"Listen," I whispered, as if the receiver could also be broadcasting what I said. I held it up to his ear. Karl's dark face looked puzzled. The rustling had been succeeded by a series of baffling little noises, a little whump!, small rattling sound, the unmistakable tiny noises of a baby fussing in his sleep. Then footsteps, getting a little fainter.

"Eh!" said Hayden, so I knew he was all right. Following the sound of the footsteps, I looked out of the kitchen across the living room to the stairs, down which Rory Brown came, carrying his backpack and a paper bag full of clothes.

"He took something out of Hayden's room," I said. I was across the rooms and up the stairs before I knew what I was doing, and passed Rory without so much as looking at him.

Hayden was still asleep, restlessly, and the sheet on his crib mattress had been taken off and then replaced. Since it had been a regular flat bedsheet, much folded to fit the crib mattress, I'd noticed how it'd been tucked before, and I knew that it had been removed and refolded. The receiving blanket I'd covered the sheet with had been placed back on top, but it was wrinkled and crooked. As long as Hayden was all right, I couldn't see that any harm had been done, but I was mighty puzzled.

When I came slowly down to the living room, I saw that Cindy and Dennis were about to go.

"Rory's going to stay here for a while," Martin was saying smilingly. "I'll get him back into town."

Cindy looked doubtful. "Are you sure, Martin? It looks like it's going to let go any minute." The sky looked heavy with snow, the fields and the sky blending into one big sheet of dirty white. Dennis, his hand holding Cindy's, was looking over his shoulder at the horizon, and he was clearly anxious to be gone. "C'mon, Cindy, we'll see Martin later," he said. "And thank you, Aurora, for the coffee. You'll have to tell Cindy how you do it. Her coffee is not her strong point."

I thought of barfing all over his boots, but decided that was a little extreme. Cindy was red. I met her eyes, and elaborately drew my finger across my throat and made a choking noise. She laughed, a little reluctantly, but laughed. This confused Dennis—of course, it would.

"See you!" Martin called from the kitchen, where he and Rory and Karl were standing in a somewhat strained grouping.

"Good-bye," I said brightly, ready for them all to be gone. Something was fishy, and the sooner Dennis and Cindy pulled away, the sooner I'd find out what it was.

I went in the kitchen to face what looked like an interrogation. Martin and Karl had taken the paper bag from Rory, and as I entered they dumped it on the table. I gasped. Besides the usual deodorant and razor, underpants and condoms, the bag contained packages of bills. Just like the one in the baby's diaper bag, the one I'd discovered in Lawrenceton.

"They were under the sheet on the crib," I said, into the silence.

"It's mine," Rory said sullenly. "As long as you can't find Regina, it's mine.

She shows up, I share it with her. But we owe some of it to the midwife." "Where'd it come from?" Martin asked. It was the opening salvo in a long bombardment.

An hour later, no one had gotten anywhere, except me. I'd looked up Bobbye Sunday's address in the telephone book, which covered several small towns in the area. The midwife lived in Bushmill, and she wasn't answering her phone. I'd tried her number several times while Martin and Karl questioned Rory. Rory, who was wily if not intelligent, had made up his mind he wasn't going to tell anyone anything. I felt like I was some kind of civil rights observer, there to make sure Rory wasn't thumped by an increasingly exasperated Martin. Karl seemed to consider this Martin's show, but he contributed to the atmosphere of menace by smoldering at Rory, with some effect.

"I never meant to hurt Therese," the boy blurted out of the blue. Karl slammed his palm against the kitchen table with explosive force. "I told you never to say her name!" he said. Then he turned to me. "Therese is simple," he said bluntly. "She can cope with life, but just barely. Then this guy shows up, tells her after one date he loves her, gets her knocked up. I have to take Therese for an abortion. Phoebe's young enough to have one of her own if she wants, we don't want to raise Therese's kid and it's not our job. She can't raise a kid, he can't raise a kid, he doesn't even want to marry her. But he had a fit when she had the abortion, which left her crying for weeks. He had a use for the baby, but not for Therese, who hasn't seen or heard from him since." I looked at Rory in a new light. Rather than a passive accomplice to a plot not yet determined, he was an instigator of a subsidiary plot. Not a very efficient instigator, since Therese's father had taken care of the situation, and would have outfaced Rory under any circumstances... I was sick of trying to figure out what had happened in this farmhouse in the past few months.

"I'm going to take a ride," I said abruptly.

"You're going to drive in this snow?" My husband looked amazed, and that was all it took to make me grab my coat. I'd been dragged along on this, outvoted by my husband as to the wisdom of bringing Rory back to Corinth, stuck with the care of Hayden, forced to consort with Martin's ex-wife. I was in a royal snit compounded of grievance and self-pity.

"Yes, I am," I replied briefly.

Even as my better sense—and I did have some—told me to stay at the farmhouse, I grabbed the keys from the counter and my purse from the table and rode the crest of my snit out to the Jeep. I climbed into it, and switched on the engine. It would have served me right if the engine had refused to start or I had driven into the fields on my way to the county road, but to my surprise I got to Route 8 just fine. I paused at the end of the driveway for a minute or two, looking at the map I'd yanked out of the glove compartment. It was the middle of the afternoon, and the sky outside was about to loose its load of snow. I wished I could close my eyes or wiggle my nose and make the kitchenful of men disappear. Then I could go back to the farmhouse without losing face.

But I turned right, on my way to the tiny town of Bushmill. It was easy, after all, to find Bobbye Sunday's office. It was the little building with the snow all over the blackened and broken roof. The trailer parked behind it didn't look damaged, but the snow around it was unbroken. I looked out of the foggy window of the Jeep, shivering despite its efficient heating.

The nearest convenience store was manned (and I'm using the word loosely) by an adolescent male with acne and chin-length hair parted down the middle. It was not a flattering style, but I told myself that was just because I was old, and feeling older by the minute.

I smiled as winningly as I could. "Can you tell me what happened at the office down the street?" I asked.

"Which one?" he asked indifferently.

I will not snap, I told myself. I will not snap and snarl. "The burned one," I said gently.

"It burned," he said, smirking at the points he was scoring off the old dame who was at least in her thirties. I wondered if he would think it was as funny if I kicked him in the groin. I took a deep breath. Overreaction. "When did it burn? Was anyone hurt?"

At least he didn't care why I wanted to know. "I guess it was a couple nights ago," he told me finally. "Someone broke in after midnight, the police figure. Stole some computers and stuff, set a fire. I bet she had some painkillers and stuff in there, someone could sell around here." He smirked again. I felt like giving him a little pain.