“You know the phrase ‘disappeared into thin air’? Well, that’s what I had seen happen. I’d never felt that term meant much—isn’t all air thin? Well, air so recently evacuated does, believe me, feel damn ‘thin.’ Who says air can nevah be too rich or too thin, hunh? But I kept thinking ‘thin air,’ ‘thin,’ like snatching at that phrase, because I so wanted to touch them, to hold on to them. Mainly to ask them things. I didn’t run to phone anybody, didn’t tell a soul. Not at first. Didn’t even ring Patrick—I mean nobody. And then, about two o’clock this morning, at the Norman Bates motel, I wake and sit up and say aloud, setting poor Circa to barking, ‘They buried something. They were burying something. And I caught them at it and so then, they went ahead and showed me where they’d hidden it.’ I was that sure of it, I called you up.

“Now you’re all here, and here is this cask, these doll things. I mean, I wanted you to see the progress on the house generally. But I felt I had to have my sanctum-sanctorum nearest-dearests here for this. I figured that if I didn’t hit anything, I would stop digging, as if suddenly even more than usually absentminded lately—then I’d maybe stand up and just show you the handpainted horse-and-river French mural paper we’re beginning to uncover in the foyer, and then I’d take you all to the Fish House over near Edenton for dinner, but I’d not say nothin’ and jes’ keep rollin’ along. But to find these things, the one a slave toy and the other something porcelain and plainly English import … I believe it was a pact between them, the girls, to go ahead and wire their arms around each other, the dolls. Like they knew their friendship couldn’t stand whatever tests were coming—a salable slave child and the owner’s daughter, or the overseer’s—but to plant these here. As a sign, near the house, a sign they loved each other. To show they knew that, and to save it some.”

•  •  •