“What?”

“He tried to hang himself in his garage. He’s in shock and deep depression, the paper said… “ “Too fucking bad he didn’t make good on it,” Louis said savagely, but his voice sounded distant to his own ears, and he felt a chill spreading through. The place has a power, Louis… it’s been full of power before, and I’m ascared it’s coming round to full again. “My boy’s dead and he’s out on a thousand dollars’ bail and he’ll go on feeling depressed and suicidal until some judge takes away his license for ninety days and gives him a slap-on-the-wrist fine.”

“Missy says his wife has taken the kids and left him,” Rachel said dully. “She didn’t get that from the paper, but from somebody who knows somebody down Ellsworth way. He wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t on drugs. He didn’t have any previous speeding violations. He said that when he got to Ludlow, he just felt like putting the pedal to the metal. He said he didn’t even know why. So around and around it goes.”

He just felt like putting the pedal to the metal.

The place has a power.

Louis thrust these thoughts away. He gripped his wife’s forearm gently. “Call your mother and father. Do it now. There’s no need for you and Ellie to be in this house another day. Not another day.”

“Not without you,” she said. “Louis, I want us… I need us to stick together.”

“I’ll follow you in three days-four at the most.” If things went well, Rachel and Ellie might be back here in forty-eight hours. “I’ve got to find someone to fill in for me, on a part-time basis, at least, at the university. I’ve got sick time and vacation time coming, but I don’t want to leave Surrendra on the hot seat. Jud can watch the house while we’re gone, but I’ll want to cut off the electricity and store what we’ve got in the Dandridges’ deep freeze,”

“Effie’s school… “ “The hell with it. It’s out in three weeks, anyway. They’ll understand, the circumstances being what they are. They’ll arrange an early dismissal. It’ll all work just-”

“Louis?”

He broke off. “What?”

“What are you hiding?”

“Hiding?” He looked at her openly, clearly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you?”

“No. I don’t.”

“Never mind. I’ll call them right now… if that’s what you really want.”

“It is,” he said, and the words seemed to echo in his mind with an iron clang.

“It might even be best… for Ellie.” She looked at him with her red-rimmed eyes, still slightly glazed from Valium. “You look feverish, Louis. As if you might be coming down with something.”

She went to the telephone and called the motel where her parents were staying before Louis could reply.

The Goldmans were overjoyed at Rachel’s proposal. They were not so wild about the idea of Louis joining them in three or four days, but in the end they wouldn’t have to worry about it all, of course. Louis had not the slightest intention of going to Chicago. He had suspected that if there was to be a snag, it would be getting air reservations this late. But luck was with him there too.

There were still available seats on Delta’s Bangor to Cincinnati run, and a quick check showed two cancellations on a Cincinnati to Chicago flight. It meant that Rachel and Ellie would be able to travel with the Goldmans only as far as Cincinnati, but they would get to Chicago less than an hour after.

It’s almost like magic, Louis thought, hanging up the telephone, and Jud’s voice responded promptly, It’s been full of power before, and I’m ascared.

Oh, get fucked, he told Jud’s voice rudely. I’ve learned to accept a great many strange things in the last ten months, my good old friend. But am I ready to believe that a haunted patch of ground can influence airline ticketing? I don’t think so.

“I’ll have to pack,” Rachel said. She was looking at the flight information Louis had jotted down on the pad by the phone.

“Take just the one big suitcase,” Louis said.

She looked at, him wide-eyed, mildly startled. “For both of us? Louis, you’re joking.”

“All right, take a couple of tote bags too. But don’t exhaust yourself packing a different outfit for the next three weeks,” he said, thinking, Especially since you may be back in Ludlow very soon. “Take enough for a week, ten days. You’ve got the checkbook and the credit cards. Buy what you need.”

“But we can’t afford-” she began doubtfully. She seemed doubtful about everything now, malleable, easily confused. He remembered her odd, dangling comment about the Winnebago he had once spoken idly about buying.

“We have the money,” he said.

“Well… I suppose we could use Gage’s college fund if we needed to, although it would take a day or two to process the savings account and a week to get the treasury bills cashed-”

Her face began to crumple and dissolve again. Louis held her. She’s right. It just keeps right on hitting you, it never lets up. “Rachel, don’t,” he said.

“Don’t cry.”

But of course she did-she had to.

While she was upstairs packing, the phone rang. Louis sprang for it, thinking it would be someone from Delta ticketing, saying a mistake had been made, no flights were available. I should have known everything was going too smoothly.

But it wasn’t Delta ticketing. It was Irwin Goldman.

“I’ll get Rachel,” Louis said.

“No.” For a moment there was nothing else, only silence. He’s probably sitting there and trying to decide which name to call you first.

When Goldman spoke again, his voice was strained. He seemed to be pushing the words out against some great inner resistance. “It’s you I want to talk to. Dory wanted me to call and apologize for my… for my behavior. I guess… Louis, I guess I wanted to apologize too.”

Why, Irwin! How big of you! My God, I think I just wet my pants!

“You don’t need to apologize,” Louis said. His voice was dry and mechanical.

“What I did was inexcusable,” Goldman said. Now he did not just seem to be pushing the words out; he seemed to be coughing them out. “You suggesting that Rachel and Eileen come out has made me see what a big man you have been about this… and how small I have been.”

There was something very familiar in this rap, something eerily familiar. Then he got it, and his mouth suddenly pulled together in a tight pucker, as if he had bitten straight through a plump yellow lemon. Rachel’s way-she was completely unaware of it, Louis was sure-of saying contritely, Louis, I’m sorry I was such a bitch, after her bitchiness had gotten her her own way about something she really wanted. Here was that voice-robbed of Rachel’s liveliness and merriness, true-but that same voice saying, I’m sorry 1 was such a bastard, Louis.

The old man was getting his daughter and granddaughter back; they were running home from Maine to Daddy. Courtesy of Delta and United, they were coming back to where they belonged, back to where Irwin Goldman wanted them. Now he could afford to be magnanimous. As far as old Irwin knew, he had won. So let’s just forget that I took a swing at you over your dead son’s body, Louis, or that I kicked you when you were down, or that I knocked his coffin off its bier and snapped the latch so you could see-or think you saw-that one last flash of your child’s hand. Let’s forget all of that. Let bygones be bygones.

Terrible as it may be, Irwin, you old prick, I’d wish for you to drop dead right this second, if it wouldn’t screw up my plans.

“That’s all right, Mr. Goldman,” he said evenly. “It was. well… an emotional day for all of us.”

“It was not all right,” he persisted, and Louis realized-although he did not want to-that Goldman was not just being political, was not just saying that he was sorry he had been such a bastard now that he was getting his own way. The man was nearly weeping, and he was speaking with a slow and trembling urgency.

“It was a terrible day for all of us. Thanks to me.