When she turned over the next picture, Maggie felt her stiffen. She saw the smile freeze rather than fade. Looking down, she saw William Morgan and a young, perhaps teenaged Stan Agee. This more recent photo was in color, and the trees in the background were vibrant with fall. The two men were dressed in flannel shirts and caps, and each wore a drab-colored vest with what looked to Maggie like small weights around the hem. Each carried a shotgun.

Shells, not weights, Maggie realized as she looked at the vests again. They must’ve been hunting. And they stood, she noted, near the slope of the gully. Disturbed, she looked at the trees again, at the tapestry she wanted to see for herself.

“Joyce would’ve taken this,” Louella murmured. “She hunted with her father. He taught her how to handle guns before she was twelve. It didn’t matter that she hated them; she learned to please him. William looks pleased,” Louella continued, though Maggie couldn’t see it. “He liked to hunt this land. Now we know he died here. Here,” she repeated, placing a palm over the picture. “Not three miles away, in the river. He never left his land. Somehow I think I always knew.”

“Mrs. Morgan.” Maggie set the pictures aside and laid a hand on her arm. “I know this must be difficult for you; it must be like going through it all over again. I wish there was something I could do.”

Turning her head, Louella fixed Maggie with a long, unsmiling stare. “Put in your pond,” she said flatly. “Plant your flowers. That’s as it should be. The rest is over.”

When she started to rise, Maggie found herself more disturbed by the emotionless reply than she would’ve been with a bout of tears. “Your pictures,” she began helplessly.

“Keep them.” Louella walked to the doorway before she turned. “I’ve no need for them anymore.”

Should she have been depressed? Maggie wondered as she listened to the car drive away. Was her reaction normal empathy for another’s tragedy, or was she allowing herself to become personally involved again? Over the last few days, she’d nearly convinced herself that the Morgan business had nothing to do with her. Now, after one brief contact, it was beginning again.

Yet it was more than a sense of involvement, Maggie admitted as she rubbed her arms to bring back warmth. There’d been something eerie in the way Louella had looked at the pictures. As if, Maggie reflected, she’d been putting the people in them to rest, though only one was dead.