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Bradley Trevor’s baseball glove on his hand. She said they had stopped in a town called Starbridge
(Dan was pretty sure she meant Sturbridge) and left the turnpike there, moving along the secondary
roads toward the bright blip of her consciousness. Later on they had stopped at a roadside café for
lunch, not hurrying, making the final leg of the trip last. They knew where she was going now, and
were perfectly willing to let her get there, because Cloud Gap was isolated. They thought she was
making their job easier, and that was fine, but this was delicate work, a kind of telepathic laser
surgery.
There had been one unsettling moment when a pornographic image filled Dan’s mind—some kind
of group sex by a pool—but it had been gone almost at once. He supposed he had gotten a peek into
her undermind, where—if you believed Dr. Freud—all sorts of primal images lurked. This was an
assumption he would come to regret, although never to blame himself for; he had taught himself not
to snoop into people’s most private things.
Dan held the Riv’s steering-yoke with one hand. The other was on the mangy stuffed bunny in his
lap. Deep woods, now starting to flame with serious color, flowed by on both sides. In the right-hand
seat—the so-called conductor’s seat—Dave rambled on, telling his daughter family stories and
dancing at least one family skeleton out of the closet.
“When your mom called yesterday morning, she told me there’s a trunk stored in the basement of
Momo’s building. It’s marked Alessandra. You know who that is, don’t you?”
“Gramma Sandy,” Dan said. Christ, even his voice sounded higher. Younger.
“Right you are. Now here’s something you might not know, and if that’s the case, you didn’t hear it
from me. Right?”
“No, Daddy.” Dan felt his lips curve up as, some miles away, Abra smiled down at her current
collection of Scrabble tiles: S P O N D L A.
“Your Gramma Sandy graduated from SUNY Albany—the State University of New York—and
was doing her student teaching at a prep school, okay? Vermont, Massachusetts, or New Hampshire, I
forget which. Halfway through her eight weeks, she up and quit. But she hung around for awhile,
maybe picking up some part-time work, waitressing or something, for sure going to a lot of concerts
and parties. She was . . .”
5
(a good-time girl)
That made Abra think of the three sex maniacs by the pool, smooching and gobbling to oldtime
disco music. Uck. Some people had very strange ideas of what was a good time.
“Abra?” That was Mrs. Deane. “It’s your turn, honey.”
If she had to keep this up for long, she’d have a nervous breakdown. It would have been so much
easier at home, by herself. She had even floated the idea to her father, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Not
even with Mr. Freeman watching over her.
She used a U on the board to make POUND.
“Thanks, Abba-Doofus, I was going there,” Emma said. She turned the board and began to study it
with beady-eyed final-exam concentration that would go on for another five minutes, at least. Maybe
even ten. Then she would make something totally lame, like RAP or PAD.
Abra returned to the Riv. What her father was saying was sort of interesting, although she knew
more about it than he thought she did.
(Abby? Are you)