She had renamed herself with no one's permission and vanished from the public record. A pilgrim without papers, all that Hannah had ever asked was to be taken on faith alone. Respectful of that, Oren had stolen the birth certificate and burned it. Now, her only proof of life on earth was this stone-these flowers-this man who kept her secret.

"Hannah, I'm lost," he said, as if expecting one more parlor trick to fix him and make him whole.

Retrieving a yellow dahlia from her grave, Oren carried this flower to Miss Rice's good friend, Mr. Swahn. In the absence of farsighted generations and a family plot, the Winstons and William Swahn had been buried in the last available section of land, a far corner of the cemetery, and a triangle was played out in the position of these three monuments.

He laid Hannah's flower down.

A bouquet of common weeds sailed past his feet to smash into Ad Winston's headstone. Without turning around, Oren knew that Isabelle had returned to Coventry.

The pretty redhead showed more decorum when she placed red roses on her mother's grave, and she also gave flowers to Swahn, laying them down next to Hannah's yellow token.

Oren and Isabelle stood in silence, side by side. He had yet to hear the sound of her voice.

And then she said, "Last summer, Hannah told me that we were always meant to get married and have four children."

He might have known that this first conversation could not begin with a simple hello. At least, Isabelle had not tried to kill him. "In all my life," said Oren, "I only loved one woman, and it wasn't you. But we could have dinner sometime."

She kicked him in the shin-hard. That had been predictable.

Isabelle walked away, pausing once on the gravel path to look back at him, just a brief taunt thrown over one shoulder, a smile for the damage she had done.

Echo of a tango.

Oren's wounded shinbone hurt like mad, and he chased that redhead down with the ghost of a limp, running for his life. He grabbed her by the hand and held on tight, despite that gleam in her honey-brown eyes that promised him more pain. He held on.

Born in 1947, Carol O'Connell studied at the California Institute or Arts/Chouinard and the Arizona State University. For many years she survived on occasional sales of her paintings as well as freelance proof-reading and copy-editing.

At the age of 46, Carol O'Connell sent the manuscript of Mallory's Oracle to Hutchinson, because she felt that a British publisher would be sympathetic to a first time novelist and because Hutchinson also publish Ruth Rendell. Having miraculously found the book on the 'slush pile', Hutchinson immediately came back with an offer for world rights, not just for, Mallory's Oracle but for the second book featuring the same captivating heroine.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair, Hutchinson sold the rights to Dutch, French and German publishers for six figure sums. Mallory's Oracle was then taken back to the States where it was sold, at auction, to Putnam for over $800,000.

Carol O'Connell is now writing full time.