Of course I agreed, relieved both at the prospect of being busy and of being helpful. We had a quick sandwich and went over to the cottage, with a few stops along the way. Dill, Varena told me, was spending some quality time with Anna, who'd been showing signs of being overwhelmed by all the wedding excitement.

"I've reached the point where all I can do here at my place is sleep," she told me, after she'd put her sweats on. "But I kept the lease up until the end of December, because I really didn't want to move back in with the folks." I nodded. I could see that once she did that, she and Dill would have lost whatever privacy they had. Or did Varena just want to ensure she had a break from our parents?

"What do you have left to pack?"

Varena began to open closets, showing me what she hadn't managed to empty out before now.

We'd stopped behind some stores to collect boxes. Downtown had been empty, now that most of the businesses were closed. It was fully dark at six o'clock this time of year, and the night was very cold. The cottage seemed warm and homey in contrast to the blackness outside.

I was assigned to pack the tiny closet by the front door, which contained things like extra lightbulbs, extension cords, batteries, and the vacuum cleaner. As I began to pack them in a sturdy box, Varena started wrapping some pots and pans with newspaper. We worked in comfortable silence for a little while.

Varena had just asked me if I wanted some instant hot chocolate when we heard the sound of someone walking outside the cottage.

The scare we'd had that morning must have made us jumpy. Both of us raised our heads like deer hearing the sound of the hunter's boots. Peripherally, I saw Varena turn to me, but I shook my head slightly to make her keep silent.

Then someone kicked the front door.

Varena shrieked.

"Who is it?" I called, standing to one side of the door.

"Jack," he yelled. "Let me in!"

I caught my breath in a rattling gasp, frightened and furious at being so. I yanked the door open, ready to let him know how much I appreciated being jolted like that. The words died in my throat when I opened the door. Jack was carrying Meredith Osborn. She was covered in blood.

Behind me I heard Varena pick up the phone, punch in 911. She spoke tersely to whoever answered.

Jack was haggard with shock. Some of Meredith Osborn's blood was smeared on him. He was breathing raggedly. Though she was a small woman, he'd been carrying her as a dead weight.

Varena picked up a sheet she'd just folded and flung it over the couch in one movement, and Jack gladly laid the little woman down. When he'd deposited his burden he stood for a moment with his arms still curved. Then with a groan he straightened them, his shoulders moving unconsciously in an effort to relax strained muscles.

Varena was already on her knees beside the couch, her hands on her landlady's wrist. She was shaking her head.

"She's got a pulse, but it's ..." Varena shook her head again. "She's been lying outside." The dying woman's face was ice-white, and the cold was rolling off the tiny body, eddying through the warm room.

We heard the sound of the ambulance in the distance.

Meredith Osborn opened her eyes. They fixed on mine.

Someone had struck her across her face, and her lips were cracked, had bled. Underneath the blood, they were blue, to match the tinge of her fingernails.

Her mouth opened. "The children," she whispered.

"Don't worry," Varena said instantly. "They're fine."

Meredith Osborn turned her gaze from my face to Varena's. Her mouth moved again. She tried as hard as she could to tell Varena something.

Instead, she died.

Chapter Five

I held on to Jack. He held on to me. We'd seen people die -  bad people, violent people, people who had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This young woman, newly a mother, beaten and left in the freezing air, was something else again.

It was Varena who ran over to the Osborn house to see if the children were there, Varena who discovered that the house was empty and silent. And, twenty minutes later, it was Varena who saw the car with Emory Osborn, Eve, and the baby Jane pull into the driveway, to be met with the news that would change their lives forever.

Lanky Detective Brainerd was on duty again, or still on duty, and he eyed me dubiously, even after we explained what had happened.

"What were you doing here?" he asked Jack directly. "I don't believe you're from here, sir."

"No, sir, I'm not. I'm here to visit Lily, and I'm staying at the Delta Motel." Jack let go of me and stepped closer to Brainerd.

I kept my gaze on the floor. I didn't know if Jack was making a mistake or not, keeping his business in Bartley a secret.

"How'd you know Miss Bard was here?"

"Her car is here," Jack said.

It was true, we'd come in my car. Mother had taken Varena to the wedding shower, so I'd given her a ride from their place over to the cottage.

After her burst of energy, Varena was slumped in an armchair, staring into space.

"So you stopped here to see Miss Bard ...."

"And when I got out of the car, I thought I heard a noise from behind the big house," Jack said calmly. "So I thought I'd check it out before I alarmed Lily and Varena."

"You found Mrs. Osborn."

"Yes. She was lying between the back of the house and their garage."

"Did she speak to you?"

"No."

"She said nothing?"

"No. She didn't seem to know I'd picked her up."

"But she spoke when she was lying on the couch?"

"Yes," I said.

Jack and Detective Brainerd turned simultaneously.

"And what did she say?" the policeman asked.

"She said, 'The children.' "

"And that's all?"

"That's all."

Brainerd looked thoughtful, as well he might.

What had Meredith Osborn meant? Had the last thoughts of the dying woman simply been dwelling on the children she was leaving behind? Or did those words mean more? Were her two children in danger? Or was she thinking of the three girls in the picture?

Whoever had sent the picture to Jack's friend Roy had started a deadly train of events.

After the ambulance removed Meredith's body, I stared out the side window of Varena's cottage, watching the police search the backyard where she had lain bleeding and freezing.

I was full of anger.

The death of Meredith Osborn had not even had the mercy of being fast. Dave LeMay and Binnie Armstrong had had only moments to fear death - and those were dreadful moments, I fully appreciated that, believe me. But lying in your own backyard, unable to summon help, feeling your own end creeping through you ... I closed my eyes, felt myself shudder. I knew something about hours of fear, about being certain your death was imminent and unavoidable. I had been spared, finally. Meredith Osborn had not.

Jack put an arm around my shoulder.

"I want to go away," I whispered.

I couldn't, and we both knew it.

"Excuse me," I said at a more conversational volume, hearing my voice's coldness. "I'm being silly."

Jack sighed. "I wish I could go away, too."

"What killed her?"

"Not a gun. Knife wounds, I think."

I shivered. I hated knives.

"Did we bring this here with us, Jack?" I whispered.

"No," he said. "This was here before we came. But it won't be here when I leave." When Jack got his teeth into something, he didn't let go, even when he was biting the wrong part.

"Tomorrow," I told him, quietly. "Tomorrow we'll talk."

"Yes."

I was taking Varena home to spend the night. She couldn't sleep in this cottage. She was ready, standing staring out the side window at the lit backyard, the figures moving around it. So I tried to walk out the door. But after I'd stepped away from Jack I reached back to grip his wrist. I couldn't seem to let go. I looked down at my feet, struggling with myself.

"Lily?" Under the questioning tone, his voice was hoarse.

I bit my lip, hard.

"I'm gone," I said, letting go of him. "I'll see you in the morning, at eight. At the motel." I glanced at his face.

He nodded.

"Lock her cottage when the police let you go, OK?"

Varena didn't seem to hear us. She stood like a statue at that window, her overnight bag on the floor beside her.

"Sure," he said, still looking intently at me.

"Then I'll see you tomorrow," I said and turned my back on him and walked out, beckoning to my sister to follow.

I have done so many hard things, but that was one of the hardest.

It was only nine by the time we got to my parents' house, but it felt like midnight. I didn't want to see anyone or talk to anyone, and yet somehow my parents had to be told, had to be talked to. Luckily for me, Varena had regained her balance by the time she saw my mother, and though she cried a little, she managed to relate the horrible death of Meredith Osborn.

"Should I just cancel the wedding?" she asked tearfully.

I knew my mother would talk her out of it. I really couldn't bear to be with people right now. I went to my room and shut the door firmly. My father came to stand outside in the hall; I knew his footsteps.

"Are you okay, pumpkin?" he called.

"Yes."

"Do you want to be alone?"

I clenched my fists until even my short fingernails bit into my palms. "Yes, please."

"OK." Off he went, God bless him.

I lay on the hard bed, hands clasped across my stomach, and thought.

I could not imagine how I could find out any more information about the three girls who might be Summer Dawn. But I was convinced that Meredith Osborn's death had come about because she knew which girl was not who she seemed to be. I tried to picture Lou O'Shea or the Reverend O'Shea attacking Meredith in the freezing cold of her backyard, but I just could not. Still less could I imagine mild Dill Kingery stabbing Meredith into silence. Dill's mother was certainly off-base, but I'd never seen any tendency to violence. Mrs. Kingery just seemed daffy.

I thought of Meredith Osborn taking care of Krista O'Shea and Anna Kingery. What could she have seen - or heard - that would lead her to think she knew that one of the girls had been born with a different identity?

I'd never had a baby, so I didn't know what happened bureaucratically when you gave birth. Some hospitals, I knew, took little footprints - I'd seen them framed on the walls of the Althaus family when I cleaned for them. And of course there was the birth certificate. And pictures. A lot of hospitals took pictures, for the parents. To me, all babies pretty much looked the same, red and scrunch-faced, or brown and scrunch-faced. That some had hair and some didn't was the only obvious distinction I could see.

I had learned, also from the much-birthed Carol Althaus, that the fingerprints police or volunteers sometimes took at mall booths were not helpful because often they were of poor quality. I didn't know if that was true, but it sounded reasonable. I was willing to bet the same reasons would render any existing baby footprints of Summer Dawn unusable.

So fingerprints and footprints were a no go. DNA testing could prove Summer Dawn's identity, I was sure, but of course you had to know whom to test. I couldn't see Jack demanding that the three girls undergo DNA testing. Well, I could see him demanding it, but I could also see all three sets of parents turning him down cold.

I stared at the ceiling until I realized my mind was going through the same cycle of thought, over and over, and it was no more productive than it had been the first time I'd gone through it.

I remembered, as I was undressing and pulling on a nightgown, that when Jack had first come to my bed, the next morning I'd made myself a promise: never to ask Jack for anything.

I was having a hard time keeping that promise.

As I lay once again on the bed I'd slept in as a virgin, I had to remind myself over and over that there was a corollary to that promise: not to offer what was not asked for.

I heard my sister next door in her old room, going through the same motions I'd gone through. I was sure she was hurting, sure she was suffering doubly since this blood and gore was happening at the time that was supposed to be the happiest in her life.

I felt helpless.

It was the most galling feeling in the world.

I was up and out of the house the next morning before my parents were stirring. I couldn't wait for eight o'clock. I rose, took a hasty shower, and yanked on ordinary clothes, not much caring what they were as long as they were warm.

I started my car with a little difficulty and drove through the frosty streets. There were a few more cars at the motel, so my knock at Jack's door was quiet.

He opened it after just a second, and I stepped inside. Jack closed the door quickly behind me, shirtless and shivering in the gust of cold air that entered with me.

What I had been going to do, planning to do, was sit in one of the two uncomfortable vinyl-covered chairs while Jack sat in the other and discuss his plans and how I could help.

What happened was, the minute the door was closed we were on each other like hungry wolves. When I touched him, my hands were pleased with everything they encountered. When I kissed him, I wanted him instantly. I was shaking so hard with wanting him that I couldn't get my clothes off, and he pulled my sweatshirt over my head and yanked down my jeans and underwear, helping me step out of them, pulling me to the bed into his nest of residual warmth.

Afterward, we lay with our arms around each other. I didn't care that my left arm was going to sleep, he didn't seem to mind that there wasn't an altogether comfortable place for his right leg.