“In the museum lab, at Orono. I’m driving there, if you’d care to ride with me.

I’ll leave around noon.”

In the background, Doreen whined, “But tomorrow’s Saturday! Since when do you work on Saturday?”

“Doreen, let me finish this call.”

“That’s how it always is! You’re always too busy. Never here for me-”

“Put on your coat, and get in the car. I’ll take you home.”

“Hell, I can drive myself.” A door slammed shut.

“Doreen!” said Lincoln. “Give me back those car keys! Doreen!” His voice came back on the line, hurried. Frantic. “I have to go. Will I see you tomorrow?”

“Noon. I’ll be waiting.”

Doreen tries,” said Lincoln, his gaze fixed on the road. “She really does. But it’s not easy for her.”

“Or for you either, I imagine,” said Claire.

“No, it’s been hard all around. It has been for years.”

It had been raining when they left Tranquility. Now the rain was thickening to sleet, and they heard it tick-ticking against the windshield. The road had turned treacherous as the temperature dropped to that dangerous transition between freeze and thaw, the blacktop collecting a frosting of watery ice. She was glad Lincoln was behind the wheel, not her. A man who has lived forty-five winters in this climate knows enough to respect its perils.

He reached down to turn up the defroster and streaks of condensation began to clear from the glass.

“We’ve been separated two years,” he said. “The problem is, she just Can’t let go. And I don’t have the heart to force it.”

They both tensed as the car ahead suddenly braked and began to fishtail, sliding from one side of the road to the other. It barely pulled Out of its skid in time to avoid an oncoming truck.

Claire sat back, her heart pounding. “Jesus.”

“Everyone’s driving too damn fast.”

“Do you think we should turn around and go home?”

“We’re more than halfway there. Might as well keep going. Or do you want to call it off?”

She swallowed. “I’m okay with this if you are.”

“We’ll just take our time. It means we’ll probably be home late.” He glanced at her. “What about Noah?”

“He’s pretty self-sufficient these days. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

Lincoln nodded. “He seems like a great kid.”

“Yes he is,” she said. And amended her answer with a rueful smile. “Most of the time.”

“Guess it’s not as easy as it looks,” said Lincoln. “I hear that all the time from parents. That raising a kid is the hardest job in the world.”

“And it’s a hundred times harder when you’re doing it alone.”

“So where’s Noah’s dad?”

Claire paused. The answer to that question almost had to be forced out. “He died. Two years ago.” She barely registered his murmured response of, “I’m sorry.” For a moment, the only sound was the windshield wiper scraping sleet from the glass. Two years, and she still had trouble talking about it. She still couldn’t bring herself to use the word widow. Women should not be made widows at the age of thirty-eight.

And laughing, loving, thirty-nine-year-old men should not die of lymphoma.

Through the freezing mist, she saw emergency lights flashing ahead. An accident.

Yet she felt strangely safe riding in this man’s car. Protected and insulated from harm. They inched past a string of emergency vehicles: two police cruisers, a tow truck, and an ambulance. A Ford Bronco had slid off the road and now lay on its side, glistening with rime. They drove past it in silence, both of them sobered by that stark reminder of how quickly life can be altered. Ended. It was one more gloomy note to an already depressing day.

Lucy Overlock arrived late to her own class. Fifteen minutes after her two graduate and ten undergraduate students stood assembled in the university museum’s basement lab, Lucy herself strode in, her slicker dripping. “With this weather, I probably should have canceled,” she said I m glad you all made it anyway She hung up her ram gear, under which she wore her usual jeans and flannel shirt, practical attire considering their surroundings. The museum basement was both dank and dusty, a cluttered cavern that smelled like the artifacts it contained. Along both walls were shelves lined with hundreds of wooden boxes, contents labeled in faded typescript: “Stonington #11: shell implements, arrowheads, miscellaneous.”

“Pittsfield #32: partial skeletal remains, adult male.”

At the center of the room, on a broad work table draped with a plastic tarpaulin, lay the new additions to this neatly catalogued charnel house.

Lucy flicked on a wall switch. Fluorescent lamps hummed on, their unnatural glare illuminating the table. Claire and Lincoln joined the circle of students.

The lights were unforgiving, casting the faces around the table in harsh relief.

Lucy removed the tarp.

The skeletal remains of the two children had been laid out side by side, the bones placed in their approximate anatomical positions. One skeleton was missing its rib cage, one lower leg, and the right upper extremity. The other skeleton appeared to be largely intact except for the missing small bones of the hands.

Lucy took her position at the head of the table, near the skulls. “What we have here is a sampled assemblage of human remains from dig number seventy-two at the southern end of Locust Lake. The dig was completed yesterday. For reference purposes, I’ve tacked the site map over there, on the wall. As you can see, the site is located right on the edge of the Meegawki Stream. That area had heavy rains and flooding this past spring, which is probably the reason this gravesite became exposed.” She looked down at the table. “So, let’s begin. First, I Want all of you to examine the remains. Feel free to pick them up, look them over carefully. Ask any questions you have about the site. Then let’s hear your conclusions as to age, race, and length of burial. Those of YOU who took part in the dig-please hold your tongues. Let’s see What the others can deduce on their own.”

One of the students reached for a skull.

Lucy stepped back and quietly circled the table, sometimes glancing over her students’ shoulders to watch them work. This assembly made Claire think of some grotesque dining ritual: the remains laid out like a feast on the table, all those eager hands reaching for the bones, turning them under the light, passing them to other hands. At first there was no conversation, the silence broken only by the occasional whisk of a tape measure being extended, retracted.

One of the skulls, missing its mandible, was handed to Claire.

The last time she’d held a human skull was in medical school. She rotated it beneath the light. Once she could name every foramen, every protuberance, but like so many other facts crammed into her memory during four years of training, those anatomical names had been forgotten, displaced by more practical data like billing codes and hospital phone numbers. She turned the skull upside down and saw that the upper teeth were still in place. The third molars had not yet erupted. A child’s mouth.

Gently she set down the skull, shaken by the reality of what she’d just cradled in her hands. She thought of Noah at age nine, his hair a whorl of dark curls, his face silky smooth against hers, and she stared at that skull of a child whose flesh had long since rotted away She was suddenly aware of Lincoln’s hand, resting on her shoulder. “You all right?” he asked, and she nodded. His gaze was sad, almost mournful under the harsh lights. Are we the only ones haunted by this child’s life? she wondered.

The only ones who see more than an empty shell of calcium and phosphate?

One of the female students, a younger, slimmer version of Lucy, asked the first question. “Was this a coffin burial? And was the terrain field or woods?”