All right, if he would only finish before she broke down before the town, as everyone wanted her to, so that they could talk about it until the next tragedy befell.

"A time to love and a time to hate," he shouted. "A time for war and a time for peace..."

She glanced at the tombstone for strength. She had made it this far without crying—she mustn't give in now. Brody, help me, Brody...

Far below in the harbor, the Amity-East Hampton ferry blasted, backing out from the dock. The drizzle began, and still McCloud went on. Was he testing his "cathartic effect" on her? Dammit, she would not cry!

She took refuge in memory. She was in her kitchen. She heard Sean, just nine years old, sneaking out, trying to avoid KP.

"Sean?"

The whining of the screen door stopped, telling her he was there.

"Hostess Ding Dong?" she called devilishly. There were none, but if Sean didn't help with the dishes, then who would?

He returned, so up-front himself that he was a pigeon for a fib. "Hi," he said with a smile.

She handed him a dish towel. He looked at it in shock, holding it as if it were diseased. The truth began to dawn. "We got Ding Dongs?"

"You ate them all last night, remember?"

He looked betrayed. "But you said—"

"I was thinking out loud. I didn't know there was anybody out there—nobody answered." She presented him a plate. "Don't drop it. I mean it."

He winced. "Mike says I got to finish painting the tiller or I can't crew for him in the regat—"

"After the dishes."

"I'll never get the boat done and he won't let me crew!"

And Sean had crewed, and the shark had come, and he'd hated the ocean ever after. It was Amity's last regatta, for no one had ever wanted their children racing to Cape North Light again, though the shark had died in an incandescent flash of power in front of everyone.

Or had it really died? Was the monster deathless? Had the first one left immortal spawn, to track them down and kill them one by one?

She pressed her temples. Along that track lay madness. She tried to concentrate on the tombstone, groping for Brody's calm good sense. The drizzle was casting a sheen on its rough Maine granite. Lines from Tennyson remembered from high school filled her head:

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

"He died," bellowed McCloud happily, "as he and his father had lived, in the service of his fellowman. And our little community is the worse for it."

She could feel the drizzle sinking in her bones. In moments he would be a part of the sodden ground. She fought another wave of despair.

O well for the fisherman's boy

That he shouts with his sister at play!