Why I didn’t tell him more about Esme-or-Emily, right then, about her texts and phone calls, and what they seemed to entail, I’m not sure. I hadn’t even told Julie everything about Esme. Until I had a fuller picture, it somehow seemed to be a risk.

I assured Pete Sunday that I didn’t need help carrying the box to my car, but he carried it anyway. We shook hands and parted. I stowed the box in my trunk, thinking it would fit right there next to my nonexistent assault weapon. Lethargic now, as if all the docked hopes for what I might learn and what I might do with it were brewed into some kind of sedative, all I wanted to do was to crawl beneath my scenes-of-the-holy-land quilt at the inn and sleep the rest of the time before checking out and heading home early in the morning. Actually, I reprimanded myself. I would sleep for an hour and then read these reports, so I could call Pete Sunday on my way home if I had any more questions. Why it seemed easier to call him from my car than from my kitchen at home, again, I have no idea. I drove back to the inn, fell on the bed, and slept until the afternoon sun and my lunchless stomach teased me awake.

I’d passed a diner on the way to the inn. Maybe they had chili.

The diner was one of those pods that resembled an overgrown Airstream trailer. I ate my chili quietly. It wasn’t half bad. When I was finished, I came out into a hushed street.

Did anyone really go to school here?

The temperature had soared into the fifties, which Wisconsin people think of as balmy. Shouldn’t there be college kids rocketing around on bikes and skateboards, pushing the calendar to its limits? Across the street was a little pocket of a park, in the center a dry fountain and a few stone benches, ringed by a tiny labyrinth of paths. From the groomed evergreens hung suet balls studded with berries and birdseed.