He scanned it carefully, though he was already certain of what it said. "Would you mind telling me who was asking about my house?"

This time, Amber Millard deferred to her boss.

"Well, now, that would be a breach of confidentiality, now wouldn't it?" Jefferson Davis Houlihan drawled.

Ted's first impulse was to ask Houlihan how many lawyer shows he'd been watching on television lately, but he checked the impulse; it would only anger the man. Studying the document in his hands again, he returned his attention to Amber Millard. "I'm going to need an application for a variance."

This time Houlihan didn't wait for his assistant to defer to him. "Not sure we have any. Haven't had any call for one in maybe twenty years."

Ted felt his temper rise. "Would you mind looking?" he asked, making no attempt to soften the edge in his voice.

"Don't mind looking," Houlihan drawled, lazily getting to his feet. "Just not sure where to start." His eyes fixed on Ted. "Maybe if you came back in a week or two…" he suggested, letting his voice trail off in an unmistakably deliberate way.

As he was leaving Town Hall a few minutes later, the first urge for a drink came over Ted, an urge that only grew stronger as the day went on. Everywhere he went, it was the same as at the Town Clerk's office.

No one was rude to him.

No one turned away as he approached.

Most people even smiled at him.

At first he tried to pretend it was just the way small towns worked: everybody here had known everybody else all their lives, and nobody knew him. It would take a while, but once they got to know him, they'd accept him. Especially once he got the inn open and his guests started spending money in the restaurants and shops strung neatly along the south side of the square. It's money that talks, he reminded himself, and mine's as good as anyone else's.

Nobody refused to sell him anything.

By lunchtime, when he'd hauled the first load of supplies back to the house, he'd already spent close to five hundred dollars, and in the afternoon-after Janet told him about Corinne Beckwith's visit-he made sure he spent a lot more.

He ordered paint and wallpaper, new slate for the roof, and new fixtures for every bathroom in the house. He spent an hour at the one furniture store in St. Albans, searching through catalog after catalog, finally putting half a dozen of the best-and most expensive-into the car to take home to Janet.

He talked to the plumbers and electricians and roofers, and anyone else he could think of who might be able to help him on the restoration. "I'm not worried about money," he assured every one of them-and made certain they all had Bruce Wilcox's phone number so the lawyer could confirm that the money was, indeed, there. "I'm interested in getting the job done right."

All of them listened politely.

All of them sold him whatever he wanted.

But all of them-the plumbers, the electricians, the roofers, and everyone else-told him the same thing: "I don't know. It's pretty busy right now. Don't see how I can fit you in. And that house is in pretty bad shape. Be better just to tear it down."

By the end of the afternoon, Ted was sick of hearing it. His last stop was at the market, where he picked up everything on the list Janet had given him. Then, he decided to make another stop to add a few things of his own.

Some bourbon. Some gin. A lot of vodka.

He'd had a rough day. He deserved a drink.

The girl at the cash register passed the bottles across the scanner without saying anything, but he'd seen the look in her eye, and had no trouble reading its meaning: Go away. We don't want you here.

Now, sitting in the bar, he met his own gaze in the mirror. To hell with you, he said silently. To hell with all of you. I'm here, and I'm not leaving. Draining the second drink in a single gulp, Ted dropped enough money on the bar to cover the bill and a tip and walked out.

After he was gone, the bartender scooped up the money, dropped part of it in the cash register and the rest of it in his tip jar, then picked up the phone.

"He was here," he said. "And he's drinking."

There was a short silence, and then the recipient of the call spoke. "That's good," Father MacNeill said softly. "Maybe he'll drink himself to death."

Evening lay like a shroud over the house. Janet tried to tell herself that her dark mood was just a result of the weather-the heat and humidity, unseasonable even for mid-September, that wrapped St. Albans like a sodden blanket. The iron determination that Corinne Beckwith's visit instilled in her that morning had begun to erode as soon as Kim and Jared came home from school. Jared tried to put a good face on it, but Kim made no effort to hide her feelings. Her unhappiness, Janet was certain, was heightened by the fact that there hadn't been any sign of Muffin all day.

"Something's happened to her," Kim said as she finally gave up trying to call the missing cat. "She wouldn't just run away."

"Cats can be pretty independent," Janet told her, trying to offer Kim hope for her pet, but at the same time wanting to prepare her for the possibility that the cat might never come back. "Maybe she just didn't like it here, and has found somewhere else to live."

"But she wouldn't do that," Kim protested. "Not Muffin!"

"Well, perhaps she'll come back," Janet told her, and changed the subject. "How was the first day at school?" she asked, and immediately wished she hadn't.

Kim moaned. "It was awful," she said. Opening the refrigerator, she rummaged around for a couple of Cokes, one of which she tossed to her brother. For the next twenty minutes Janet listened to her oldest daughter's account of the twins' humiliation in the first ten minutes they'd been in class at St. Ignatius. "And it wasn't even Jared's fault," she finished. "Sister Clarence never even asked if he wrote the note, and of course he wouldn't tell her he didn't."

"Look how she treated us," Jared said. "And it was our first day in school. If I'd told her Luke Roberts wrote the note, she'd have probably had him expelled, or made him stay after school and say two thousand Hail Marys or something."

Kim rolled her eyes, wondering once again how it was that Jared never seemed to get mad about anything-even someone else getting him in trouble-and always managed to make it sound like he hadn't done anything special. He didn't even seem to be angry at Sister Clarence. "Will you at least admit Sister Clarence is a total creep?"

"Kim!" Janet did her best to glare at her daughter, but as she'd listened to Kim recounting their day at school, a dark suspicion had been growing in her mind that there was more to it than Kim knew.

Father MacNeill.

But surely he wouldn't go so far as to turn a teacher against her own students? Or would he? For the rest of the afternoon the problem gnawed at her, nibbling away at the resolve that had come to her only a few hours earlier.

Then Ted came home, and even before they saw him, they knew what he'd been doing. It was nothing visible; nothing they could hear or smell, taste or touch. But all of them had been living with it for so long that they recognized it the instant he entered the house.

It was the aura of alcohol.

Janet, testing the roast she'd fixed for dinner, caught the look that passed between Kim and Jared. Though neither said a word, she could read their common thought as clearly as if they'd spoken: He's drunk!

Molly began to cry, as if she, too, had picked up the thought-or perhaps detected her father's condition with some internal radar of her own.

Then he came into the kitchen, confirming their unspoken thoughts.

His step was a little too careful, his speech a little too precise.