“They’re very tired. I put them to bed. You looked nice tonight, Jenny.”

“I looked nice tonight.” She felt herself begin to tremble.

“Yes, I was there. I was looking in the window. You should have guessed I was there. If you love me you would have guessed.”

In the darkness Jenny watched the crystal bowl, eerie, green. “Why didn’t you come in?”

“I didn’t want to. I just wanted to make sure you were still there waiting for me.”

“I am waiting for you, Erich, and I’m waiting for the girls. If you didn’t want to be here, let me come and be with you.”

“No… Not yet. Are you in bed now, Jenny?”

“Yes, of course.”

“What nightgown have you got on?”

“The one you like. I wear it a lot.”

“Maybe I should have stayed.”

“Maybe you should. I wish you would.”

There was a pause. In the background she could hear sounds of traffic. He must always call from the same phone. He had been outside the window.

“You didn’t tell Pastor Barstrom that I’m mad at you.”

“Of course not. He knows how much we love each other.”

“Jenny, I tried to phone Mark but his line was busy. Were you talking to him?”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“You really were talking to Pastor Barstrom.”

“Why don’t you call and ask him?”

“No. I believe you. Jenny, I’ll keep trying to get Mark. I just remembered. He has a book of mine. I want it back. It belongs on the third shelf of the library, the fourth from the right end.” Erich’s voice was changing, becoming whiny, fretful. There was something about it.

She was hearing it again. The high-pitched screaming that had nearly destroyed her with its accusations: “Is Mark your new boyfriend? Does he like to swim? Whore. Get out of Caroline’s bed. Get out of it now.”

There was a click. Then silence. Then the dial tone, a mild, impersonal buzz radiating from the receiver in her hand.

37

Sheriff Gunderson phoned twenty minutes later. “Jenny, the phone company partially traced the call. We have the area he dialed from. It’s around Duluth.”

Duluth. The northern part of the state. Nearly six hours driving from here. That meant if he was staying in that area he had started down in the midafternoon in order to have been looking in the window at eight o’clock.

Who had been with the children all the hours he’d been gone? Or had he left them alone? Or weren’t they alive anymore? She hadn’t spoken to them since the sixteenth, almost two weeks ago.

“He’s coming apart,” she said tonelessly. Sheriff Gunderson did not try to offer empty cheer. “Yes, I think he is.”

“What can you do?”

“Do you want us to go public? Release the facts to television stations, newspapers?”

“God, no. That would be signing the girls’ death certificates.”

“Then we’ll get a special squad combing the Duluth area. And we want to leave a detective in your house. Your own life may be in danger.”

“Absolutely not. He’d know.”

It was almost midnight. February 28 would become March 1. Jenny remembered the childhood superstition she had. If you fell asleep saying “hare, hare” on the last night of the month, and woke up in the morning the first day of the new month saying “rabbit, rabbit,” you would get your wish. Nana and she used to make a game of it.

“Hare, hare,” Jenny said aloud into the quiet room. She raised her voice: “Hare, hare.” Shrieking, she screamed, “Hare, hare, I want my children, I want my children!” Sobbing, she collapsed back on the pillow. “I want Beth, I want Tina.”

In the morning her eyes were so swollen she could barely see out of them. Somehow she got dressed, went downstairs, made coffee, rinsed off her cup and saucer. The thought of food sickened her and there was no use stacking the dishwasher with one lonely cup and saucer.

Slipping on her ski jacket she hurried outside and walked around to the window on the southern side of the house that looked into the family area of the kitchen. There were footsteps outlined in the snow below that window, footsteps that had come out of the woods, gone back to the woods. While she sat in that room, Erich had stood out here, his face pressed against the glass, watching her.

The sheriff phoned again at noon. “Jenny, I played that tape for Dr. Philstrom. He thinks we’d better take the chance of going public in search for the children. But it’s your decision.”

“Let me think on it.” She wanted to ask Mark.

Rooney came over at two. “Want to sew a little?”

“I suppose so.”

Placidly Rooney took a chair near the iron stove and got out the pieces she was working on.

“Well, we’ll be seeing him soon,” Rooney commented.

“Him?”

“Erich, of course. You know that promise Caroline made that she’d always be here on his birthday. Since she died twenty-six years ago, Erich has been on this place on his birthday. Pretty much like you saw him last year. Just kind of wandering around as though he’s looking for something.”

“And you believe he’ll be here this year?”

“He never missed yet.”

“Rooney, please help me, don’t remind anyone… Not Clyde or anyone about that.”

Seemingly pleased to be treated as a conspirator, Rooney nodded eagerly. “We’ll just wait for him, won’t we, Jen?”

Jenny could not trust even Mark with the information. When he phoned to urge her to let the sheriff get help from the media, she declined. Finally she compromised. “Give it one week more, please, Mark.”

The week would be up March 9. And Erich’s birthday was March 8.

He would be here on the eighth. She was sure of it. If the sheriff and Mark suspected he was coming, they might insist on trying to hide some policemen around the farm. But Erich would know.

If the girls were still alive, this was her last chance to get them back. Erich was losing whatever grip he had on reality.

In the next week, Jenny moved in a near trance, her every thought a continuing prayer. Oh, Lord in mercy, spare them. She dug out the ivory case that held Nana’s rosary beads. Jenny closed her hand around the rosary. She could not concentrate on formal prayer. “Nana, come on, you say it for me.”

The second… the third… the fourth… the fifth… the sixth… Don’t let it snow again. Don’t let the roads be impassable. The seventh. On the morning of the seventh the phone rang. A person-to-person call from New York.

It was Mr. Hartley. “Jenny, so long since I talked to you. How are you, the girls?”

“Fine, we’re fine.”

“Jenny, I’m sorry, we’ve got a terrible problem. The Wellington Trust, remember they bought Minnesota Harvest and Spring on the Farm? Paid a lot of money, Jenny.”

“Yes.”

“They were having the paintings cleaned. And, Jenny, I’m sorry to tell you this but Erich forged his name to them. There’s another signature under his, Caroline Bonardi. I’m afraid there’s going to be a terrible scandal, Jenny. The Wellington people are having an emergency board meeting tomorrow afternoon. They’ve called a news conference after it. By tomorrow evening there will be a big news story.”

“Stop them! You have to stop them!”

“Stop them? Jenny, how can I? Art forgery is serious business. When you pay six figures for a new artist… When that artist wins the most prestigious awards in the field… You can’t keep quiet about a forger, Jenny. I’m sorry. It’s out of my hands. Right now they’re investigating to find out who Caroline Bonardi is. In friendship I wanted you to know.”

“I’ll tell Erich. Thank you, Mr. Hartley.” Long after she put the phone down, Jenny sat staring at the receiver. There was no way to stop the story. Reporters would be here looking to talk to Erich. It wouldn’t take too much investigation to find that Caroline Bonardi was the daughter of the painter Everett Bonardi and the mother of Erich Krueger. Once they started examining the paintings carefully they’d be able to determine that all of them were over twenty-five years old.