me walking above her head.

I stood still for a moment, trying to orient myself, which was impossible since it was as dark upstairs as down. I didn’t understand the lower floor plan, so I couldn’t imagine a duplicate much less a variation of it for the second floor.

But I did know I was in a wing, and if I found a short stairway, it would indicate that I was moving back toward the center of the house. If Marcy came up the turning stair and I could find the main stair, I’d be able to race down it and, with a little luck, find the front door or the exit to the garden.

I started toward what I thought would be the center portion of the house. Marcy had stopped counting. I heard a noise, footsteps in a different place than I had expected hers to be.

“Anna?”

Zack! It was Zack’s voice, calling from below.

“Anna? Anna!” he cried.

I had to bite my tongue to keep from shouting back.

Marcy was silent, listening. If I answered Zack, she’d know where I was. But if I didn’t warn him, she might lie in wait for him. Two against one, we had a chance; somehow, Zack and I had to find each other.

I prayed. Help. Help me know where he is.

Zack had become quiet, as if he had figured out the nature of the game being played. The silence of the house was like a roaring in my ears.

Maybe I could send my mind out, I thought, send it on a journey like I did during an O.B.E. Guessing that Zack had entered the house the same way as I had, I imagined the room off the garden, picturing in my head how I would move along its walls, searching it with mental hands.

There was a door — not the door I had gone through, a door to the left. Are you there, Zack? Yes! I knew it in the place I call my “heart.” And then he wasn’t. I had lost him.

He’s moving, I thought. I have to keep up with him. But at that moment I heard a sound close to where I was standing, the turn of a knob. Marcy was opening the door to the steps I had just climbed.

I rushed ahead, then smashed my toes into a step and sprawled forward, catching another step with spread palms — the top step, I realized — a short stairway into the main portion of the house. Scrambling up it, I heard Marcy climbing the turning stairs.

“Where are you now, baby?” Marcy called. “Are you hidden? Hide-and-seek.”

I shivered at the childish pitch of her voice and tiptoed forward.

“Have you found a good spot, baby? Here I come, ready or not.”

Why was she calling me “baby”? Did she think I was her brother? Was this a game she had played with her hated younger sibling? She was crazy.

I waved my arms around, hoping to touch a surface. I felt as if tricks were being played on me, as if the walls had the power to recede from me when I reached out. Get a grip, Anna. Maybe I was in a large, square hall. Then I must be near the steps, I thought.

Stop, let your mind search, I told myself, but I couldn’t. I didn’t trust myself enough to stand still and let my mind do the work.

“I’m coming, baby. I’m going to find you.”

My left hand finally touched a wall, and I raced ahead, letting my fingers drag lightly along to keep me going straight. A doorway — I hesitated. There was no light inside the room: The shutters were closed on this floor as well. I kept going. Another doorway, another pitch-black room. I slipped inside and flattened my back against the wall by the door. Stop, think, I told myself; you’re going to get yourself cornered.

I took deep breaths, trying to slow my racing thoughts. My mind went out into the hall again — I sent it there. I searched for Zack: He was coming upstairs. Zack. Zack, I’m here.

I heard Marcy opening and closing doors in the wing I had come from. “Olly olly in free,” she sang out, as if calling in the players of her game. I wondered if she knew, as I did, that Zack was climbing toward the upstairs hall.

He’s at the top of the main stairway, I thought. The stairs ran sideways, not back to front, as I had assumed. I must have rushed past its landing without realizing it.

He was in the hall now, coming toward me. I started out of the room, moving as fast as I could while trying to be quiet, wanting to reach Zack quickly and get us both back to the steps he had just climbed. His light was off, but I knew where he was. I extended my arm and touched him. He jumped.

Something clattered to the floor — his flashlight. In response, a wild laugh erupted from Marcy.

“It’s Anna,” I whispered.

Zack gripped my hand. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

But Marcy had come racing from the wing and positioned herself at the top of the main stairs, blocking our escape route. I saw it as she shone her flashlight on us. Zack used the brightness of her light to find the one he had dropped.

He clicked the button, and for a moment they focused their beams on each other.

“I see you,” she said, her eyes sparkling in the light. She shook her head, her perfectly cut hair swinging a bit. She was like a child who had discovered the feel of her hair moving and enjoyed making it do that. “You are supposed to hide! Hide, hide now. I’ll count again.”

“She’s off the deep end,” I said to Zack.

“No kidding.”

Marcy played at hiding her eyes. “O-one, two-oo, three.

.”

“Does she own a gun?” I asked.

“She wouldn’t have told me if she does.”

“We’ll never get past her. We need to find another stairway.”

“Or try a window. What’s in here?” He shone his flashlight around the room from which I had just emerged.

“The shutters are locked. At least, they are downstairs,” I told him.

“I’ll break them open.”

“There’s probably another set of back stairs. They’re usually next to a fireplace,” I said, placing my hand over his to guide the beam of light, scanning the walls on either side of the hearth. “I’m going next door.”

“Better stay together,” he said. “If this battery gives out—”

“I can find you.”

He started banging at the shutters’ lock, using his metal flashlight like a hammer. Out in the hall Marcy was reciting her numbers in a singsong voice that set my teeth on edge. I stepped into the hall, then froze.

Marcy had set her flashlight on its side, and it illuminated her, throwing tall shadows against the walls. While counting cheerfully, she poured a liquid across the landing of the main stairs, then moved swiftly to the entrance to the wing, still pouring.

“Do you smell that?” Zack asked from inside the room.

“I see it. She’s going to burn this place down.”

Zack hurried to the door and watched her a moment.

“Crazy, but not stupid — one more arson. You’ve got to help me break through this shutter. There must be back stairs, but if we don’t find them—” He picked up a wood chair with a long back and four thick legs. We lined up, making the chair a battering ram, and ran at the window, jamming the chair legs into the shutter. Pieces of wood splintered and broke off. We ran at it again.

“She’s lit something,” he said, and rushed to the door to close it.

It was eerie, smelling the fire again, smelling it as I had the night I was with my uncle. I began to yank on the heavy curtains, and Zack, realizing why, joined me, using his weight to bring down the drapes.

He handed them to me, and I rushed them to the door to stuff under the crack, hoping to keep out deadly smoke.

“Want this rod?”

“Yes. No. The andiron!” he said. He picked up one of the heavy brass pieces intended to hold logs. Looking like a shot-putter, he spun to gain momentum, then slammed the andiron against the shutters. The lock snapped. I ran to the window, and both of us clawed at the wooden panels, opening them. We struggled with the window locks, then shoved up the sash.

I heard a whoosh. Drapes or not, the house was too old to be airtight, and we had created a draft. Marcy screamed, then let out an excited laugh. “Here I come, ready or not.”

“I hope you’re not afraid of heights,” Zack said.

“I’m more afraid of fire.” But when I looked down from the window, I saw that the large proportions of the house had put us farther off the ground than I expected.

“It’s okay,” Zack said, as if sensing my fear. “Get in the window. It’s wide enough for both of us.” He climbed through first, then gripped my arm as I climbed into a sitting position.

I sat on the sill, clinging to the bottom of the raised window.

Zack shone his flashlight on the shrubs below. The blue of the LED, like the moonlight, reflected off the surface of bushes. They were mounded deep against the house.

“Want me to go first?” he asked. When I didn’t reply, he said, “Okay, we’ll jump at the same time.”

I pressed my lips together and forced myself to nod.

He studied my face. “This is like the water-at-night thing,” he said, remembering our conversation at the party. “You don’t like it because you can’t see what’s beneath the surface. Want me to go first?” When I still didn’t answer, he said, “I’ll go first, but you’ve got to jump right after.

Promise?”

“Promise.”

He leaped.

I watched him roll far below me, lie still for a moment, then stagger to his feet. He rushed forward, shook the bushes in a rough kind of search, then called up. “No thorns, no stakes, no skunks. And you don’t have to worry about the lawn sprinkler — it’s sticking out of my back. Just kidding.

Jump, Anna!”

I nodded and turned myself around until I lay with my belly on the windowsill.

“Anna, what are you doing?” Zack cried.

“Getting five feet closer to the ground.” I planned to hang by my hands, then close my eyes and drop. But at that moment the door of the room burst open.

Marcy came through, and I saw in one terrifying flash the hallway burning behind her. She started toward me. I quickly lowered myself till I dangled by my hands. I couldn’t see her, but I could hear her gasping, coughing uncontrollably from the poisonous smoke.

“Marcy,” I called, “crawl, crawl to the window!” I beat my feet against the house, trying to get traction, trying to hoist myself back up.

“Anna, drop!” Zack shouted.

“Marcy, come on. Come here!” I pulled myself up high enough for my chin to be supported by the sill. I saw that the fire was burning fast, coming into the room.

“Marcy, crawl to me!”

She sat on the floor wheezing. I didn’t have the strength in my arms to pull myself all the way up.

“Marcy, can you hear me? Crawl to me! Crawl to the window! Please!”

“Anna!” Zack shouted.

“Marcy!” I screamed, desperate to get through to her. The fire was a quarter of the way into the room, close to the edge of the rug.

She looked up suddenly, her light eyes meeting mine.

The hungry flames were within two feet of her. She laughed in a manner too bright and tinkly for an adult. “Better fire here than fire hereafter,” Marcy said, and leaned back.

“Let go, Anna,” Zack begged from below.

Let go, Anna, Uncle Will called.

Let go, Anna. The third voice was soft, familiar, sounding closer than if the words had been spoken in my ear.

“Mother Joanna?”

Let go now, she said.

And I did.

SHOCK — THE NUMBNESS of it, the disconnect it creates with actual events — is useful. It keeps you from running through a burning house, screaming to the person left behind, when it is much too late.

Zack and I crawled together out of the bushes, then ran fifty feet or more before turning back to look at the house.

Aunt Iris emerged from the main entrance. She must have taken the route I had been looking for so desperately. The fire roaring above her and its choking smell did not seem to faze her. Shock, I thought, and called to her. She came quietly.

Aunt Iris, Zack, and I sat together on the wet grass and watched the upper story burn, listening to the approaching sirens, thinking about Marcy.

I remember the next two hours as a jumble of images: the pulsating lights of the trucks; the smoke that kept pouring out when there were no more flames; the look on Dave’s face; the way Zack held his father in his arms and cried with him.

We waited for the firefighters to remove Marcy’s remains, but with the effort now designated as recovery rather than rescue, and her body considered part of a crime scene, the police told us it would be hours before that happened.

I put my arms around Aunt Iris. She had borne the burden of Marcy for years, and in some ways, her burden had finally been lifted. Now Zack’s father was bearing the brunt of the pain. My eyes met Zack’s. I ached for him and Dave.

We left Aunt Iris’s car where she had parked it earlier, in the employee lot on the estate. She told the sheriff she had

“sensed” the gate’s entry code, but I thought it just as likely that Marcy had divulged it at some point. McManus’s deputy drove us home, then stayed and drank some stale instant coffee. Later I found out he had been told not to question us.

I was grateful to the sheriff; while I could have insisted on having a lawyer present, there was no controlling what Aunt Iris might say with or without legal advice. She wandered from room to room, and I held my breath, hoping she would not talk to the grandfather clock or smash a mirror. She didn’t, and the young deputy never ventured out of our kitchen.

At three a.m., Sheriff McManus arrived, accompanied by a fire investigator and Zack. Earlier Zack had called his uncle, who had made the drive from Philadelphia and was now with Dave.

In a quiet discussion on the porch, I told them that Marcy had admitted to killing Mick, my mother, and Uncle Will, and that the police should look for forensic evidence of the third murder beneath the gazebo. I assumed she had killed Uncle Will while he was fishing on the estate and that Uncle Will’s equipment might be found nearby. I then asked what I needed to know most: If it “happened” that Aunt Iris had

“suspicions” about Marcy’s crimes, would she face charges? The sheriff said his unprofessional opinion was that mental incompetency would get her off the hook but that I needed to phone her attorney and have her present when he questioned her. He also advised me of my rights.

Returning to the kitchen, I suggested to Aunt Iris that she go up to her room and rest. She was exhausted and didn’t fight me on it. Then the four of us sat down to piece together the story of that evening.

At 7:15, Zack had driven Erika to an appointment with McManus and the fire investigator, having convinced her that if she didn’t come clean, he would go to the authorities himself. When Zack had stood guard outside the house Friday and discovered the obsessive Elliot Gill watching the upstairs windows, he didn’t know what to think, except that the facts of the arson game had to be revealed immediately so that the police could figure things out before another tragedy occurred.

Returning home from his and Erika’s meeting with authorities, Zack found that his father was still at a business dinner, but, unknown to Zack, Marcy had come home and read my note. Audrey, ever watchful for evil acts, had observed and happily reported to Marcy that I had stolen Zack’s boat and headed up-creek. Marcy must have guessed where I was going and realized I was giving her a golden opportunity to get rid of me.

She instructed Audrey not to tell Zack that I had come for him. Later the note I had written was found in Marcy’s purse.

It was Zack’s theory that Marcy had planned to give the note to the police and tell them about my previous assault.

Erika’s three friends had unwittingly provided Marcy with cover for another murder. It wasn’t clear when Marcy’s final plan for me came together. As the fire investigator pointed out, quantities of accelerants are readily available in country houses, and Marcy was familiar with her childhood home.

Audrey did not tell Zack about the note, but, fortunately for me, she couldn’t resist telling him about the stolen boat.

Setting out in his father’s cruiser, Zack had spotted the anchored rowboat, then the ladder that I’d left against the bank. Following my route, he had found Iris semiconscious in the garden. At that point he called 911 on his cell.

When Zack entered the house, he still didn’t understand what was happening. While aware that his stepmother visited Iris occasionally, he had not known the nature of their relationship and had no idea why Marcy would hurt Iris or Will. But when he heard her counting in her strange game of hide-and-seek, he knew Marcy was dangerous. He feared it was his own text messages that had been accessed, that it was Marcy who had used Erika’s game as a convenient cover for Uncle Will’s murder.

That was as much as we could get through that night — or that morning, I should say. The sheriff told us all to get some sleep. He planned to get his own shut-eye in his car, which he had parked across the top of Aunt Iris’s driveway, protecting us from curious intruders. Zack needed to get home to Dave. On his way out, he stopped for just a moment, his fingers brushing the tips of mine.

I went to check on Aunt Iris. Her room was dark, but she was up, sitting on the edge of her bed. “I can’t sleep.”

I turned on a soft lamp and sat on a chair close to her bed.

“They made me promise I wouldn’t tell her,” Aunt Iris said.

Her eyes were wide open, but when I looked in them, I didn’t think she was seeing the present.

“You mean the Fairfaxes.”

“They broke their promise, the one they made to me when I gave them Marcy. So I broke mine. After they had the boy — after they decided Marcy didn’t matter anymore — I told her she was mine.”

I could imagine how it had happened. Whether Marcy was emotionally abandoned by her parents or whether she was simply a spoiled child with a bad case of sibling jealousy, all Iris could see was her own child suffering.

And what had Uncle Will seen? The outcome that he had feared all along, knowing Iris’s unstable mind and a mother’s strong feelings for her child.

“William argued with me when I was pregnant, said the Fairfaxes lived too close.”

I wondered silently why the Fairfaxes weren’t wary of the O’Neill reputation; perhaps the gossip was a more recent phenomenon, or perhaps the Fairfaxes didn’t mix enough with the locals to hear it.

“I thought he meant it would be too painful for me. I didn’t know it would hurt other people.”

I said nothing, unable to respond in a way that would comfort her. I didn’t remember Joanna or the pain her death had caused me as a toddler. The only mother that I remembered loved me still, and I loved her. But Uncle Will’s death cut deep.

“I didn’t tell Marcy who her father was, not while he was alive.”

“Did Audrey know?”

She shook her head no. “Marcy was born here at the house. Since Mick wouldn’t admit she was his child, he couldn’t tell me what to do with her, couldn’t tell the Fairfaxes not to take her. Marcy and Mick never got along. He was hard on her.”

“Maybe he was afraid for her.”

“Of her,” Aunt Iris corrected. “He was afraid of her the way he was afraid of me.”

More afraid, I thought, seeing a selfishness and greed in Marcy that wasn’t in Aunt Iris. I wondered at what point Uncle Will had bought the book Psychosis and the Criminal Mind.

I suspected that it was to understand Marcy rather than Iris.

“When Mick died, a part of me knew that Marcy had done it. Joanna didn’t suspect at first — didn’t know my relationship to Marcy or Mick — she simply wanted to help Audrey. I tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t listen to me. So I told Marcy that Joanna was reading Mick’s psychic signs and she should get out of Wisteria for a while. I never expected she’d kill Joanna. I couldn’t allow myself to think that Marcy would kill someone as sweet and loving as Joanna.”

I swallowed hard.

Iris sat on the edge of her bed, rocking back and forth, hands clasped tightly in her lap. “What could I do? What could I do? I couldn’t bear to lose my daughter, too. And reporting Marcy wasn’t going to bring back Joanna. ‘She won’t do it again,’ I thought. ‘There’s no reason for her to.’”

“But there was,” I interjected. “She’d kill as long as she needed to, to save her own skin.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Aunt Iris said.

I couldn’t say, That’s okay. I forgive you. I couldn’t say that yet.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated plaintively.

“I know you are. Try to get some rest.”

IN THE DAYS that followed, Zack and I had our hands full. His father had lost more than his wife and their future together: With the information that surfaced about Marcy, Dave’s memories of the person he had loved were destroyed. My aunt lost the daughter she had spent thirty-seven years protecting. As for Audrey, as much as I disliked her selfrighteousness, I felt sorry for her. She lost her “project” in life, the little girl she had helped to raise and the woman she cared for in later years. She also lost her belief that she had known everything about her husband. Zack and I spent every waking moment trying to support the people who had lost so much as well as working with authorities.

The sheriff also had his hands full. With additional police support, traces of Uncle Will’s blood were found in the gazebo. They fingerprinted the smooth, painted rocks that had been placed on my bed in imitation of Audrey’s work and found Marcy’s prints. I would never know whether Marcy was trying to scare me away or had started on a plan to murder me.

Erika was charged with second-degree arson and malicious destruction of property, and Carl and his two friends — the guys who had attacked me — with assault.

Although I didn’t like Erika, it was the three guys I found scary. Their excuse for inflicting pain and threatening serious harm was simply that they were “looking out for their own.” Carl’s two companions were in the process of copping deals, offering information that proved Carl responsible for the earlier harassment of Uncle Will. I guess in their and Marcy’s world, it was every man for himself.

By law, the kids who attended the fire and made no effort to stop Erika were also accountable. The sheriff thought they’d end up with probation — a close monitoring of their school and home life — as well as community service. Mom kept reminding me that it was for the best; they needed their parents to pay more attention to what they were into.

Yes, Mom came. And here’s the really weird thing: She arrived in Wisteria the day after the fire. The night of the fire she awoke with a bad feeling, and for a reason she couldn’t really explain, she started packing suitcases. At seven a.m. she tried to call me, but I had turned off my cell. She tried Aunt Iris’s landline next, but by the time I awoke to answer it, she had given up. Not waiting any longer, Mom put the kids and the dog in the car and started for Maryland. Maybe psychic stuff can bypass genetics; maybe it can work heart to heart.

With the arrival of my Baltimore family, Aunt Iris’s silent house sprang to life. The girls and I took the room that had been Joanna’s and mine, the one with the blue-flowered wallpaper. Jack begged for my corner of the attic. Mom took Uncle Will’s room. Rosy slept in the upstairs hall at night, and when she needed some peace, hung out in Uncle Will’s den — she liked the brick floor.

To Grace, Claire, and Jack, it seemed as if we had just won the lottery. Suddenly, they had a large house to run through; a backyard as big as a park, which had its own

“lake,” as they called the creek; and “a castle” next door, the Flemings’ home.

Aunt Iris informed me that Uncle Will had departed shortly after she and I had talked in her bedroom, which was just as well, for with my family, there would be no resting in peace in his own home. Surprisingly, Aunt Iris seemed to like the noise; maybe it drowned out some of the noise that was inside her head. Or maybe, with Marcy gone, she was truly more at peace. Rosy liked the new doggy friend she found in Clyde, and Clyde introduced her to the joy of ducks. Aunt Iris’s cats could handle both dogs, but they were wary of the kids at first, spending a lot of time on the hood of Uncle Will’s pickup.

Dave and Zack often followed Clyde through the gate in the hedge. Dave was selling the house — its memories were too painful — but he seemed to be able to bear up better when he was around us.

As for Zack, he found out what it was like to be adored by little kids. I envied the freedom Claire and Grace felt with him — tackling him in the grass, climbing on his shoulders in the creek, getting him to draw pictures that they could color in. I would have liked to feel his big hand wrap around mine the way it wrapped around theirs. When he was gentle with them, I felt a strange ache inside me.

I even felt a little left out. In Baltimore I had been Jack’s pitcher when he batted, his quarterback when he received, and his receiver when he quarterbacked. Now it was always Zack and Jack, and when Jack couldn’t pull Zack away from the twins, he trailed behind Dave.

But that wasn’t the real problem. With all the people that Zack and I were paying attention to, there didn’t seem to be the time or space alone to figure out our own connection.

There was a bridge between us, formed by the people we loved, but I didn’t know how to cross it. Maybe I didn’t have the nerve to.

About two weeks after Marcy’s death, when a semblance of normal life had returned, thanks to Mom, I was in the kitchen, sipping a glass of Dr Pepper, taking a break from the book I had been reading on psychic phenomena. I thought I had the gift, and I had been raised to believe we are supposed to use God’s gifts, but I wasn’t yet confident enough to let go and see what I was capable of. In time, as Aunt Iris said.

Mom was putting the kids to bed. I could hear their scampering feet above me. Aunt Iris had gone off in her gold sedan to who knows where, and the cats had wandered away into the trees. I walked down to the dock, stepped over the life vests the kids and I had left there, and sat at the end, swinging my feet over the dark water.

I don’t know how long I’d been there when Zack called from the other dock, “Can I come over?”

Before I could reply, he dove into the water, breaking the moonlight into silver pieces. I watched him swim the distance and climb the ladder onto our dock. He sat next to me, his arm dripping on me.

“Anna,” he said, “we’re good friends, right?”

“Right.”

“And good friends are honest with each other, right?”

“Right. . Well, most of the time,” I said.

He glanced sideways at me and laughed. “I need honest advice.”

I waited for him to continue. I wondered how I was ever going to get over him.

“I’ve got girlfriend problems.”

Oh, great, just what I wanted to advise him on. “You know, Zack, I’m not really good at that kind of stuff.”

“But I know you understand, because we talked about it before. You know how some girls are attracted to artist types, while other girls think that’s the last thing they need and are interested in jocks?”

I swung my legs. “Yeah.”

“I have two girls really interested in me.”

I felt like saying, Just two?

“I mean really interested,” he went on. “One of them wants to marry me.”

“What?!”

“How do I tell them I’m in love with their sister?”

I turned to him.

“Anna,” he said softly, “I am in way over my head with a girl who has chestnut-colored hair. I have been from the beginning. But maybe before I tell the others, I should find out if their sister would give me half a chance. What do you think?”

“I think the others are too young for you,” I said. “But the girl with the red hair, she might be just right.”

“I know she is.”

Our first kiss was shy. The second was longer and sweeter. The third — well, to be honest, on the third kiss I fell off the dock and took him with me. And the dark water wasn’t scary at all.