But she simply continued along her route, emerging from the woods and into the open, returned to much that was familiar and should have been comforting. Of course there was no reason for Monica to be driving along the Poor Farm Road, wasn’t she trespassing?—taking a chance? This was not her road but Sheila’s. She felt a subtle dread, a fascinated dread, as, driving fairly fast, she approached one of the road’s snaky turns; its awkward dips and ruts; its narrow crumbling concrete bridges. After a snowstorm the road was hardly more than a single lane, unplowed for days. . . .

Sheila Trask was widely known to be a reckless driver. Especially on the Poor Farm Road, “her” road. She took the curves at high speeds, she absentmindedly swung out into the left lane, she did an alarming amount of juggling behind the wheel as she tried to fish a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket, find a matchbook, light a match. . . . Sometimes too she drove when her mind wasn’t clear. . . .

Monica resisted the impulse to speed up. To match Sheila. She passed familiar fields, woods, a few scattered farmhouses, the remains of the old poorhouse, and then, suddenly, Edgemont itself—looking, in the late afternoon light, rather grim and weathered at the end of its long snowy drive. It was absurd and pretentious, Monica thought, for a house to have a name; as if Sheila Trask, or Morton Flaxman, were of noble birth. The house too was pretentious, a country squire’s mansion, fieldstone, stucco, brick, slate roofs and enormous chimneys, an inappropriate stately air—inappropriate for the rural setting. Sheila should sell the property and move away, Monica thought. It was wasteful and extravagant and pointless for a single woman, and a woman of such a temperament, to own a place like Edgemont; to live alone in the country; with her neighbors covertly watching her, and passing judgment.

Little changed about Edgemont, day following day. Someone picked up the mail; someone was using the driveway; but very few persons seemed to be around. Monica, driving by, could not prevent herself from slowing her car . . . to look hard, hungrily, bitterly up the long driveway. She could not see, of course, the carriage house and the parking area but she supposed that Sheila’s old station wagon was there, in its usual position. The carriage house would be locked up tight, most likely; the snow about its doorstep would be undisturbed.

9

But then, one day in late March, there was the station wagon—Sheila’s car, and no other—parked in Monica’s driveway.

And there was Sheila herself, strolling in the pasture close by, hands stuck in her pockets, a cigarette in her mouth.

Monica drove into her driveway; braked her car to a jolting stop; sat trembling; staring. Sheila raised her hand in a formal gesture of greeting and came slowly forward . . . slowly, as if she too were frightened.