Lis taught sophomore English at Ridgeton High School.

“I’m a tough grader.” She laughed wanly. “I’ve been on my share of sixteen-year-olds’ shit lists.”

“ ‘i your lover.’ ” The sheriff hitched at his gun belt. He stared at the letter for a moment. “Return address?”

Lis flipped through the manilla folder where she’d filed it-in the Letters, Miscellaneous slot. Just past, she now noted, Last Will and Testament-Owen and Lis. She found the envelope. There was no return address. The postmark was Gloucester.

“That’s nowhere near Marsden,” she pointed out.

“Let me make a call.” The sheriff glanced at Owen, who nodded at the phone.

As she leaned against the counter, sipping the rose-hip tea, Lis remembered a hot Saturday in September, replanting a bush of hybrid tea roses, lemon yellow. Sweat was running along her nose with a tickle. Owen had been working all day and had just returned. About 6:00 p.m., the sun low and wan. He stood in the doorway, his large shoulders slumped, a piece of paper in his hand. Lis glanced up at him and the plant sank through her fingers, a thorn piercing her skin. Because of the sallow, grave expression on her husband’s face she hadn’t at first noticed the pain. Lis looked down a second later and saw a sphere of blood on her finger. She set the plant on the ground. Owen handed her this very letter and she took it from him slowly, leaving a bloody fingerprint on the envelope-like an old-time wax seal.

Portia now read it. She shrugged, and announced to Lis, “I’ve got some stuff with me. Stop by the room, you want. It might relax you.”

Lis blinked and forced herself to appear blasé. Only her sister, she reflected from an emotional distance, would offer a joint with one-fifth of the town’s constabulary standing nearby (his squad car’s bumper proclaiming, Ridgeton Says NO to Drugs). This was vintage Portia-playful, cunning, perverse. Oh, Portia-the hip, pale, French-braided younger sister with her Discman and her stream of thin-faced boyfriends. She’d been forced to endure an evening in the country, and she was blowing Lis one of the cold kisses her older sister remembered so well.

Lis did not reply. The young woman shrugged and, with a glance at Owen, wandered out of the kitchen.

The sheriff, who hadn’t heard Portia’s proposition and probably wouldn’t have understood it if he had, hung up the receiver. When he spoke, it was to Owen. “Well… The long and the short of it is that she doesn’t have anything to worry about.”

She? Lis repeated to herself. Was this me? Her face burned and she sensed even old-world Owen shift uncomfortably at the sheriff’s patronizing attitude.

“They said it didn’t mean nothing. Hrubek’s a schizo-they don’t do well by people face-to-face. Too nervous to talk or something. So they write these long letters that’re just nonsense mostly and when they do make a threat they’re like too scared to act on it.”

“The postmark?” Lis asked firmly. “ Gloucester.”

“Oh, about that. I asked. He may still’ve sent it. He got sent to this hospital there for some tests the first week in September. It’s pretty low-security. He might’ve slipped away and mailed a letter. But, what I was telling you before, he’s headed east, away from here.”

The sheriff and Lis both looked at Owen, who because he was the largest person in the room and the most grave, seemed to be in charge. “What if he isn’t?”

“Hell, he’s on foot, Owen. The doctor said there’s no way he can drive a car. And who’s going to give him a ride, a big crazy like that?”

“I’m just asking you,” Owen said, “what if he isn’t going east. What if he changes his mind and comes here?”

“Here?” the sheriff asked and fell silent.

“I want you to put a man on the house.”

“I’m sorry, Owen. No can do. We’ve got-”

“Stan, this is serious.”

“-that storm coming up. It’s supposed to be a whopper. And Fred Bertholder’s in bed with the flu. Sick as a dog. Whole family has it.”

“One man. Just until they catch him.”

“Look, even the state boys’re spread pretty thin. They’re on highway detail mostly because of the-”

“Fucking storm,” Owen spat out. He rarely swore in front of people he didn’t know well; he considered it a sign of weakness. Lis was momentarily shocked at this lapse-not at the cussing itself but the anger that would be behind it.

“We got our priorities. Come on, don’t go looking that way, Owen. I’ll check in with Haversham every so often. If there’s any change I’ll be over here like greased lightning.”

Owen walked to the window and looked out over the lake. He was either paralyzed with anger or deep in thought.

“Why don’t you go to a hotel for the night?” the sheriff suggested with a cheerfulness that Lis found immensely irritating. “Hey, that way you’ll get yourselves a good night’s rest and not have to worry ’bout nothing.”

“Good night’s rest,” Lis muttered. “Sure.”

“Believe me, folks, you got nothing to worry about.” He glanced out the window into the sky, perhaps hoping for a searing streak of lightning to justify his deployment of deputies this evening. “I’ll stay on top of it, yessir.” The sheriff offered a rueful smile as he stepped to the door.

Only Lis said good night.

Owen paced beside the window, gazing out to the lake. He said matter-of-factly, “I think we ought to do that. A hotel, I mean. We’ll get a couple rooms at the Marsden Inn.”

A quaint little bed-and-breakfast, lousy (Owen’s word) with dried flowers, Shaker furniture, country wreaths and dreadfully sincere paintings of live horses, dead birds and glassy-eyed nineteenth-century children.

“Not exactly the best hideout from a crazy man, would you say?”

“It doesn’t sound like he could even get halfway to Ridgeton, let alone find a hotel we’re staying at… If he was inclined to find us in the first place. Besides, the Inn ’s only two miles from here. I don’t want to have to go far tonight.”

“We need to finish the dam and the taping.”

Owen didn’t speak for a moment. He asked in a distracted voice, “Where do you think he is?”

“I’m not leaving till we get that levee finished. The sandbags, the-”

Owen’s eyes flashed. “Why are you arguing?”

Lis blinked. She’d learned to tolerate his temper. She knew it was usually misdirected. Her husband was angry now, yes, but not at her-at the sheriff. Most times she blustered right back at him. But tonight she didn’t raise her voice. On the other hand she wasn’t going to back down. “I’m not disagreeing. The hotel’s fine. But I’m not leaving until we’ve got at least another foot’s worth of sandbags.”

His eyes again looked out onto the lake while Lis’s dipped to the letter, resting on the butcher block. Lis smoothed it, then folded the paper. It made a crinkling sound and she thought for some reason of dried skin. She shivered and tossed it onto a stack of bills to be filed.

Lis pulled on her jacket. Was he going to argue, or agree? Unable to anticipate his reaction she felt her stomach twisting into a knot. Cautiously she said, “It shouldn’t take more than an hour.” Still he said nothing. “You think we can get enough bags piled up by then?”

Owen finally turned from the window and asked what she’d just said.

“Sandbags? Can we stack enough in an hour?”

“An hour? I’m sure we can.” His serenity surprised her. “Anyway I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as they say. You know weathermen around here-they’re always sounding false alarms.”

The driver downshifted to the lowest of his thirteen gears and nudged the huge white tractor-trailer past the restaurant and into the parking area. He locked the brakes and shut off the diesel, then checked a map, spending more time than he thought normal for a smart man like himself to calculate that he’d be in Bangor by four the next afternoon.