I felt like some credulous, desperate hag; but at least, I didn’t have to feel foolish in front of Jep or my family. No one beyond Stefan and me—and Julie and Rebecca Broom—needed to know about the ultimately doomed, possibly fanciful attempt to exonerate Stefan, which I still believed was based on truth, even if Stefan didn’t.

What he finally said was this: “What if she did kill Belinda? I didn’t save her.”

We knew all we would ever know. And still, a curious peace settled over us. We had finally changed our landline number, so most of the calls we got now were from people of good intent—I counted among those even people selling timeshares. No one was going to be crouching in the kitchen anymore or marching up and down outside chanting hymns of hatred for me and mine. Tomorrow, I might wake up as a person whose life perhaps contains ordinary sorts of trials and triumphs—a person who could spend hours worrying about mole holes in the backyard or my mother’s hernia surgery.

I stood in the cold, huddled in my parka with my mug in my hand. How long had it been since I’d felt free to stand alone outside in the dark?

Did I think I would see Longing Esme? No, I knew she was gone. Did I think that I would see Belinda’s sweet shade in starlight? I walked around to the red-carpet walk of chokeberry Stefan had made of our driveway, the rock walls and turrets crested by azaleas in frank purple to shadowy lavender, swirled round with painterly waves of phlox, bluebells, bleeding heart and trillium. All those blooming decks were fast asleep now, but they would surge back in the spring. I felt that when she left, Emily-or-Esme took with her the night that lasted four years.

The next day, we didn’t talk about Emily.

We didn’t talk about Belinda.

When Jep came home, Stefan showed us some of the real estate sheets he’d been collecting. We’d agreed that he might want to stay on at home until he got through his first year of school, but he wanted to see what was out there in terms of a house. He had plans to be an eccentric bachelor in his own pad.