It was good to get home, kick off my shoes, grab a cup of tea, and congratulate Sorrow, with a sad sigh, for being a good boy. He hadn’t pooped or peed in the house. Maybe he wasn’t man enough to lift his leg yet, but he was getting the idea of not defacing the place where you ate and slept.

I sipped the hot tea and let my body sink into itself. I didn’t want to think or speculate. There was something about Marjory’s friends, and especially about Arnold Otis, that had drained me. I didn’t eat at the restaurant. I hadn’t been hungry. Still wasn’t. There were times when being with too many people filled me in ways that I didn’t want to feel. Maybe another reason for coming to the woods, so I could pick my times and places to be social. But that was not a choice at the moment, not with so much going on in my life.

I lay down on the brown couch, Sorrow on the carpet beside me, and put one arm up over my eyes. What I needed right then was the forest on a warm, rainy, summer day, when the trees talked to me and clouds lay overhead like the all-encompassing ceiling of a cave. I wanted to be cradled, to breathe and live without complication, but that wasn’t possible. Maybe ahead—when the snow came and I had enough money to live without scrounging work, without being involved with death.

How quickly people tired me. Except a few.

The phone rang. It was Bill, back from Lansing.

“Got your October story,” he said, all business as usual. “Good job. Come in next week and we’ll talk about holiday pieces. I’ve got some ideas. Maybe you’ll come up with something … ?”

There was a pause. The kind of pause that happens when the subject is about to change—maybe go to a place you don’t want to go, or are afraid to go. I held my breath, then broke whatever was coming in two.

“The brother, Arnold Otis, came to town,” I said.

He cleared his throat. Maybe swallowing words. I couldn’t think about that right then. Whatever had been about to happen made me nervous. My heart was beating faster and I had a lot of spit in my mouth. “I heard,” he said. “We covered the meeting here in TC.”

His voice dropped. I sensed sadness there—as if he knew a moment had passed between us that might never come again.

“He came to Leetsville after that,” I finally said. “It turned out I’d already met him.”

“Where?”

“I was at Deward. Checking something I found in my photographs.”

“What?” He was back to being a newsman, not a friend.

“There was an oblong, or more a rectangle—dug over—on the ground. It looked … I don’t know … odd. And very close to the jack pine where I found Marjory.”

“So?”

“Well, I was kind of crawling around the space … you know, like a gravesite … when I found six very dead roses someone had laid there.”

“Oh, my God!”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

“So? Where does this Otis guy come in?”

“He came up behind me when I was on my knees. Never gave me his name. He said he was fishing the Manistee. But no fishing pole.”

“You think he was there to see where his sister died?”

“Yup. But later … and I don’t know if this is connected or not … I was at Bellaire, seeing Marjory’s aunt, and when I came out the roses were gone, the photographs I’d printed were gone, and so was my camera.”

“Hmm. Think he did it?”

“I don’t think it was him. But he could have called someone. He was the only one who knew what I had.” I hesitated a minute. “Anyway, we’re going out tomorrow and Lucky and Officer Winston are having that rectangle dug up. See what might be there.”

“What do you think it is?”

“No idea. I’ve got a suspicion. Otis said he thought it could be his brother, Paul, who had murdered Marjory. The guy hasn’t been seen in years. In and out of mental hospitals, like their mother. There was a letter to Marjory. Crystalline, her friend, found it. The letter was from someone who claimed to be writing for Marjory’s brother, but they didn’t say which brother. Arnold said he’d had a friend write it for him. Something about being blackmailed by somebody he thought might be their mother or his brother.”

Bill listened and said nothing.

“Or …” I went on. “It could be somebody from the End of the World group. He thinks the rope they wear at the waist is suspiciously like the rope they found around Marjory’s neck.”

He still said nothing.

“Lucky’s coming to rely on me,” I added after a while. “I’m not a cop. I don’t have the first idea what I’m looking for …”

“I don’t believe that. So Dolly’s still with that cult thing?” He gave a low laugh. “She’s such an odd cuss. That’s worrying you, I’ll bet.”

“Well … yeah, I guess …”

“So, you’ll get me the story tomorrow? Whatever they find. Do a recap of the investigation so far. Don’t forget to bring in Arnold Otis. It was his sister who was murdered.”

“He’s going to be furious. You know the story will go out on the wire, once we print it.”

“Can’t be helped, Emily. You know that. We don’t do favors. Not even for people close to us. That’s not what news is.”

I sighed heavily.

“That bad?”

“Oh, just … I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

We hung up. I first rested my hands on the phone and then disconnected it from the wall. Enough of people. Too much anger boiling around me. What I needed most was Dolly and her easy certainty, her way of stumbling along in a straight line without looking side to side. I needed her firm belief in what was there before her eyes, while I questioned everything. Too much thinking can be bad for you, I’d found, just as my mother used to say too much reading was bad for the eyes. Too much thinking kept you from jumping on moments that could change your life, and left you wallowing in self-pity. Better not to think at all.

I lay down on the couch, had my face licked a few times—which made me happy—then went to sleep.