“She’s right, David,” Aunt Marian put in. “Who’ll take care of the farm? You think Arnie and Bobby could keep up with it? I don’t.”

“I’ll hire the Jonas kid to help out. Full time.”

“That costs money.”

“I know that.”

“And going out to the coast again—that could cost a fortune if you’re there any time at all.”

“We can manage.”

“But can we, Daddy?” It was Jennifer again.

“I think you can.”

“You don’t think things are a little different now? A little special? And that we might need you here?”

Hook could not remember Jennifer ever being sardonic with him except in fun, so there was no question in his mind how deeply she felt about his going. Yet he could not back away from the problem, either; he would be leaving again too soon for that.

“What else can I do?” he asked. “Can we leave it the way it is now—Chris a suicide?”

“It’s police business,” Aunt Marian said. “Why don’t you just send them the letter and let them take it from there? If there’s anything to find out, surely they’re the ones to find it.”

“I can’t take that chance.”

“And what about the chance something could happen to you?” Jennifer asked.

“Nothing will happen to me.”

“Like nothing happened to Chris?”

“I’ll be in no danger, honey. Believe me.”

Behind them, Bobby had come into the room a short time before and had stood there listening, his face set, grim. Now he spoke:

“If Dad doesn’t go, I’m going.”

Jennifer whirled on him. “Will it change anything? Will it bring him back? Can you make him live again?”

Her vehemence shocked her brother into silence, and herself into tears. She fell against Aunt Marian and began to cry. Moving over to the davenport, Hook sat down next to her and gathered her into his arms, all five and one-half feet of her, a woman actually, but for the moment all child, all disconsolate little girl.

Softly Hook told her that one of the women in Santa Barbara had said the same thing. “And of course it’s true,” he went on. “We can’t bring him back. But they took more than Chris’s life, Jen. They took his character and his memory. They took the truth of him. And we’ve got to have it back. For him, as well as for us.”

Her head moved against his chest, a nod of understanding or acceptance, he hoped, and he hugged her. Patting his knee, then pushing against it, Aunt Marian got to her feet and told Bobby they might as well have a cup of cocoa before going back to bed. They went into the kitchen.

Hook’s bony legs did not make for much of a lap but they seemed to be sufficient for Jennifer, who fell asleep almost immediately. As Aunt Marian left, she had turned off the table lamp across the room, so he sat watching the fire in darkness now. The wood was white oak, from an old tree felled by a change in the course of the creek that ran through his acreage across the blacktop road. Using chainsaws, he and Chris and Bobby had worked on it through most of a Saturday afternoon early in November, right after they had finished harvesting the corn on the Strickler piece near town. It had been a clear, beautiful day, cold and crisp, and the noise of the saws had made the intervals of silence, when they turned them off to load the wood or just to rest, seem especially peaceful—and poignant now in retrospect, for by then Chris had made up his mind to take the trip West and see more of the country before facing his nineteenth birthday and the draft, and both boys had become unusually restrained and pensive, like lovers facing a breakup. Chris admitted hating the thought of missing Thanksgiving and Christmas at the farm, and the overburdened tables Aunt Marian would set on each occasion, but he was determined to go, and go he did.