Ford Considering everything, I decided that the wisest thing to do was to change my priorities. I would stamp down my desperate need to know why and redirect my mind to something other than Jackie's devil story. And Jackie's pa.s.sion for her photographic studio gave me my new direction. I'm sure that, long ago, I must have looked as she did. When I first started writing, I was driven, and writing was all I could think of-just as Jackie was driven to get her photography studio set up and find out whether or not she could make it in that world.

We had over a week of peace and quiet, and, in spite of my intentions, I thought about things. Facts were piling up in a way that made me feel sure that when she was a child, Jackie had seen something she shouldn't have, namely, a murder. And I suspected that her mother had been one of the people who'd helped kill that poor woman, and her lack of remorse was part of what had driven Jackie's father to abduct their child and run away.

I wasn't a psychiatrist or I would probably have wanted Jackie to "get it out." But, personally, I've always thought that releasing great pain was overrated as a cure. What good would it do if I brought all that to the surface again? Would it help Jackie to remember that she actually saw-and heard -a woman's slow, agonizing death? And if we did find out who killed her, would it bring her back to life? And what would the murderer-or murderers-do to an eyewitness?

Whatever my excuse, I decided not to continue my pursuit of the devil story. I hoped that whoever had tossed that rock over the wall and given us information wouldn't contact us again. And when the package from the forensics man in Charlotte didn't arrive, I didn't call and remind him.

Okay, so the truth was, I'd had an idea for a book that had no devil in it.

It was a book about loneliness, about a man who'd lost faith in himself and others, but who, eventually, finds something to believe in. I hadn't worked out the details of the novel yet, such as exactly what the man came to believe in, but I felt that it would come to me.

And the deeper truth was that I was beginning to enjoy myself. I wasn't such a fool that I didn't know that I was once again in some semblance of a marriage, the time when my life had been happy. And I wasn't so dumb that I didn't know I must have been looking for that from the many secretaries I'd hired and fired. I hadn't wanted a research a.s.sistant, I'd wanted someone like me, someone who had no life and wanted to join in my life. I used to yell at them that they were incompetent, when the truth was that I was angry-or maybe jealous-when they went home to their friends and relatives. I wanted to scream that I'd once had a family, people to share Thanksgiving and Christmas with.

But I couldn't do that. For one thing, no one would have believed me.

The world thinks that if you're a person who gives out autographs, you don't need what "ordinary people" need.

Right. Lonely at the top. Cry all the way to the bank. I'd heard it all before. But whatever my problem was, I found that I was happier than I'd been since Pat died, and I didn't want to mess it up. I was writing down ideas in the mornings, but in the afternoons I found myself sitting in the garden that Jackie was wrestling from the weeds, sipping lemonade, and talking with whomever stopped by to visit.

For all that she was often as sharp as an artichoke leaf, people liked Jackie and her enthusiasm for her new studio was infectious. Every afternoon someone came by to see how the work was going. And I must say that the excitement made me want to be part of it all. At dinner I'd go through the thick B & H catalog that the photography company in New York had sent Jackie and we'd talk about all the gewgaws that are available for a photographer. I read all the books she had on photography, a grand total of three, then ordered seventeen more books from Amazon.com, and after they arrived, we spent the evenings going over them.

One afternoon Tessa, Allies daughter, came to stay with us. I don't know if her mother was working or if she just wanted a break-or if Jackie wanted the girl to visit. Whatever, I ended up enjoying the child's company.

At first I was annoyed by her presence. My experience with children was limited, and mostly, I wanted them to go away. So I wasn't happy when I went down for my lemonade and cookies and found Jackie sitting there with a nine-year-old girl. I felt that my time was being intruded on and, besides, how was I supposed to deal with her? Should I ignore the child and talk of adult things? Or was it better to ask the kid about her school and heap praise on a bunch of stick figure drawings?

Since the girl didn't say anything, I decided to ignore her and talk to Jackie. But when the phone rang, Jackie ran to answer it, and I was left alone with the girl. She didn't seem to be any more interested in me than I was in her so we sat there and drank lemonade in silence.

After a while it seemed that Jackie was going to stay on the phone forever so I said to the kid, "What were you inventing?"

One thing I like about kids is that they have no idea of rules. They don't have their minds full of what a person should and shouldn't do. For instance, a kid doesn't know that you shouldn't celebrate the death of a bully of a cousin. So, based on the little I knew, I guessed that I wouldn't need to make small talk about the weather before leading up to the more interesting things. And besides, I'd never yet met a kid who paid any attention to the weather.

"Things," she said, and looked at me sideways in a way that I recognized as an invitation.

I didn't answer, but just held my hand up in a gesture that said, You lead the way.

I followed her into the bush. The jungle, really. Way back in the corner of my property, where no cutting implement had been for many years, she showed me an opening against the ground that a rabbit would have loved.

She looked at the size of me and said, "You can't get through there."

I'd had all I could take of females telling me I was too big. I gave her a look and said, "Try me."

I don't know what got into me, but I ended up slithering through the brush on my belly like a snake chasing a rat. Of course I enlarged the hole as I moved, which took its toll on my clothes and whatever skin was exposed, but I finally made it into the interior.

Inside, the girl had formed a green igloo. "This is great," I said and really meant it. Sitting down on the ground, I looked up at the way she'd twisted and woven the vines and tree branches together. I wasn't sure but I thought the place might be tight enough to repel water.

She was a homely little girl, but when I looked at her smile of pride I could almost see her someday running a corporation. She was smart, determined, and an individual. She wasn't a run-of-the-mill kid who colored in the lines and did everything to please her teachers.

"Shown this to anyone else?" I asked.

When she shook her head no, she made me feel good. Reaching behind her, she picked up a little green thing and handed it to me. It was an a.s.semblage of leaves, sticks, moss, bits of mud, a rock here and there, and acorns-and it was fantastic. "I like it," I said, and again she grinned.

When she didn't say anything more, I realized she wanted us to leave, maybe so Jackie wouldn't see the hideout. Stretching out on my belly, I slithered back through the now-larger tunnel and out into the sunlight.

When Jackie at last got off the telephone, Tessa and I were back in our chairs, looking for all the world as though we'd never left them. When Jackie turned away to say something to Nate, I winked at Tessa and she grinned at me before ducking her head and looking back at her lemonade.

For days, I made notes for my book about the lonely man and spent the afternoons enjoying the social life Jackie was carving out for the two of us.

We had a second barbeque dinner with Allie, Tessa, and some people from Asheville who were staying in the area. Since Jackie had met them in the grocery, she and I almost had a fight about her inviting strangers to dinner.

But they turned out to be nice people and we had a good time.

One afternoon I went downstairs but found no lemonade, no cookies, no Nate working, and no Jackie. After searching, I found her in the kitchen laughing with a good-looking woman who seemed vaguely familiar. Jackie introduced her as D. L. Hazel.

"Ah," I said, "the sculptor." I was proud of myself for having remembered that, but still, it didn't explain why she looked familiar.

She was about my age or maybe a bit older, and I could see that she'd once been beautiful. She still was, but she'd faded somewhat. And maybe I imagined it, but I thought I saw something unhappy in her eyes. When I caught Jackie looking at me, I knew she had something to tell me later.

Sure enough, after Dessie, as she told us to call her, left, Jackie told me that the woman had once been an actress on a soap opera. "Ah," I said. I didn't say so but I knew which one. It was the one Pat's mother had watched and I'd seen it often when I sat by her peeling potatoes for dinner.

"She quit?" I asked. "To live here?"

Jackie shrugged to tell me that she couldn't understand it either. "The story is that she grew up in Cole Creek, but left when she was quite young to go to L.A. She got a job on a soap right away and was a big hit. But when she returned here for her best friend's wedding, she remained in Cole Creek and never went back to L.A. They killed off her character on the soap and Dessie started sculpting. D. L. Hazel is her professional name. Her real name is Dessie Mason."

"Who was the friend?" I asked, thinking it was male.

"The love of your life," Jackie said, and it took me almost a minute to figure out who she was talking about.

"Rebecca?"

"The very one."

"She's not the-" I began, but closed my mouth. Why bother? I thought.

But I wondered if the entire town thought I was having it off with a woman I'd barely spoken to.

I came to like Dessie. In fact, I liked her a lot. She came to dinner at our house on Friday and invited me-not Jackie-to lunch at her house on Sunday.

The first time I met Dessie, she'd been rather quiet, subdued even, and she'd spent most of her time talking to Jackie. She caught me staring at her a couple of times and I'd looked away, feeling guilty. But I'd been trying hard to place her and having no luck.

Besides, the more I looked at her, the better she looked. She was a mature woman with a grown-up body, grown-up clothes, and she knew about grown-up things. I looked at Jackie and Dessie standing side by side in front of the kitchen sink and I thought, It's like looking at Sophia Loren and Calista Flockhart.

Dessie didn't stay long that first visit, but when she came for dinner on Friday, she looked fabulous. She had on a dress, something with a wide belt and a V-neck that showed off her great bosom.

And then she did something that nearly made me burst into tears in front of our guests.

She was the last one to arrive. I was filling plates with corn on the cob and barbequed chicken when she came in, looking and smelling like a woman, and I can tell you that it was a relief to see a female in something besides blue jeans and a T-shirt. She had her hair all fluffed out and she wore big gold earrings and tiny sandals, with her toenails painted pink.

She was holding a wooden box in front of her as though it contained something fragile. I a.s.sumed it was a cake and held out my hands to take it from her, but I heard Allie whisper, "Oh, Lord," then Nate's grandmother said, "Heaven be merciful," so I put my hands to my side and looked at Jackie. She just shrugged to say that she had no idea what was going on.

Tessa, the kid who usually stayed on the outskirts, ran forward, stopped in front of Dessie, and said, "May I open it? Please? Please?"

I didn't know what was going on but my curiosity meter just about broke its dial.

When Allie began to grab the plates and gla.s.ses on the round iron table, I thought she might throw them on the ground, but Jackie took them from her. Dessie stood there waiting, holding the box until the table was clear, and only then did she set the box down in the center of the table.

Dessie stepped back, smiled at Tessa, and nodded.

After a smile of triumph sent to her mother, Tessa stepped forward and put her hands on the box. The bottom of the box was a flat piece of wood, about a foot square, and the top, a fourteen-inch cube, was set over it.

Jackie came to stand beside me. The box had the word front on it and that word was facing me. I watched with wide eyes as Tessa slowly lifted the wooden cube straight up.

I had, of course, figured out by now that since Dessie was a sculptor, one of her pieces was probably inside. And since she was so famous it was no surprise that people were in awe of her work.

But nothing on earth could have prepared me for what I saw when Tessa lifted up that lid. Before me was a small clay sculpture of the head and shoulders of two women. The younger one was smiling and looking down at something, while the older woman was looking at the younger one, love in her eyes.

They were Pat and her mother, their likenesses and expressions perfectly captured.

If Jackie hadn't shoved a chair into the back of me, I would have collapsed. No one said a word. I think maybe even the birds held their breaths as I looked at that piece of clay. It was them; it was the two women I had loved more than my own soul.

I reached out to touch it, to feel their warm skin.

"Careful," Dessie said. "It's still wet."

Drawing my hand back, I had to take a few breaths to calm myself. Jackie was standing behind my chair with one hand on my shoulder, her fingers pressing on me, giving me strength.

I managed to recover enough to look up at Dessie. "How... ?" I got out of my dry mouth.

She smiled. "Internet. You're a famous man so you're all over the Net. I ran off copies of photos of your late wife and mother-in-law and..." She glanced back at the sculpture. "Do you like it?"

My throat was swelling up and I could feel tears behind my eyes. I was going to make a fool of myself!

"He loves it!" Jackie said, sparing me. "He's mad about it, aren't you?"

All I could do was nod and swallow repeatedly as I looked at that beautiful piece of art.

"I'd say this calls for champagne," Jackie said, "and I need everyone's help in getting it out of the 'frig."

I was grateful to Jackie for taking all those people away. She got all the guests, about a dozen of them, to follow her into the kitchen, and left me alone with Dessie. Moving a chair beside mine, she sat down, her hands on the table.

"I hope it's okay," she said softly. "It was presumptuous of me but Pat's Mother was one of the best books I ever read. I think I cried from page two to the last page. You made a heroine out of a woman who would otherwise have been forgotten. After I met you, I wanted to give you something to say thanks for what you gave me with that book."

I couldn't speak. I knew that if I did, I'd start bawling. Reaching across the table, I took her hand in mine and squeezed. All I could do was nod.

"Good," she said. "It means everything to me that you like it. But this is just the clay so I can change anything you want to."

"No!" I choked out. "It's perfect."

I could feel her smiling at me, but I couldn't take my eyes off the sculpture. I'd seen Pat smile just like that when she was reading my ma.n.u.scripts. And I'd seen her mother secretly look at her husband and daughter with that face full of love. Had she ever looked at me like that? I wondered.

But I knew the answer. Yes, she had, I thought, and I squeezed Dessie's hand tighter.

"Here they come," she said, "so pull yourself together."

I smiled at that, wiped my eyes, sniffed a couple of times, then watched Dessie slip the top back over the sculpture. "Why don't you come to lunch at my house on Sunday and let's talk about casting it in bronze?"

I nodded, feeling better, but not yet secure enough to talk.

"You," she said quietly. "Alone. One o'clock?"

Turning, I looked at her and saw that this was more than just an invitation to a meal. She was telling me that if I was interested, she was.

Yeah, I thought, I was, so I nodded, we smiled at each other, and stayed separate for the rest of the evening.

But our physical separation didn't fool Jackie. Approximately three and a half seconds after the last guest left, she informed me that my behavior toward Dessie had been "indecent."

"And what does someone of your generation know about decency?" I shot at her. "You run around in shirts the size of my socks, with your belly b.u.t.ton exposed, and you think you know about decency?"

To my extreme annoyance, Jackie gave me a cold little smile and walked out of the room.

I didn't see her again until the next morning, and I expected her to be slamming pots and pans around in the kitchen in a jealous fit. Why were women so jealous? I wondered.

But Jackie wasn't in the kitchen. Worse, there was no breakfast in the kitchen. I had to search that oversize house for twenty minutes before I found her. She was on the front porch and she was packing camera equipment into a big, padded backpack. She had on high-topped, thick-soled shoes that looked like they weighed twelve pounds each.

"Going somewhere?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "It's Sat.u.r.day and I'm taking the day off. It's a gorgeous day and I'm going to photograph flowers."

I didn't want to spend the day alone in that cavernous house. I'd had six years alone and a few weeks of being around people, and now I couldn't seem to bear solitude. "I'll go with you," I said.

Jackie gave a snort of derision and looked me up and down. I had on an old T-shirt and a baggy pair of shorts-my sleeping attire. And, okay, I'd put on a few pounds in the last years, but I knew there was muscle under there.

"I'm going to be climbing," she said, as though that excluded me. "And, besides, you don't have the proper shoes or even something to carry water in."

She had me there. I'd never been much of a hiking-climbing person.

Climb all day, look at some fabulous view for ten minutes, climb down. I'd rather stay home and look at a book. "Wasn't there a store next to Wal-Mart called mountain something?"

"Yes," Jackie said, slipping her arms into her backpack. "But I'm sure the store doesn't open until nine, it's seven now and I'm ready to go." With a little smile, she turned toward the steps.

I gave a great sigh. "Okay, I'll call Dessie and see what she's doing."

Jackie stopped and turned back, looking as though she wanted to murder me. "Get dressed," she said through clamped-shut teeth. "Blue jeans, T-shirt, long-sleeved shirt."