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At least she was looking at him now, and there wasn’t an ounce of fear in her voice or in her eyes. He was pleased. She trusted him not to hurt her.

“I didn’t mean as in consenting adults. I just meant that you’re no more a kid than I am. There’s no reason for you to be embarrassed.”

“I suppose you’d be the one to be embarrassed since I’m so skinny and ugly.”

“Yeah, right.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I think you’re very—no, never mind that. Now, smile.”

She gave him a ghastly smile, but again, there was no fear in it. She did trust him not to rape her. He heard himself say, completely unplanned, “Was it your husband who humiliated you and beat you in that sanitarium?”

She didn’t move, didn’t change expressions, but she withdrew from him. She just shut down.

“Answer me, Sally. Was it your damned husband?”

She looked at him straight on and said, “I don’t know you. You could be the man calling me, mimicking my father, you could be the man last night at my window. He could have sent you. I want to leave now, James, and never come back here. I want to disappear. Will you help me do that?”

Jesus, he wanted to help her. He wanted to disappear with her. He wanted—He shook his head. “That’s no answer to anything. You couldn’t run forever, Sally.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it.” She turned, clutching her clothes to her chest, and went back into the bathroom.

He started to shout through the bathroom door that he liked the small black mole on the right side of her belly. But he didn’t. He sat down on the chintz sofa and tried to figure things out.

“Thelma,” he said after he’d swallowed a spoonful of the lightest, most beautifully seasoned scrambled eggs he’d ever tasted in his life, “if you were a stranger and you wanted to hide here in The Cove, where would you go?”

Thelma ate one of her fat sausages, wiped the grease off her chin, and said, “Well, let me see. There’s that dilapidated little shack just up on that hillock behind Doc Spiver’s house. But I tell you, boy, I’d have to be real desperate to hole up in that place. All filled with dirt and spiders and probably rats. Nasty place that probably leaks real bad when it rains.” She ate another sausage, just forked the whole thing up and stuffed it into her mouth.

Martha came up beside her and handed her a fresh napkin. Thelma gave her a nasty look. “You think I’m one of those old ladies who will dribble on themselves if a handmaiden isn’t right on the spot to keep her clean?”

“Now, Thelma, you’ve been twisting the other napkin around until it’s a crumpled ball. Here, take this one. Oh, look, you got some sausage grease on your diary. You’ve got to be more careful.”

“I need more ink. Go buy me some, Martha. Hey, you got young Ed back there in the kitchen? You’re feeding him, aren’t you, Martha? You’re buying my food with my money and you’re feeding him just so he’ll go to bed with you.”

Martha rolled her eyes and looked at Sally’s plate. “You don’t like the toast? It’s a little on the pale side. You want it better toasted?”

“No, no, it’s fine, truly. I’m just not hungry this morning.”

“No man wants a skinny post, Sally,” Thelma said, taking a noisy bite of toast. “A man’s got to have something he can hang on to. Just look at Martha, bosom so big young Ed can’t even walk past without seeing her poking out at him.”

“Young Ed has prostate trouble,” Martha said, raising a thick black eyebrow, and she left the dining room, saying over her shoulder, “I’ll buy you some black ink, Thelma.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“But—”

Sally just shook her head and walked across the street toward the World’s Greatest Ice Cream Shop. She was limping only slightly today. A bell tinkled when she opened the door.

Amabel, dressed like a gypsy with a cute white apron, stood behind the counter, scooping up a French Vanilla double-dip cone for a young woman who was talking a mile a minute.

“. . . I heard that two people have been murdered here in the last several days. That’s incredible! My mama said The Cove was the quietest little place she knew about, she said nothing ever