At the faculty meeting Skander had been no help, sitting silently and appearing downcast. But a few teachers had contributed: Ted Wrigley and Kate, Bill Dolittle and Betty Sherman. Roger Bennett had been almost garrulous but he hadn’t said anything substantive—that is, his purpose had been to show that he was still sorry for knocking Hawthorne down during the basketball game, which only made Hawthorne wonder if it had been an accident after all.

That was where Hawthorne was with his thinking when he saw Kate in the parking lot. Briefly, he wondered whether Kate had put the picture on his desk as a gift, but the very unlikelihood of that struck him as evidence of his distraction. Still, he believed he could benefit from her point of view. He also found her attractive. It made him realize that he wanted a face to insert between him and the faces of his wife and daughter, if only for an hour or so. And then he asked himself what right he had to rest. What right did he have to turn away from them?

Despite his uncertainty, Hawthorne called to Kate. She wore a red mackinaw, almost as if she wanted to be noticed. Soon they were walking along a path in the woods past the playing fields. Hawthorne spoke about the picture, how it showed his wife and daughter on Christmas day. He described coming back from the teachers’ lounge and finding it on his desk. As he talked, he realized he had been badly frightened. Kate listened to him carefully as their feet scuffed through the fallen leaves. The muted sunlight through the trees made it seem they were walking within a vast Japanese lantern.

“And you thought I might have put it there?” she asked.

“I didn’t know. But if it was meant as a friendly gesture, then it might have been done by—”

“By someone you’ve been friendly with,” said Kate, laughing. “No, I didn’t do it. Didn’t anybody notice anything? There wasn’t a note? What about Mrs. Hayes, did she see someone?”

“No, and that’s another problem. She’s resigned.” Hawthorne explained that she had been made anxious by the computers but he hoped to persuade her to come back.

“How difficult.” Kate carried a backpack slung over one shoulder.

“She didn’t give the computers a real chance. I’d meant to spend more time with her but what with one thing and another it wasn’t possible, so I was going to help her this week.”

“And what if she couldn’t learn?” It was Kate’s habit to look at a person out of the corner of her eye when she spoke, only half turning her head and not facing the other person directly.

“Then I’d hire someone to work under her. I told her that this afternoon on the phone but she wouldn’t rethink her decision. She said the office was too small for two people. I’ll write the board. If she won’t change her mind, then perhaps they can give her a special tribute for her years of service as well as some improved retirement package, or at least a bonus.”

“Who’ll take her place?”

“Fritz says he knows of a person who might work out.”

Half a dozen crows seemed engaged in an argument among the pines. The maple leaves under their feet were bright yellows and oranges. Occasionally, Kate would pick one up, study it, and carry it a while before letting it flutter back to the ground.

“Did you ask Fritz about the photograph?” asked Kate.

“If he’d put it there, he would have told me. To tell the truth, I find the whole business incredible.” He was about to tell her about Ambrose Stark’s appearance, then decided not to. It already struck him as too peculiar, as if it had been a hallucination.

“Do you think it’s connected to whoever put those clippings in our mailboxes?”

“I don’t know.” Hawthorne took off his glasses and polished them on his tie. Without his glasses the colors of the trees became a spectacular blur.

“I felt bad calling you about George.” Kate laughed abruptly. “Especially since nothing’s happened.”

“I was glad that you felt comfortable enough to alert me. You still think he’ll call?”

“He could easily show up. If he’s drinking, there’s no telling what he might do. All of this should be terrific material for your book.”

Hawthorne stopped and put a hand on her arm. “Believe me, there is no book. I came here to keep Bishop’s Hill from going out of business, not to write anything.”

“Everyone’s talking about it. They think that’s why you took the job, to write about dysfunctional education. I was looking forward to it.”

Hawthorne began walking again. “Then you’ll have to be disappointed. I don’t belong to that world anymore.” Hawthorne worried that his tone had been unnecessarily harsh, and he tried to soften it. “By the way, I’ve taken over the coaching of the swim team, but I may not be able to make all of the practices. Is that something you might help me with? I could probably take you off some other stuff—mail room and lunch duty.”

Kate appeared to consider. “My son’s home in the afternoon. It would probably mean more baby-sitting, but I think I could manage it. I used to swim a lot. That’s where I met George. We both swam at UNH. He got booted off the team for drinking. I should have taken it as a warning.” Kate began to talk about her marriage and George’s jealousy. In part she wanted to show Hawthorne that she hadn’t telephoned him out of foolishness, that George could easily make a scene. She described his temper and his drinking and how she was forced to stay in this area because of his visiting rights.

As they walked and Hawthorne listened, he knew that shortly they would talk about his own marriage and the death of his wife and daughter. Not only was it the place where his thoughts always went, it was the place where all conversations sooner or later arrived, as if anyone’s pleasant remark or idle discussion of the weather was only a way of getting to what interested them most, the horrific deaths of Meg and Lily. It was like watching a ball roll down a hill: eventually this subject—the lowest part of all talk—would be reached. He could almost feel Meg and Lily waiting in the wings for their turn onstage. Yes, he too had been married. Yes, something awful had happened.

Yet, when he began to talk about Wyndham, it was almost with relief, as if his purpose in life was to tell that story over and over. To tell it until its last shard had been pulled from him. As he listened to himself, he realized that the story sounded practiced as it changed from event and recollection into language, as if each retelling were an attempt to scrub away the awfulness.

“The boy, Stanley Carpasso, had been at Wyndham for over three years. That may have been the problem. The usual stay at a treatment center is two. But he’d had a rough time. He was eleven when he came. He’d already been in four foster homes and was very destructive. He had no relatives and his father was unknown. His mother had been a prostitute and she’d died of AIDS. He became extremely fond of me. In fact, after the first six months or so, I was the only person who didn’t become a victim of his tantrums. So it appeared I was doing him some good. That in itself seemed reason enough to keep him there longer. At first he was friendly with my wife and daughter and the affection he had for me extended to them as well. But with puberty he began to change. Not that he obviously came to dislike Meg and Lily, but he was jealous of them. He concealed this as best as he could, but when I was late to an appointment or when I was simply busy with my own family he resented it. And those feelings increased.

“Unfortunately, I wasn’t sufficiently aware of them. I was busy, and when I saw him, he seemed the same as ever. No, that’s not right; he’d sometimes complain about my family. He even asked why I didn’t adopt him, why he couldn’t live with us. His foster home experiences had been disasters, but he said that wouldn’t happen if I took him in. He promised to be an angel. That was his word, an angel. However, I couldn’t do it. Partly I was skeptical and partly it’s bad practice to take in a favorite. I mean, all the kids wanted a home—perhaps not a real home but some ideal impossibility of their imagination. And if I’d taken Stanley in, it would have created a series of damaging expectations and disappointments for the others.