The chimneys, Mrs. Connor had warned her, probably leaked; the cellar would probably flood if there was a great deal of rain. There were loose-fitting windows and shingles nearly rotted through and the condition of the two remaining barns was frankly dangerous—she shouldn’t go prowling and poking around in them, in the hayloft in particular: the owner of the property had seen to it that a clause had been added to the lease exempting him from responsibility along these lines. Nonetheless Monica indulged in daydreams of buying the farm one day. The three-acre property had once included several hundred acres of meadow- and farmland and woods, and she fantasized buying them all back. On three sides she had views of open meadows and farmland, on the fourth side a view of her own weatherworn barns, no other human habitation was in sight; the Olcottsville Road, narrow and poorly paved, had very little traffic. . . . She recalled Sheila Trask’s annoyance at the suggestion that they were neighbors and felt now the logic of it. The woman hadn’t meant to be insulting—she had simply stated a self-evident truth.

Sometimes, when she was vacuuming or running water she imagined she heard the telephone ringing, but when she stopped to listen she heard nothing—only silence. She received very few telephone calls and made few; nor did she receive much mail. All of which soothed her if it did not entirely please her. The house exuded indefinable odors of age and dust, and sometimes, particularly at night, it seemed to echo with unknown lives and histories: but Monica told herself she was safe here, out in the country, as she had rarely been safe in Manhattan. She shared the house with no one. There was never the possibility of another person slamming open any door she had closed, or calling her name. . . . Though once or twice she imagined she heard her name spoken aloud: Monica: faintly, lightly: Monica—! But not in the cadence of her former husband’s voice. In the cadence of no voice she knew.