“Despite what you did for us, or what you say you did—”

“You wish I had never come into this house,” Juliana said.

“If you saved Hawthorne’s life it’s dreadful of me, but I’m so upset; I can’t take it all in, what you’ve said and Hawthorne has said.”

“How strange,” Juliana said. “I never would have thought the truth would make you angry.” Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find. I’m lucky. “I thought you’d be as pleased and excited as I am. It’s a misunderstanding, isn’t it?” She smiled, and after a pause Mrs. Abendsen managed to smile back. “Well, good night anyhow.”

A moment later, Juliana was retracing her steps back down the flagstone path, into the patches of light from the living room and then into the shadows beyond the lawn of the house, onto the black sidewalk.

She walked on without looking again at the Abendsen house and, as she walked, searching up and down the streets for a cab or a car, moving and bright and living, to take her back to her motel.