"Do you have something in mind?" I knew he did or he would not have mentioned it.

"As a matter of fact I do. I wonder if she would be willing to return to ERF? We don't know how much of CAIN Gault has tampered with. I'd like to suggest to the Director that the Bureau use Lucy to follow Gault's tracks through the system to see what can be salvaged."

"Frank, I know she would be thrilled," I said as my heart filled with gratitude.

"I can't think of anyone better qualified," he went on.

"And it will give her a chance for restitution. She did not willingly do anything wrong, but she used poor judgment."

"I will tell her," I said. From his office I went to the Willard and got a room. I was too tired to return to Richmond, and what I really wanted to do was fly to Newport. I wanted to see Lucy, even if only for an hour or two. I wanted her to know what Senator Lord had done, that her name was cleared, her future bright. Everything was going to be just fine. I knew it. I wanted to tell her how much I loved her. I wanted to see if I could find words that for me were so hard. I tended to hold love hostage in my heart because, if expressed, I feared it might abandon me as many people in my life had.

So it had been my habit to bring what I feared upon me. In my room I called Dorothy and got no answer. Next I called my mother.

"Where are you this time?" she asked, and I could hear water running.

"I'm in Washington," I said.

"Where's Dorothy?"

"It just so happens she's right here helping me with dinner. We're having lemon chicken and salad-you should see the lemon tree, Katie. And the grapefruits are huge. I'm washing the lettuce even as we speak. If you would visit your mother once in a blue moon, we could eat together. Normal meals. We could be a family. "

"I would like to speak to Dorothy."

"Hold on." The phone clunked against something, then Dorothy was on.

"What's the name of Lucy's counselor at Edgehill?" I asked right off.

"I'm assuming they've assigned someone to her by now."

"Doesn't matter. Lucy's not there anymore."

"I beg your pardon?" I asked.

"What did you just say?"

"She didn't like the program and told me she wanted to leave. I couldn't force her. She's a grown woman. And it's not like she was committed or something."

"What?" I was shocked.

"Is she there? She returned to Miami?"

"No," said my sister, who was quite calm.

"She wanted to stay in Newport for a while. She said it wasn't safe to come back to Richmond right now, or some nonsense like that. And she didn't want to come down here."

"She's in Newport alone with a goddam head injury and a problem with alcohol and you're not doing anything about it?"

"Kay, you're overreacting, as usual."

"Where is she staying?"

"I have no idea. She said she just wanted to bum around for a while."

"Dorothy!"

"Let me remind you she's my daughter, not yours."

"That will always be the biggest tragedy of her life."

"Why don't you just for once keep your fucking nose out of it!" she snapped.

"Dorothy!" I heard my mother in the background.

"I don't allow the F word!"

"Let me tell you something." I spoke in the cold, measured words of homicidal rage.

"If anything has happened to her, I will hold you one hundred percent accountable. You are not only a terrible mother, you are a horrible human being. I am truly sorry you are my sister."

I hung up the phone. I got out the telephone directory and began calling airlines. There was one flight to Providence that I could get on if I hurried. I ran out of the room and kept going just as fast through the Willard's elegant lobby. People stared.

The doorman got me a cab and I told the driver I would double his fare if he could get me to National fast. He drove like hell. I got to the terminal as my flight was being called, and when I found my seat, tears welled up in my throat and I fought them back. I drank hot tea and closed my eyes. I was unfamiliar with Newport and had no idea where to stay.

The taxi from Providence to Newport was going to take more than an hour, the driver told me, because it was snowing. Through water-streaked windows I looked out at dark faces of sheer walls of granite on roadsides. The stone was lined with drill holes and dripping with ice, and a draft creeping in from the floor was damp and miserably cold. Big flakes of snow spiraled into the windshield like fragile white bugs, and if I stared too hard at them I started to get dizzy.

"Do you have any recommendations for a hotel in Newport? " I asked the driver, who spoke in the manner peculiar to Rhode Islanders.

"The Marriott would be your best bet. It's right on the water and all the shopping and restaurants are within walking distance. There's also a Doubletree on Goat Island."

"Let's try the Marriott."

"Yes, ma'am. The Marriott it is."

"If you were a young lady looking for work in Newport, where would you go? My twenty-one-year- old niece would like to spend some time here." It seemed stupid to pose such a question to a perfect stranger. But I did not know what else to do.

"In the first place, I wouldn't pick this time of year. Newport's pretty damn dead."

"But if she did pick it this time of year. If she had time off from school, for example."

"Umm." He thought as I got caught up in the rhythm of the windshield wiper blades.

"Maybe in the restaurants?" I ventured.

"Oh, sure. Lots of young people working in the restaurants. The ones on the water. The money's pretty good because the main industry's tourists in Newport. Don't let anybody tell you it's fishing. These days, a boat with a thirty-thousand-pound hold comes back in with maybe three thousand pounds of fish. And that's on a good day."

He continued to talk as I thought about Lucy, about where she would go. I tried to get into her mind, to read it, to somehow reach her through my thoughts. I said many silent prayers and fought back tears and the most terrible of all fears. I could not deal with another tragedy. Not Lucy. That loss would be the last. It would be too much.

"How late do most of these places stay open?" I asked.

"What places?"

I realized he had been talking about butterfish, something about them being used in cat food.

"The restaurants," I said.

"Would they still be open now?"

"No ma'am. Not most of'em. It's almost one a.m. Your best bet if you want to find your niece a job is to go out in the morning. Most places open by eleven, some earlier than that if they serve breakfast."

My taxi driver, of course, was right. I could do nothing now but go to bed and try to get some sleep. The room I got at the Marriott overlooked the harbor. From my window the water was black, and the lights of men out fishing bobbed on a horizon I could not see.

I got up at seven because there was no point in lying in bed any longer. I had not slept and had been afraid to dream.

Ordering breakfast, I opened curtains and looked out at a day that was steely gray, water almost indistinguishable from sky. In the distance, geese flew in formation like fighter planes, and snow had turned to rain. Knowing not much would be open this early did not stop me from trying, and by eight I was out of the hotel with a list of popular inns, pubs, and restaurants I had gotten from the concierge.

For a while I walked the wharfs, where sailors were dressed for the weather in yellow slickers and bib pants. I stopped to talk to anyone who would listen, and my question each time was the same, just as their answers were all the same. I described my niece, and they did not know if they had seen her. There were so many young women working in places along the water.

I walked without an umbrella, the scarf around my head not keeping out the rain. I walked by sleek sailboats and yachts battened down with heavy plastic for the winter, past piles of massive anchors broken and eaten with rust. Not many people were around, but many places were open for the day, and it did not occur to me until I saw ghosts, goblins, and other spooky creatures in the shop windows of Brick Market Place that today was Halloween.