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By Root 485 0

Caller had just been a figment of Little Nell's imagination. I waited and waited, but it didn't happen. Finally, just before the first operation on my hand, I told Brandon about how I'd had the idea that I might not have been alone in the house, at least not all the time. I told him it could have just been my imagination, that was certainly a possibility, but it had seemed very real at the time. I didn't say anything about my own missing rings, but I talked a lot about the footprint and the pearl earring. About the earring I think it would be fair to say I babbled, and I think I know why: it had to stand for everything I didn't dare to talk about, even to Brandon. Do you understand? And all the time I was telling him, I kept saying stuff like 'Then I thought I saw' and 'I felt almost sure that.' I had to tell him, had to tell someone because the fear was eating me from the inside out like acid, but I tried to show him in every way I could that I wasn't mistaking subjective feelings for objective reality. Above all I tried to keep him from seeing how scared I still was. Because I didn't want him to think I was crazy. I didn't care if he thought I was a little hysterical; that was a price I was willing to pay to keep from getting stuck with another nasty secret like the one about what my father did to me on the day of the eclipse, but I desperately didn't want him to think I was crazy. I didn't want him to even speculate on the possibility.

Brandon took my hand and patted it and told me he could understand such an idea; he said that under the circumstances, it was probably tame. Then he added that the important thing to remember was that it was no more real than the shower Gerald and I took after our athletic, bump-and-bruise romp on the bed. The police had gone over the house, and if there had been someone else in there, they almost certainly would have found evidence of him, The fact that the house had undergone a big end-of-summer cleaning not long before made that even more likely.

'Maybe they did find evidence of him,' I said. 'Maybe some cop stuck that earring in his own pocket.'

'There are plenty of light-fingered cops in the world, granted,' he said, 'but it's hard for me to believe that even a stupid one would risk his career for an orphan earring. It would be easier for me to believe that this guy you thought was in the house with you came back later and got it himself.'

'Yes!' I said. 'That's possible, isn't it?'

He started to shake his head, then shrugged instead. 'Anything is possible, and that includes either cupidity or human error on the part of the investigating officers, but . . . ' He paused, then took my left hand and gave me what I think of as Brandon's Dutch Uncle expression. 'A lot of your thinking is based on the idea those investigating officers gave the house a lick and a promise and called it good. That wasn't the case. If there had been a third party in there, it's odds-on that the police would have found evidence of him. And it they'd found evidence of a third party, I'd know.'

'Why?' I asked.

'Because something like that could put you in a very nasty situation — the kind of situation where the police stop being nice guys and start reading you the Miranda warning.'

'I don't understand what you're talking about,' I said, but I was beginning to, Ruth; yes indeed. Gerald was something of an insurance freak, and I had been informed by agents of three different carriers that I was going to spend my period of official mourning — and quite a few years after — in comfortable circumstances.

'John Harrelson in Augusta did a very thorough, very careful autopsy on your husband,' Brandon said. 'According to his report, Gerald died of what MEs call "a pure heart attack," meaning one uncomplicated by food poisoning, undue exertion, or gross physical trauma.' He clearly meant to go on — he was in what I've come to think of as Brandon's Teaching Mode — but he saw something on my face that stopped him. 'Jessie? What's wrong?'

'Nothing,' I said.

'Yes there is — you look terrible. Is it a cramp?'

I