I strain to look closer, and there’s nothing there. But there was—I’m sure of it. I’m almost sure of it. I had the impression of a slight figure topped by a triangle of hair surrounding a pale face . . . I stand in indecision with one hand on the gate, my heart thudding in my ears. I’m simultaneously absolutely sure I saw a person and absolutely sure what I saw was a trick of the light. But the twilight is taking hold, shifting and bending and filtering the light to a dark gray everywhere except where the remnants of that glorious sunset still linger. The cat pauses to consider me silently, or perhaps she’s still looking at her invisible prey.

“There’s nothing there,” I tell her. “I’ve changed the locks.” But I can no longer pick out her gray figure in this dusk. I shall have to leave this wonderful wood, go into the Manse, and I shall have to check every room, and there will be nothing there. I will know there never was, and yet the certainty of what I saw, what I know I saw, will sit in my stomach in a block of icy leaden dread.

With the Manse waiting silently for me to decide what to do, I take a breath, push the gate open and cross the garden briskly, determined not to look reluctant. The absurdity of that strikes me, and I almost laugh. Look reluctant to whom? Because now I am hell-bent on practical action, and in this no-nonsense spirit, it’s easy to see that my mind conjured a female figure after the shock of the possibly charming Mr. McCue’s nighttime visit and not only hearing about his alarmingly free-wandering sister, but seeing the evidence, too, in the ashtrays and the rifled box room. The back door is just as firmly locked as when I left it, and given the locksmith’s visit, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that nobody has the keys to this house but me. I turn on the kitchen light, and for once the immediate drenching in rational, cheerful yellow! is welcome. It carries me through the entire ground floor, room after room, where I snap on the light in each, check them over and move on with the lights still on, warding off the now near-total darkness that has descended. The stairs to the second floor give me slight pause, but I grab the poker from the living room and forge onward and upward, each step of the stairs creaking as I lay down my weight on it. The sound is like a dry chuckle from a rarely used throat. The Manse is laughing at me, but I can’t be annoyed at that. I’m almost laughing at myself.