Ethan nodded. "The only thing that's missing is a girl in the backseat."

His uncle choked on a piece of popcorn. "Jesus, Ethan. Aren't you a little young to be thinking about that?"

"Well, that depends. On account of most guys get into that stuff when they're fourteen or fifteen, and I'll be dead by then."

Ross turned, so that the movie played over his cheek and brow, distorting his face. "Ethan, you don't know that for sure."

"That guys have s.e.x when they're fourteen?" Ethan said, deliberately misunderstanding. "How old were you when you had s.e.x for the first time?"

"I wasn't nine and a half."

"What's it like?"

On the screen, two cops were shooting at a bad guy in a convertible. The convertible rolled on an embankment and burst into flames. Ethan knew that the stuntman who'd done that scene had gotten out of the fire and walked away in his flame-r.e.t.a.r.dant suit, perfectly okay. People died all the time in movies and then got right back up and did it again, like it was some kind of joke.

He could see that his uncle was trying to edit whatever he had decided to say, but he also knew that Ross would tell him the truth. Unlike his mother, who only wanted to keep him a kid as long as possible, Uncle Ross understood exactly how much you needed to cram into the measure of a life before you checked out. "It's pretty amazing," Ross answered. "It feels like coming home."

Somehow, that description just didn't do it for Ethan. He thought he might hear words like round round and and wet wet and and burst burst, dialogue from the Playboy Channel that came through the speakers on the TV even though the picture was scrambled. He wondered if his mother, in Canada, was doing things that were round and wet and bursting with that guy Eli, who made her glow every time he came over. That detective was all she thought of these days. He remembered how he had been talking to her while she was making pancakes a few nights ago, about this wicked cool pogo stick he'd seen advertised on TV that not only counted how many times you jumped but egged you on and called you by your name. "It sounds great," his mother had said.

"Maybe I could get it for my birthday," Ethan suggested, and she had turned to him, all confused.

"Get what?"

"The pogo stick?"

"What pogo stick?" she'd asked, and then she'd shook her head and flipped the pancakes again, when they were already done cooking anyway.

Uncle Ross still seemed to be coming up with his explanation. "I think when you sleep with someone, you take a part of her with you. Not just the physical stuff-cells and all that. But part of what makes her her her."

Everyone had someone, Ethan thought. Everyone but him. "Maybe I could just kiss a girl, so that every now and then she'd think of me. You know, Oh, that was the kid I kissed who had that disease and died Oh, that was the kid I kissed who had that disease and died."

"Ethan, you're not-"

"Uncle Ross," he said wearily. "Don't you lie to me too."

Most of the time, the truth that he was going to die sat in his stomach like something that would not digest-a stone, a ball of wire. He understood that he'd drawn the short end of the stick genetically, that an early death was not an option, but a fact. He did not want to find Jesus, or make out a will, or do any of the things people did when they knew they were going to pa.s.s away. He just wanted to live live.

In the movie, someone got his arm cut off with a chain saw.

Ethan reached for his uncle's hand. He pushed up the sleeve of his sweater, to the spot where a scar swam beneath the surface of his wrist. "Why?" he whispered.

"The difference between us is that you're a hero, Ethan, and I'm a coward." Ross pulled his arm away and rolled down the sleeve. "I will personally make sure you kiss a girl before you die, if I have to hire one," he said, and he wasn't joking, and that made Ethan feel like crying.

There was a hail of bullets on the soundtrack. Ethan sifted his fingers through the popcorn, which rustled like autumn. "Do you feel like you want to die right now?" he asked.

Ross shook his head. "No."

"Me neither," Ethan said, and he turned his face up to the screen.

Eli had always been the kind of cop who couldn't sleep well while a case was still at loose ends. Add to this a healthy dose of s.e.xual frustration, and it was no wonder that he found himself walking around the edge of the parking lot of the motel shortly after a rainstorm at midnight. Watson lay just beyond an empty spot, his head on his paws, his eyes following Eli as he paced on the muddy ground.

Shelby was asleep. At least, he figured she was asleep. She'd kissed him good night so thoroughly he could still feel the imprint of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and hips against him, hours later. Then she'd closed the motel room door in his face. It was a punishment of sorts, he was sure, a look at what he was missing by virtue of taking it slow.

He wondered what she slept in. Silky nightgowns? Flannel pajamas?

Nothing?

Why was was he taking it slow, anyway? She'd all but told him flat out that she was interested, and ready. If he went inside and knocked on her door, she might answer it wearing only a sheet. Eli had no doubt that if anything could get his mind off this murder case, it was making love to Shelby Wakeman. he taking it slow, anyway? She'd all but told him flat out that she was interested, and ready. If he went inside and knocked on her door, she might answer it wearing only a sheet. Eli had no doubt that if anything could get his mind off this murder case, it was making love to Shelby Wakeman.

But the last woman he'd felt so much for in so little time had been his wife. He'd married her within months of their first meeting, certain that her love for him ran as deep as a trench in the Atlantic, too. And she had left him for another guy.

Eli wasn't going to let that happen to him again. And the easiest way to keep from getting burned was to keep a safe distance from anything that looked like a potential fire.

"Milk."

Eli turned to find Shelby standing a few feet away in a tank top and a pair of drawstring pants printed with cherries. She came closer, barefoot, on the wet earth. The sight of her narrow feet alone made Eli start to sweat. "What?"

"Milk. Warm. It'd do the trick." She smiled at him. "You can't sleep, right?"

She didn't know the half of it.

"It's what I do when my biorhythms are all screwed up- you know, from being awake during the night with Ethan, and then having to go to bed in bright daylight."

Eli heard nothing in that sentence except the words "go to bed." He nodded at her and wondered if his whole hand would be able to span the flat plane between her hips. Her tank top rode up in the front, exposing the thinnest line of skin, and Eli felt himself stop breathing.

Hypoxia, he thought. he thought.

Eli stared down at the ground, fighting for composure. One of Shelby's footprints, delicate and full-bottomed, had landed by chance right across one of his-bigger, broader. It was the most erotic thing he'd ever seen.

Jesus, he was a basket case.

The h.e.l.l with it, Eli thought, moving across the muddy stretch toward her. He could have her in bed in less than three minutes, and he'd deal with the consequences later. He stepped over Watson, over the double footprint that had gotten him hot and bothered in the first place-and he stopped short.

Double footprints, like the ones that had been photographed at the crime scene after Cecelia Pike's murder. The first time Eli had noticed that, he'd used it to blow holes in the theory that Gray Wolf had been there to hang Cecelia. It stood to reason, too, that if Cissy had been abducted from her bedroom after childbirth, she would not have been wearing boots to leave a tread behind. She, like Shelby, would have come right from bed.

Pike's shoes had been predominant . . . after all, he'd cut the body down. But there had been one print where the woman's sole had been stamped down on top of the man's, like the footprints that he and Shelby had just made-the woman's smaller foot superimposed across the man's larger one, the step made after the man had made his.

Dead women don't walk away.

"I know where to find the baby," Eli said.

Ross believed in past lives. Moreover, he believed that the person you fell in love with in each life was the same person you fell in love with in the life before, and the one before that. Sometimes, you might miss her-she'd be reborn in the postWorld War I generation, and you wouldn't come back until the fifties. Sometimes, your paths would cross and you wouldn't recognize each other. Get it right-that is: fall madly, truly, deeply-and perhaps there'd be an eternity carved out solely for the two of you.

What if Lia Pike had been the one for Ross? If she'd been killed before she could find him, and then had come back as Aimee . . . only to die accidentally after falling in love with him? What if she was haunting him now because there was no other way to connect?

What if the reason he thought about killing himself so much was not depression, or chemical imbalance, or borderline personality disorder, or the dozen other labels shrinks had slapped on him . . . but only a means of ending this life so that he could start another one with the woman he was supposed to be with?

He stared down at the obituary in his hand, the one that Az Thompson had given him days ago. By now, Lia's body was where it belonged. The rest of her, though, was waiting for him. She'd even said so, with his initials.

"Ross!"

Shelby's voice rose like smoke from downstairs. He folded the picture of Lia again and tucked it into his pocket, then came into the living room to find Eli Rochert and his sister beaming, that behemoth dog between them.

"Where's Ethan?" Shelby asked.

Ross looked at the clock. He didn't wear a watch-why bother, when he couldn't seem to speed up his time on earth anyway-and hadn't really noticed that nearly all the night had pa.s.sed. "I guess he's still skating out back."

"I'll check." Shelby started through the kitchen, then turned to Eli. "Go ahead. Tell him."

"Tell me what?" Ross said.

Eli sank onto the couch and spilled a mess of papers on the cushion beside him. "Pike smothers the infant, or at least he thinks he does. He leaves it in the icehouse while he breaks the news to his wife. It autoresuscitates-"

"It what?"

"Just trust me on this. It starts breathing again, but then it sort of goes into standby mode since its body is so cold. It looks dead, but it's not."

Ross sank down. "Okay," he said, listening more closely.

"Cecelia Pike wants to see her newborn's body. She breaks out of the bedroom he's locked her in, and finds the baby in the icehouse, where it's cold and blue and looking pretty d.a.m.n dead. She picks it up and cries over it . . . which is how Pike finds her. He goes off the deep end-here she is mourning for what he thinks is her lover's child-and hangs her. But the baby's not dead But the baby's not dead." He tosses a photograph at Ross, a grainy study of footprints. "Someone walked on that sawdust after Pike did, someone who was wearing boots that were awfully similar to the ones taken off Cecelia Pike's feet- a girl named Ruby."

"Ruby?"

"Yeah. She was the housekeeper, some kid who lived with them. When I met with Duley Wiggs, that old cop, he mentioned it-although I didn't realize it at the time. Said that Pike wasn't up for a big funeral celebration at his house, with his girl girl gone. I thought he was talking about Cissy . . . but now I realize he meant the hired help." gone. I thought he was talking about Cissy . . . but now I realize he meant the hired help."

"Why hasn't anyone mentioned her?"

"Because she was a servant, and servants are supposed to be invisible. And because she disappeared that night. Pike wouldn't tell me about her, because she probably knows that he killed his wife."

"So if Ruby took the baby and disappeared that night-"

"The baby might still be alive. In her seventies, and about to inherit a nice tract of land," Eli finished. "Plus, Ruby might be able to fill in the blanks. I did a little digging on the Internet. A woman named Ruby Weber was born in the Northeast Kingdom, moved to Comtosook with her family in 1925, and disappeared from Vermont records in 1932. Now she lives at 45 Thistlehill Lane in Gaithersburg, Maryland."

Ross could not seem to force the woman's name out of his throat. Ruby Weber. RW RW. Lia had not been trying to tell everyone gathered at her grave that she loved him. She had only been pointing Eli and the others in the right direction.

When Meredith had been about Lucy's age, her dog had been run over by a truck. Her mother had taken Blue to the vet to be put down, and instead of crying, Meredith had thrown herself into the art of prestidigitation. She made quarters vanish, red rubber b.a.l.l.s slip out of sight, small paper bouquets of flowers disappear-before retrieving them magically from her ears, the cookie jar, the silverware drawer. She put on these shows for Ruby, who saw right through her. "Honey," she had said to Meredith, "there are some things you just can't bring back, no matter what."

Years later, Meredith knew she was lucky to have reached the age of thirty-five and still have her grandmother around. After all, she had experienced firsthand her mother's premature demise, and she knew how loss could eat away at you like a termite, tiny and insidious until your heart was nothing but dust.

She thought of death like the seam of a hem: each time you lost someone close, it unraveled a little. You could still go along with your life, but you'd forever be tripping over something you previously took for granted. If Ruby pa.s.sed away, there would be no one but Meredith and Lucy. There had never been aunts and uncles and cousins; no family reunion or gala Christmas dinner. They had had each other, which had been enough.

"You are not allowed to die," Meredith said, matter-of-fact. She squeezed her grandmother's hand. "You are not allowed to die until I say so."

She nearly jumped out of her seat as Ruby squeezed right back. Looking down, she saw her grandmother's open eyes- and even better, the yellow heat of recognition in them.

"Meredith," Ruby answered, her voice faint and thready, "who said anything about dying?"

After Eli left and Ethan went to bed, Ross holed himself up in his room. Shelby knocked on the door to bring him some food, which he turned away. She tried an hour later, hoping to just sit and talk, but he came to the door in his underwear, and said he really didn't feel up to company.

She hated herself for doing it, but when there was no sound of movement from inside the room, Shelby jimmied the lock, checked Ross to make sure he was only asleep, and slipped his razor into her pocket.

She slept fitfully that night, dreaming in black-and-white about walking on a ground so hot it burned the soles of her feet. When she woke up, it was nine in the morning, she had a skull-splitting headache, and someone was playing a radio too loud.

Determined, she stomped down the hall toward Ethan's room first, certain that he was to blame. But he was fast asleep, curled under the blankets and completely oblivious to the racket that was coming from down the hall. Shelby moved along to Ross's room, and knocked on the door. "Ross," she yelled, "turn that thing down!"

But the music did not stop. She pushed on the door, and found it unlocked. The radio blared on, a preset alarm.

The bed was made, the dresser clear, and Ross's small duffel missing.

On the pillow was a piece of paper.

Shel, she read, I'm sorry for leaving this way. But then, if I ever did do something right, I wouldn't be the brother you know. I'm sorry for leaving this way. But then, if I ever did do something right, I wouldn't be the brother you know.

A scream rolled inside her. Ross had just left her a suicide note.

Ross sat in his car, looking at the neat line of j.a.panese maples and listening to the language of birds and thinking that it was fitting for everything to come to an end at a spot like this. He took a deep breath, aware that what he was about to do would change the lives of many people other than himself. But then, how couldn't couldn't he do it? he do it?

He'd driven around Comtosook for a few hours, until he'd come to a decision and had gotten everything he needed to make it happen. He could say he was doing this for Lia, but it wouldn't be the truth. Ross was doing it for himself, to prove that there was something-at last-at which he could succeed.

He reached along the pa.s.senger seat, picked up the piece of paper that had Ruby Weber's address scrawled across it, and then got out of the car.

The mailbox said WEBER/OLIVER, and Ross found himself wondering if this woman might have a male companion, or for that matter, a female one. He walked up the brick path to the front door and rang the bell.

"They're not home."

Ross turned to see a neighbor watering the adjacent lawn with a sprinkler. "Do you know where they went?" he asked. "I'm sort of dropping in unannounced . . ."

"Are you family?"

Ross thought of Lia. "Yes."

The neighbor came closer. "I don't know how to tell you this," she said sympathetically, "but Ruby's in the hospital."

Ross wandered the hospital's administrative floors until he reached an office that had a secretary absent on a coffee break and a doctor's extra lab coat hanging on a coat hook just inside the door. Costumed, he moved with purpose to the cardiac care unit and asked for Ruby Weber's chart, which he scrutinized for a few minutes, memorizing her age, her condition, and the room into which she'd been put. When he got there, however, a woman was sitting with Ruby on the edge of the bed.

Not wishing for an audience, Ross busied himself in the hallway until the woman left the room, holding a little girl by the hand. As they headed away from him, Ross slipped inside. "Mrs. Weber," he said, "I'd like to talk to you."

She had battleship-gray hair and eyes as blue as the center of a flame. Her skin, so finely wrinkled, reminded Ross of rice paper. "Well, that would be a novelty. Being that all your friends seem to want to poke and prod me and take my blood."

Ross tugged his arms from the sleeves of his coat, folded it, and set it on a chair. "That's because I'm not a doctor."

He watched her face as she struggled with the decision to push the nurse's call b.u.t.ton and have him evicted . . . or to simply hear him out. After a very long moment, Ruby hiked herself up on her pillows. "Are you a patient? You look like you're in pain."

"I am."

"What hurts?"

Ross thought about how to answer this. "Everything." He took a step forward. "I want to talk to you about 1932."