Rose felt scruffy and tired and hadn’t wanted to come to church. Saturday had been horrible. It seemed like everybody had wanted something from her. Jerram had gone off in a sulk after trying to make her feel guilty, as if she was shirking her duty by not going to sleep on the spot to get a dream message from Nancy. Right after, Chief Henning had phoned to ask if he could question Rose about the same thing. Luckily, Dad had said no. He told Silver they’d have to consult their lawyer, Ms. Cambrick, before Rose could be involved.

After a depressing supper, she had an overwhelming need to talk, to sort it all out. Jerram had always been the one she could talk to, and now she couldn’t.

She’d phoned Grace but her mother said she was out.

“Tell her to call me,” Rose said, then impulsively she dialed Daniel’s number and asked him to come over. He said yes. No questions, no explanations, he just said yes.

When he arrived, face red-bitten from the cold because he’d walked all the way, Rose knew she wanted to tell him everything. And yet, in spite of the trust she felt for him, she kept holding back. Allegiance to Jerram kept getting in the way. It was as if she would be betraying him by talking so intimately to someone else. But she forced it out, half expecting Daniel to feel repulsed. He took her hand instead, and held it firm as she talked.

“Do you think I’m wrong not to help the police?” Rose asked Daniel.

There was a long pause before Daniel answered. “It would be easy to say yes. But it’s always easy to do the right thing when you yourself don’t have to do it. I don’t know, Rose. Can you help them?”

Rose was startled. She hadn’t considered that and neither had Silver Henning. They had all begun to assume she could make contact with Nancy at will.

“That helps more than anything anybody has said,” she told Daniel. “I’m not the one who has the power. It’s Nancy. It’s really up to her.” “And if you do get another message from her?” “I’d like to wash my hands of the whole thing. But I guess you know the answer. If Nancy decides to tell me where this new body is, what else can I do but let Silver know? Although … it all seems so pointless when they’re dead already.”

“But maybe the faster they find the victims, the closer they’ll get to knowing the killer.”

“I never realized how practical you can be,” Rose said, smiling.

“Lots of things you don’t know about me,” he said.

“And maybe things you don’t know about me, either,” she said sadly. “You don’t think I’m some kind of freak, do you?”