She woke as the watery light of dawn was seeping around the tightly closed curtains. Just a regular nightmare, not a Nancy mare.

But her mind was racing. Should she tell Silver about the blue car? But what if the man was innocent?

Anyway, he had been buying a Christmas tree. Would a murderer buy a tree? And he knew her name. The killer couldn’t know that. Even if he’d read the newspaper; it only said “local girl.” There was no mention of her name, no photograph.

She couldn’t go around making accusations; it would make everything worse if she was wrong. Nobody would believe her about anything after that. The only good thing she could do was to name the killer when she was absolutely sure.

Unable to go back to sleep, Rose got up and went downstairs into her father’s den. On the bookshelf were the family photo albums, a continuing history of the Potter family. Rose pulled out the albums and brushed them off. Except for when Mom stuck in new prints, nobody ever seemed to bother to look at them.

Rose looked at them now, as the dawn grew brighter, searching fifteen years of photographs for an answer. Find out who you are, everybody was telling her.

She looked at her face smiling out of the glossy pictures. Rosecleer Potter. Maybe the question wasn’t who are you, but something far more awful. Maybe the question was what are you?

As she was putting the albums back on the shelf, she heard a sound outside, a scuffling crunch of feet that made her freeze. Her first thought was: It’s him; he’s come to get me. Her second thought was not to be stupid, it was only some nocturnal animal hurrying home.

She pulled back the drapes to peep out and immediately drew back, stifling a gasp. Someone was moving furtively along the side of the house, almost close enough for her to touch on the other side of the window. She watched as he made his way toward the corner. He was going around to the kitchen.

She opened the den door a crack and listened for the sound of the kitchen door opening and closing. It came as she expected, and then the stealthy footsteps making their way into the hall and up the stairs. He knew which creaky steps to avoid, to get upstairs without making a sound.

It was the same way she went back to her room, the way she and Jerram had always sneaked around when they wanted to.

Her heart was beating painfully, and she held her breath until she was behind her own door. He hadn’t seen her watching, she hoped. It seemed important that he didn’t know. But why had Jerram been out? And what had he been doing?

Twenty