"Yes," said Sylvie. "She kills to cover her crime. I hide."

"You hid to cover her crime."

"Poor Lanny. He was an ass, but he might have grown out of it."

"I realized something," said Don. "A little fact about murder that you often overlook. It's always somebody's child who dies."

"Not me," said Sylvie. "I'm nobody's child."

He held her hand. You're mine now, he was saying. Not my child, but mine. To miss you when you go, to look out for you, to hope you'll be careful.

"I don't know what to do, now, Sylvie," he said. "I don't know how to find her. I just can't imagine Lissy is still living under her own name. She told her lies to the McCoys and then she took off. She could be anywhere. Any country."

"So," said Sylvie. "So we don't find her."

"But we have to," said Don. "I don't know how we can set things to rights without her."

She stroked the wood of the bench. "So work awhile this afternoon. Maybe some idea will come to you."

He shook his head. "I can't work on the house anymore," he said. "Not till I know what's needed."

She flinched. "Don, it's the house that's making me real. Keeping me alive."

"But it's killing the women next door."

She looked at him searchingly. "Don?"

"Don't ask me to do that, Sylvie," he said. "Think what you're asking. Those old ladies may be crotchety and strange but I can't just forget them and finish the house and it kills them or enslaves them completely or... You're solid now, Sylvie."

She nodded. "I know, I wasn't... I didn't mean for you to forget them, I just... I can feel the hunger of the house."

"So can they."

"It wants you to go on. Can't you feel it?"

He shook his head.

"Well that's good," she said. "You're still free, then."

"I've got to find a way to set things right. Not to decide between the dead woman that I love and a couple of strange old ladies I like a lot."

She giggled. "Did you ever think you'd say a phrase like 'the dead woman that I love'?"

He stroked her neck, the part of her shoulder left bare by the neckline of the dress. "Nor did I ever think that the most beautiful woman I ever met would disappear if she ever went outdoors."

"Strange times," said Sylvie.

"Strange but good," said Don.

"Good?"

"This is completely selfish of me, but if you hadn't been killed in this house and trapped here and... you think a college graduate librarian would ever look at a man like me?"

She shook her head. "But then, think of the hard road you had to travel to bring you here."

"Come to think of it," said Don, "if our meeting and falling in love with each other—that is what happened, isn't it?"

She nodded.

"Well if that was part of some cosmic plan, then I got to say that's one hell of a lousy planner. Somebody should fire that guy."

"Let's be honest," said Sylvie. "If we could undo the bad things—I wasn't murdered, and you didn't lose Nellie—and the price of doing that was that we never met each other and never loved each other..."

Don didn't need to answer. They both knew that they'd do it in a hot second.

"That doesn't mean this isn't real," said Sylvie. "Just because our lives might have gone another way. A better way. Doesn't mean that we don't love each other now. I mean, it did go this way, and we can't trade this for that or that for this, so..."

She couldn't figure out how to end what she was saying, so he kissed her and solved that one small problem. Anything that could be solved with a kiss, he could do that. Trouble was, it was a very small list of very minor problems.

"It's Gladys who'll know," he said. "If anybody does. She had the power to get those old ladies out of here. To keep them out this long. If there's any way to keep you alive but get you out of this house..."

"There isn't," said Sylvie. "She couldn't even get those ladies farther than the carriagehouse. What can she do for me?"

"Hey, it's just a lot of old wives' tales, right?" said Don. "But I'll tell you, everything they told me has turned out to be right. I'm not going to make the mistake of underestimating any of those old wives."

"Think they've finished the food you brought them?" asked Sylvie.

"You had to remind me of food."

"So go eat," she said. "And when you come back, see if they'll let you in and give you some answers. Even if the answer is that there's nothing you can do for me, at least we'll know."

He paused at the door. "Do you really think God has anything to do with this?" he asked.

She shrugged.

"I mean religion is all about life after death and right and wrong, right?"

"I guess we know there's a life after death," she said.

"But the will of God and all that," said Don. "I just don't see how the will of God could possibly have anything to do with this."

"I don't know, Don. I wasn't a believer."

"I was raised that way, but when Nellie died I decided that was all the proof I needed that God didn't exist or if he did then he didn't care about us at all." Even saying this much about Nellie brought tears to his eyes and he had to swallow hard. "But now here you are. Here you are. A spirit, alive when your body's dead. So where does God come into it? Is he out there somewhere, working to make it so that in the long run, the really really lo-o-o-ong run, everything comes out even?"

"I don't think so," she said. "I mean, maybe he's out there." She walked to him, touched his chest, right over his breastbone, right over his heart. "But maybe he's in there. Making it all come out right."

Don shook his head. "I don't think God is in there." He lifted her hand from his chest and kissed it. "But you are."

He went out to the car and his legs felt loose and rubbery under him. He was a little dizzy. Either he was very hungry or he was in love. A quarter pounder with cheese would settle the question.

Answers

If the idea was to make up with the Weird sisters, Don still had a ways to go. And the start would be that leaf-covered lawn.

Their garage contained no car. Instead, it had the cleanest array of gardening tools Don had ever seen. What did they do, wash them in dish soap after each use? Every tool had a shelf of its own or a clip to hold it to the wall. Nothing touched the ground. The only sign that they had not been maintaining the garage up to their normal standards was a couple of spiderwebs, but these were so new they didn't even have sacs of eggs or more than a couple of bug corpses. If these ladies had stayed in the Bellamy house, the place would never have decayed at all.

The rake was clipped to the wall. Don took it down and toted it over his shoulder out to the front yard. His body didn't like raking, not today, not after yesterday's labors, but he pushed on and after a while the aches and pains subsided and became the trance of labor. His hands were already callused. It felt good to him, to know that work had shaped his body. Back when he was a general contractor, building house after house, real physical labor had been only a hobby for him, fine carpentry in the garage. He had no calluses then. The last few years before his wife left, he had even been developing a little pooch at the beltline. That was gone, too. He didn't have the shaped, constructed muscles of a bodybuilder. He had the body that honest labor made, and he had learned to recognize it in other men, and respect it. And to like his own. He felt good in this flesh.

The job was done. The leaves were piled at the curb. He leaned for a moment on the rake, and the front door opened. Not just a crack, and not just to be slammed in his face. Miz Judea and Miz Evelyn both stood there, waiting for him. He waved. "Got to put the rake away." They closed the door as he walked around the house to the garage in the backyard.