“You will not have the peace and quiet that a writer needs to do his best work,” Harold said in an amusingly prim voice. I wondered what the reaction would be if I said that was okay, I hadn’t written anything more riveting than a grocery list since Jo died, and maybe this would stir me up a little. But I didn’t. Never let em see you sweat, the Noonan clan’s motto. Someone should carve DON’T WORRY I’M FINE on the door of the family crypt.

Then I thought: help r.

“That young woman needs a friend,” I said, “and Jo would have wanted me to be one to her. Jo didn’t like it when the little folks got stepped on.”

“You think?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I’ll see who I can find. And Mike… do you want me to come up on Friday for this depo?”

“No.” It came out sounding needlessly abrupt and was followed by a silence that seemed not calculated but hurt. “Listen, Harold, my caretaker said the actual custody hearing is scheduled soon. If it happens and you still want to come up, I’ll give you a call. I can always use your moral support—you know that.”

“In my case it’s immoral support,” he replied, but he sounded cheery again. We said goodbye. I walked back to the fridge and looked at the magnets.

They were still scattered hell to breakfast, and that was sort of a relief. Even the spirits must have to rest sometimes.

I took the cordless phone, went out onto the deck, and plonked down in the chair where I’d been on the night of the Fourth, when Devote called.

Even after my visit from “daddy,” I could still hardly believe that conversation. Devote had called me a liar; I had told him to stick my telephone number up his ass. We were off to a great start as neighbors.

I pulled the chair a little closer to the edge of the deck, which dropped a giddy forty feet or so to the slope between Sara’s backside and the lake. I looked for the green woman I’d seen while swimming, telling myself not to be a dope—things like that you can see only from one angle, stand even ten feet off to one side or the other and there’s nothing to look at. But this was apparently a case of the exception’s proving the rule. I was both amused and a little uneasy to realize that the birch down there by The Street looked like a woman from the land side as well as from the lake. Some of it was due to the pine just behind it—that bare branch jutting off to the north like a bony pointing arm—but not all of it. From back here the birch’s white limbs and narrow leaves still made a woman’s shape, and when the wind shook the lower levels of the tree, the green and silver swirled like long skirts.

I had said no to Harold’s well-meant offer to come up almost before it was fully articulated, and as I looked at the tree-woman, rather ghostly in her own right, I knew why: Harold was loud, Harold was insensitive to nuance, Harold might frighten off whatever was here. I didn’t want that.

I was scared, yes—standing on those dark cellar stairs and listening to the thumps from just below me, I had been fucking terrified—but I had also felt fully alive for the first time in years. I was touching something in Sara that was entirely beyond my experience, and it fascinated me.

The cordless phone rang in my lap, making me jump. I grabbed it, expecting Max Devore or perhaps Footman, his overgolded minion. It turned out to be a lawyer named John Storrow, who sounded as if he might have graduated from law school fairly recently—like last week. Still, he worked for the firm of Avery, Mclain, and Bernstein on Park Avenue, and Park Avenue is a pretty good address for a lawyer, even one who still has a few of his milk-teeth. If Henry Goldacre said Storrow was good, he probably was. And his specialty was custody law.

“Now tell me what’s happening up there,” he said when the introductions were over and the background had been sketched in.

I did my best, feeling my spirits rise a little as the tale wound on.

There’s something oddly comforting about talking to a legal guy once the billable-hours clock has started running; you have passed the magical point at which a lawyer becomes your lawyer. Your lawyer is warm, your lawyer is sympathetic, your lawyer makes notes on a yellow pad and nods in all the right places. Most of the questions your lawyer asks are questions you can answer. And if you can’t, your lawyer will help you find a way to do so, by God. Your lawyer is always on your side. Your enemies are his enemies. To him you are never shit but always Shinola.

When I had finished, John Storrow said: “Wow. I’m surprised the papers haven’t gotten hold of this.”

“That never occurred to me.” But I could see his point. The Devore family saga wasn’t for the New York ’mes or Boston Globe, probably not even for the Derry News, but in weekly supermarket tabs like the National Enquirer or Inside l’ew, it would fit like a glove—instead of the girl, King Kong decides to snatch the girl’s innocent child and carry it with him to the top of the Empire State Building. Oh, eek, unhand that baby, you brute. It wasn’t front-page stuff, no blood or celebrity morgue shots, but as a page nine shouter it would do nicely. In my mind I composed a headline blaring over side-by-side pix of Warrington’s Lodge and Mattie’s rusty doublewide: COMPU-KING LIVES IN SPLENDOR AS HE TRIES TO TAKE YOUNG BEAUTY’s ONLY CHILD. Probably too long, I decided. I wasn’t writing anymore and still I needed an editor. That was pretty sad when you stopped to think about it. “Perhaps at some point we’ll see that they do get the story,” Storrow said in a musing tone. I realized that this was a man I could grow attached to, at least in my present angry mood. He grew brisker. “Who’m I representing here, Mr. Noonan? You or the young lady? I vote for the young lady.”

“The young lady doesn’t even know I’ve called you. She may think I’ve taken a bit too much on myself. She may, in fact, give me the rough side of her tongue.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Because she’s a Yankee—a Maine Yankee, the worst kind. On a given day, they can make the Irish look logical.”

“Perhaps, but she’s the one with the target pinned to her shirt. I suggest that you call and tell her that.” I promised I would. It wasn’t a hard promise to make, either. I’d known I’d have to be in touch with her ever since I had accepted the summons from Deputy Footman. “And who stands for Michael Noonan come Friday morning?”

Storrow laughed dryly. “I’ll find someone local to do that. He’ll go into this Durgin’s office with you, sit quietly with his briefcase on his lap, and listen. I may be in town by that point—I won’t know until I talk to Ms. Devore—but I won’t be in Durgin’s office. When the custody hearing comes around, though, you’ll see my face in the place.”

“All right, good. Call me with the name of my new lawyer. My other new lawyer.”

“Uh-huh. In the meantime, talk to the young lady. Get me a job.”

“I’ll try.”

“Also try to stay visible if you’re with her,” he said. “If we give the bad guys room to get nasty, they’ll get nasty.

There’s nothing like that between you, is there? Nothing nasty? Sorry to have to ask, but I do have to ask.”

“No,” I said. “It’s been quite some time since I’ve been up to anything nasty with anyone.”

“I’m tempted to commiserate, Mr. Noonan, but under the circumstances-’’ “Mike. Make it Mike.”

“Good. I like that. And I’m John. People are going to talk about your involvement anyway. You know that, don’t you?”

“Sure. People know I can afford you. They’ll speculate about how she can afford me. Pretty young widow, middle-aged widower. Sex would seem the most likely.”

“You’re a realist.”

“I don’t really think I am, but I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

“I hope you do, because the ride could get rough. This is an extremely rich man we’re going up against.” Yet he didn’t sound scared.

He sounded almost… greedy. He sounded the way part of me had felt when I saw that the magnets on the fridge were back in a circle. “I know he is.”