Winter Moon

no key. Presumably, an intruder would not have one, either.

The other door led to the back porch. On this side, the dead bolt

operated with a thumb-turn. It was locked. She disengaged it, pulled

open the door, stepped onto the porch. Deserted. And as far as she

could see, no one was sprinting away across the backyard. Besides,

although an intruder would not have needed a key to exit by that door,

he would have needed one to lock it behind him, for it operated only

with a key from the outside.

Somewhere an owl issued a mournful interrogative. Windless, cold, and

humid, the night air seemed not like that of the outdoors but like the

dank and ever so slightly fetid atmosphere of a cellar. She was

alone.

But she didn't feel alone.

She felt . . . watched. . "For God's sake, Heth," she said, "what the

hell's the matter with you?" She retreated into the vestibule and

locked the door. She stared at the gleaming brass thumb-turn,

wondering if her imagination had seized on a few perfectly natural

noises to conjure a threat that had even less substance than a ghost.

The rotten smell lingered. Yes, well, perhaps the ammonia water had

not been able to banish the odor for more than a day or two. A rat or

another small animal might be dead and decomposing inside the wall. As

she turned toward the stairs, she stepped in something. She lifted her

left foot and studied the floor. A clod of dry earth about as large as

a plum had partially crumbled under her bare heel. Climbing to the

second floor, she noticed dry crumbs of earth scattered on a few of the

treads, which she'd failed to notice in her swift descent. The dirt

hadn't been there when she finished cleaning the stairwell on

Wednesday. She wanted to believe it was proof the intruder existed.

More likely, Toby had tracked a little mud in from the backyard. He

was usually a considerate kid, and he was neat by nature, but he was,

after all, only eight years old.

Heather returned to Toby's room, locked the door, and snapped off the

stairwell light. Her son was sound asleep. Feeling no less foolish

than confused, she went down the front stairs, directly to the

kitchen.

If the repulsive smell was a sign of the intruder's recent presence,

and if the slightest trace of that stink hung in the kitchen, it would

mean he had a key with which he'd entered from the back stairs. In

that case she intended to wake Jack and insist they search the house

top to bottom--with loaded guns.

The kitchen smelled fresh and clean. No crumbles of dry soil on the

floor, either. She was almost disappointed. She was loath to think

that she'd imagined everything, but the facts justified no other

interpretation. Imagination or not, she couldn't rid herself of the

feeling that she was under observation. She closed the blinds over the

kitchen windows. Get a grip, Heather thought. You're fifteen years

away from the change of life, lady, no excuse for these weird mood

swings. She had intended to spend the rest of the night reading, but

she was too agitated to concentrate on a book. She needed to keep

busy. While she brewed a pot of coffee, she inventoried the contents

of the freezer compartment in the side-by-side refrigerator.

There were half a dozen frozen dinners, a package of frankfurters, two

boxes of Green Giant white corn, one box of green beans, two of

carrots, and a package of Oregon blueberries, none of which Eduardo

Fernandez had opened and all of which they could use. On a lower

shelf, under a box of Eggo waffles and a pound of bacon, she found a

Ziploc bag that appeared to contain a legal-size tablet of yellow

paper. The plastic was opaque with frost, but she could vaguely see

that lines of handwriting filled the first page. She popped the

pressure seal on the bag--but then hesitated.

Storing the tablet in such a peculiar place was tantamount to hiding

it.

Fernandez must have considered the contents to be important and

extremely personal, and Heather was reluctant to invade his privacy.

Though dead and gone, he was the benefactor who had radically changed

their lives, he deserved her respect and discretion. She read the

first few words on the top page--My name is Eduardo Fernandez-- and

thumbed through the tablet, confirming it had been written by Fernandez

and was a lengthy document. More than two thirds of the long yellow

pages were filled with neat handwriting. Stifling her curiosity,

Heather put the tablet on top of the refrigerator, intending to give it

to Paul Youngblood the next time she saw him. The attorney was the

closest thing to a friend that Fernandez had known and, in his

professional capacity, was privy to all the old man's affairs. If the

contents of the tablet were important and private, only Paul had any

right to read them.

Finished with the inventory of frozen foods, she poured a cup of fresh

coffee, sat at the kitchen table, and began to make a list of needed

groceries and household supplies. Come morning, they would drive to

the supermarket in Eagle's Roost and stock not only the refrigerator