Janet Fischer met a divorced instructor in wind generator repair at the local community college. She got pregnant and married, in that order. The baby had her yellow-blond hair and blue eyes, and she and her friends all sighed in relief, as did Skinner, then a student at the University of Minnesota. Fischer made a claim for an insurance company reward for turning in the Van Den Bergs on the Lego theft. After some threatened litigation in both directions, she collected seventy-five hundred dollars of the pledged ten-thousand-dollar reward, reduced because a portion of the Legos were not recovered. Of the seventy-five hundred, a lawyer got a third. With the remaining five thousand, Fischer bought herself a new, and larger, engagement ring, and a new clarinet for her then fiancé.

—

Rose and Clay Ford did well in his business. He was not one for paperwork or bill collecting, but she was. Rose also pushed Ford into pistol competitions, which he hadn’t been much interested in since he was primarily a rifleman. She liked handguns, though, and by cross-training each other, they came to dominate their respective divisions of the Midwestern competitions of the International Practical Shooting Confederation. Rose might even have been a tad better with the lighter calibers.

—

Father Brice couldn’t root the last vestiges of skepticism from his heart, but the archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis took him aside, and said, “George, accept what is. A poor parish has been revived, a town is given new life, and coreligionists from all over North America come here to celebrate the Virgin.”

“You’re ordering me to believe?”

The bishop shook his head. “No, I’m asking you to relax.”

—

As Virgil was packing up to leave Wheatfield after finishing the investigative paperwork, Skinner wandered into the back room, and asked, “You want a free Zinger?”

“No, thanks. How about you? What are you going to do? You gonna grow up and be a cop?”

“I don’t think so,” Skinner said. “You know what? What you do would make me feel sad. I know you’re doing good, and that there’s a satisfaction and a thrill involved, but it would mostly make me feel sad. I don’t want to go through life feeling sad.”

“You can’t work in this store your whole life,” Virgil said. “Man, you just can’t do that.”

“I won’t. I’m stashing away the money, and I’ll figure something out. I can’t sing or play music, I can’t draw or dance, I’m not interested in architecture, but I’m a good writer. I might write books.”

“Not exactly the fastest road to riches,” Virgil said. He looked around. “Where’d I put that Glock?”

“I think I saw it on the radiator.”

“Oh, yeah.” Virgil stepped across the room, picked up the pistol, and stuck it in his duffel bag. “So you have ideas for a book?”