I waded into them, swinging my book bag, and they suddenly fell back. Abruptly their ugly faces turned confused and surprised. Like magic, they were only boys again, just teasing boys who always push you as far as they can, especially if the playground teacher isn"t around.

"Look out, it"s Wonder Woman!" one yelled, and a man who had come to the door of the 7-Eleven across the parking lot laughed out loud. They grabbed the bike and ran away, shouting insults at one another-You p.u.s.s.y! You wimp! You sissy!-as they ran. No one came to help as I took Lonnie"s hands and dragged her to her feet. The knee of her sweatpants was torn, and her backpack was muddy. There was mud on the side of her face, too.

"Are you hurt?" I asked her as she stood. I tried to hug her. She slapped my hands angrily away.

"They got my d.a.m.n bike! s.h.i.t! s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t, why didn"t you grab the bike while it was laying there!" Her eyes blazed as she turned on me. I fell back in surprise before her anger.

"I was worried about you! The bike wasn"t that important!"

"That"s easy for you to say. A bike isn"t the only d.a.m.n thing you"ve got!" She lifted her sleeve to wipe mud off her face. She might have wiped away tears as well. I stared at her, speechless. I thought I had been brave, almost heroic. She seemed to think I had been stupid. She glanced up from examining a bleeding sc.r.a.pe on her knee and knew she"d hurt me. She tried to explain. "Look, it"s like this. If we had gotten the bike, we would have won. Now I got all bruised up and I lost, too. So they"ll tease me with the bike again. I got to fight them all over again tomorrow."

"I think it"s dumb to fight for that bike at all," I said quietly. "You could really get hurt. The bike isn"t worth it."

"Yeah," she said sarcastically. "That"s what they teach us girls. Don"t get into fights over stuff. It"s not worth getting hurt over. So guys keep taking stuff from us, knowing we won"t fight. Those guys, if I don"t fight them to get my bike back, then they"ll take something else from me. And something more. They"ll keep on taking stuff from me until I have to fight back. Only by then it"ll be too late, because I"ll never have learned to fight, so whatever it is that I finally fight for, they"ll just take it from me anyway."

Her logic was torturous, and I shied away from her conclusion.

"Like Carl," she added bitterly. "I didn"t fight him at first. He moved in. He eats our food and uses our phone and leaves the house a mess. He took my home. He took my mom. s.h.i.t. He even took my bike and gave it to those guys. Now he thinks he can take anything he wants and I won"t fight. He"s probably right, too."

"I know I probably can"t beat those boys," she admitted a few minutes later as we walked slowly down the darkening street. "But I can make it cost them something to pick on me. They can hit me and knock me down, but they know I"m going to fight back, hit back. So maybe they"ll go find an easier target. I know, everyone says that if you avoid a bully or ignore him, he"ll go away. But that"s bulls.h.i.t. They don"t. They just grow up and become your mom"s boyfriend. Dead cat."

I don"t know how she saw it in the dark. Black fur in a black gutter, but she saw it. She opened her pack and took out her spray can and inscribed his neon orange memorial on the pavement. She scooped up his body carefully and set it at the base of a No Parking sign. "Still warm," she said regretfully as she wiped her hands down her shirt. "Poor kitty." Crouched over the body, it was like she spoke to the cat. "Carl gave them my bike. That"s like he gave them permission to pick on me, take stuff from me. Like I don"t matter any more than a dead cat in the gutter. Run over me and just keep going." She smoothed the cat"s rumpled fur a last time. "G.o.d, I hate Carl," she said quietly.

More conversationally, she added, "You know what really p.i.s.ses me off? That Carl gave them my bike and some money for picking up his dope. He never gives me nothing for picking up his junk. I just have to do it. So that if someone gets caught with it, it"s me. He told my mom, if I get caught, they won"t do much, because I"m a kid."

"But doesn"t your mom . . ." I began.

"Long as my mom gets her junk, she"ll believe whatever he says," Lonnie said sadly. "Since Carl moved in, it"s like I"m mostly invisible. She doesn"t even yell at me anymore. The only time she talks to me is when I bring the junk home. She always thanks me. That"s the only reason I do it." Her eyes swung to mine. "And I still talk to her. Carl"s always telling me to shut up, but I don"t. I tell her about my cats, I told her about you." In a quieter voice she added, "I tell her she shouldn"t be tricking just to get money for junk. That"s how I fight him. Maybe I won"t win, but no one can say I didn"t fight." She gave her one-shouldered shrug. "I won"t stop, either. Long as I keep fighting, he can"t say he won."

When I got in, Mom was waiting for me. Her face was white. "I d.a.m.n near called the cops," she hissed at me. "You didn"t call me; I came straight home, there"s no sign of you . . ." Then she burst into tears.

I was stupid. I told her where I"d been and what had happened. When I was done, she just sat there on the couch with her face in her hands. She spoke through her fingers. "G.o.d, Mandy. You have no concept . . . look. Sweetie. You can"t get involved in this. You just can"t. Drugs and prost.i.tution and abuse and . . . No. Mandy, you have to stay away from her. You must."

"I can"t." I was telling the truth. "I can"t just abandon her. Then she"d have no one! I have you, but she doesn"t have anyone but a bunch of stray cats."

Mom got up and walked into her room without a word. That really shook me up. For a minute I thought that was it, that she was so mad she wasn"t even going to talk to me anymore. Then she came back with a little red tube in her hand.

"This is not a toy," she told me severely, as if I had asked to play with it. "This is a serious weapon. Pepper spray. You point it like this, push this catch down, and then spray it. It will make anyone back off long enough for you to run away. Don"t stick around and try to fight, just get away. And use it only if you are really in danger. Never for a joke, never as a threat. If you have to, use it. Other than that, don"t even tell anyone you have it."

"There"s two," I said out loud as I took them.

"Give the other one to Lonnie," she said. She walked to the window and peered out through the curtains. She talked to the night. "Show her how to use it. But after that, you are not allowed to see her anymore. Do you understand? This is as much as we can do for her. No more."

I couldn"t argue with that voice, but I wondered if I would obey her. "Mom," I asked quietly, "if you had been there tonight, if you had been me . . . would you have used it on those boys?"

"No. Boys your age are just . . . Well, maybe, yes. Yes." She hesitated. "I don"t know," she admitted. "Mandy, I don"t know; I wasn"t there, and you weren"t the one being threatened . . . If Lonnie had just walked away, if she hadn"t challenged them . . ." Her voice trailed away. She didn"t know either. How could I know when to fight back if my own mom didn"t know? In a quieter voice she added, "I have to get us into a better place. I have to."

I didn"t see Lonnie for a while. I took a different route home from school, used a different door into my building. I pretended that if I didn"t see her, I wasn"t avoiding her. I liked her, but her problems were just too scary. I tried not to think about her, but my hand kept finding the extra vial of pepper spray in my coat pocket. Then one afternoon at four o"clock, I turned off the TV and put on my coat. I wrote Mom a note. I left the apartment.

It was dark but at least it wasn"t raining. I walked fast, glad there were no boys hanging out around her building tonight. I wondered how I"d know which door was hers. I wondered if I"d have the guts to knock. But I didn"t have to. Lonnie knelt on the ground by the Dumpster. The single parking lot light illuminated at least a dozen orange outlines of cats on the pavement. As I watched, another one slowly formed on the ground in front of Lonnie. I went to her.

The area around the Dumpster was littered with sprawled cat bodies. A terrible noise was coming from Lonnie as she painted around them. Uh, huh, huh. The noise people make when they can"t cry. I was afraid to get too close to her. She crawled to the next cat and began outlining it.

"What happened?" I whispered into the darkness.

She looked up, startled. Even in the dimness, I could see she was broken. "I don"t know," she choked out when she recognized me. "I don"t know. They weren"t hit by cars, they weren"t killed by dogs. They"re just dead. I just don"t know." She sank down in defeat on the dirty pavement. "My strays. My loyal subjects." Her hand rested on one dead cat like a benediction. Behind her, a small kitten mewed questioningly in the bushes. "I got nothing left," she told me sadly. She shook her head. "I fought and I fought. But I still lost. In the end, it all got taken away." She seemed to get smaller.

"Lonnie!" Carl called from the window. He leaned out, craning to see her. "Lonnie, you down there? You got my stuff?"

It was the wrong time to ask her that. She came to her feet like a puppet hauled up on its strings. "No!" she screeched back. "No, I don"t!" Then, in a plea for understanding, "Carl, my cats are dead! Something killed them." Her voice broke on the words.

"Oh, no, really?" His voice shook. "That"s awful, Lonnie. That"s just terrible." Then he laughed out loud, and I knew he"d been holding it back all along. "Well, maybe someone poisoned the f.u.c.kers so you"d quit wasting time on them. Quit sniveling and go get my stuff. Now!"

Her hands flew up to her face in horror. Speechless, she stared into the darkness beyond the Dumpsters. When she dropped her hands a moment later, her painty fingers had left fluorescent tabby-cat stripes on both her cheeks.

I couldn"t believe what happened next. She didn"t even look at me. She limped straight to the door of her building. She obediently went inside. Lonnie had stopped fighting.

The kitten found me. I felt her tiny claws in my sock. I picked her up. She was skinny and her little mouth opened hugely when she cried. "You"ve got the wrong person," I told her. I set her down and walked away.

Then I heard the sound. Not a shout. A roar, like the roar of a lioness, wordless in her fury. It came from the window above. Carl yelled back but it was a startled shout, full of dismay. I couldn"t see much, but I saw her shadow crash into his, her fists pummeling at his face and chest. For an instant I thought that she could win. But it was still a boy"s game. I heard his answering roar of anger. He seized her by the upper arms, lifted her off her feet, and threw her.

She hit the window. The gla.s.s shattered, flying out like a cloud of diamonds. Lonnie fell with it, twisting and yowling.

I did a stupid thing. Somehow I had the pepper spray in my hand and I pointed it up at the window. Lonnie seemed to be falling forever. I saw Carl look out as she fell; I even saw the shock on his face, heard someone else in the room behind him scream.

Then I squeezed the b.u.t.ton and enveloped myself in a cloud of pepper gas. Carl was too far away. Even finally knowing when to fight, I thought to myself, was not enough. People like Carl still won. Blinded and choking, I fell to my knees as Lonnie struck the ground. Broken gla.s.s rang in a brittle rain with her.

Everything in the world stopped. I didn"t kneel by her, I crumpled. I tried to touch her but I couldn"t. I wasn"t Lonnie, to touch death without fear. Then she lifted her head. She looked at me and her mouth opened. As if she moved a mountain, she turned her head. Her lips pulled back. With her last breath, she lifted her upper lip and snarled up at the window that framed Carl.

Summoned, the cats came. The queen"s loyal subjects poured forth to her call. Without a rustle of leaves, without a patter of paws, they came. Orange shapes flickered in the night. They came in a wave that became a tide. From the bushes in back of the Dumpster, from under cars, from the distant streets, from everywhere, they came. They flooded the parking lot. A score, a hundred, five hundred fluorescent orange silhouettes lit the night as they answered her call. I saw Carl stagger back from the window. Like living flames, the cats licked up the side of the building, over the sill, and through the broken gla.s.s. The rumble of their snarls were like a big truck idling. The parking lot was darker when the last one disappeared inside. The hissing and spitting and caterwauling from up there almost drowned his screams.

Mom"s headlights. .h.i.t me just about the same time the cats poured out of the window again. Like molten gold or streaming honey, they flowed down the side of the building. They engulfed Lonnie and me. I felt the warmth of a hundred small bodies, the soft swipe of velvet paws as they rushed past and over me to get to her. I swear I saw them, and I swear I felt them.

They purred all over Lonnie, they marked her with their brows, they b.u.mped her with their fluorescent noses. They nudged and they pleaded and they nagged, pushing at her body. They kneaded it with their paws demandingly, scores of little fluorescent paws pushing at her yielding flesh, making her smaller and more compact, re-creating her in a new and perfect image.

The Queen of the Strays sat up groggily. She blinked her great amber eyes. She lifted a velvet paw to swipe at her tabby face. She stood and she stretched, showing me four sets of razor claws and four powerful legs attached to a lithe and perfect body.

"Lonnie?" I asked incredulously.

The cat shrugged one shoulder.

In the next instant, Lonnie was gone. The tidal wave of fluorescent cats retreated, and she padded off in the midst of them. The great orange glow surged into the blackberry tangle. Their light dwindled as they faded into the th.o.r.n.y jungle of vines. Then it winked out. Lonnie was gone and my mom was there going, "Oh, my G.o.d, my G.o.d. Get in the car, Mandy. Right now. Get in the car."

I did. We were halfway home before I noticed the tiny black-and-white kitten that was stuck to my sock like a burr. When I put it in my lap, it curled up and began to purr.

I don"t know what Mom saw that night. She says I had pepper gas in my eyes and that I couldn"t have seen anything. The papers said that a junkie wh.o.r.e got mad at her pimp and cut him to ribbons with a razor. The papers never even mentioned Lonnie.

No one ever wonders what happens to strays when they disappear.

I hope her next eight lives are better than this one was.

Finis.

Sometimes it seems to me that the public appet.i.te for certain types of stories comes and goes in waves. It"s most visible, I think, on television. There is a decade of westerns, a decade of doctor shows, followed by a decade of forensic scientists or vampires or rich teenager tales.

Similar waves rise and fall in our genres. Steampunk gives way to urban fantasy. Psychic romance alternates with alternate history. Of course, our genre is probably the only place where we feel free to mix tropes and trends freely. I am sure that an urban steampunk fantasy that involved a psychic tracking down lost lovers in an alternate history setting could do quite well. One could even toss in a werewolf and an alien, and many readers would not find the mixture too heady.

For me, the most fun of working with an overworked topic is trying to burnish away the barnacles and rust to find the solid true core of story at the middle. When anything becomes a stereotype or a cliche, there is one sure truth about it: at the core of it, there is something vital, something that speaks so strongly to all of us that we return, over and over, to try to grasp completely the lesson it is trying to teach us.

This is my effort to knock some of the rust off a cliche and look at it from a slightly different perspective.

Josh was working with a hammer and chisel, cutting out just enough wood from the oak posts to make the gate hinges set flush when the rental sedan came inching slowly up the drive. Its tires crunched softly over the gravel; other than that, it was near silent, the driver letting the car almost idle up the lane. Arizona plates. Well, someone had driven a long ways to visit Mrs. Reid. Josh watched it for a moment, then went back to his work. Her guest was none of his beeswax; the visitor would be for the home owner, not him. He was just the handyman, finishing up the final work on her yard project, just as he was the handyman for a couple dozen other owners of rural cottages.

But of them all, Mrs. Reid was the oddest. Strange lady. The little cottage at the end of the winding lane looked almost exactly as it had when she"d bought it. Usually, when some rich lady bought up one of the cottages, the first thing they did was gingerbread it up. Fresh paint, a patio, a hot tub, and a privacy fence. Those were the standard changes he made for new clients. But not Mrs. Reid. He picked up a Yankee screwdriver, inserted a small bit, and jacked two pilot holes into the post. The only real changes she"d wanted him to make were out here in the yard. But that was none of his beeswax either. The customer got to say what she wanted done and how she wanted it done. No matter how strange the requests. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his cuff and then tried the hinge in its place. Perfect. He"d have it done by dark.

He was reaching for the screws and screwdriver when the man spoke behind him, startling him. "I"m looking for a woman named Doria. She goes by Doria Simmons. Does she live here?" He had a deep voice, and the softness of his words seemed intentional. The slight sibilance sounded like bad-fitting dentures.

Josh turned to look up at him. The short, stocky man standing over him had gotten out of his car quietly, not even shutting the door behind him. He was an old man, at least in his seventies and more likely in his eighties. The coa.r.s.e curls of his hair had gone to gray, and there were deep furrows in his brow. A small silver cross on a silver chain rested snugly at the hollow of his throat. It looked odd on a man of his size and years. He lugged a heavy canvas satchel like a workman"s tool bag, but he didn"t have the physique of a man who worked with tools anymore. His shoulders were rounded, curling in toward his chest, and the veins and tendons stood out beneath the age spots on his hands. He just looked old, old and tired. But he also looked determined, in a mean old man sort of way that put Josh"s hackles up without him even thinking about it.

Josh shook his head. "No sir. This is Mrs. Agatha Reid"s cottage. She only moved in a couple months ago. Maybe someone named Simmons lived here before. I wouldn"t know. People who buy these little cottages off the beaten track usually like to keep to themselves. It"s not my place to ask a lot of questions, you know. I"m just the handyman."

The man"s eyes had narrowed at the woman"s name, a wince almost of pain. It deepened the lines around his mouth and the ones in his brow. "Reid? She"s using the name Reid?"

"That"s the lady that lives here, yes sir. I don"t know about her *using" that name. It"s the only name I know her by." Josh positioned the hinge, licked the point of the screw, set the point of it into the pilot hole, and then pushed it in with the screwdriver. He leaned against it, pushing hard as the screw bit into the wood. Josh had expected the man to leave. Instead, he stepped closer.

"The woman I"m looking for used to be married to a man named Reid. Adam Reid. She might still be using his name."

"Well, she told me she was widowed. So Reid might have been her married name. She never told me her husband"s name. I think it still makes her sad to talk about him." He positioned another screw and began working it in.

The man didn"t reply directly to that. Instead, he leaned over Josh in a way that the handyman resented. He hated working under someone"s scrutiny. That had been one pleasant thing about his job. Mrs. Reid slept days and worked nights. He"d only seen her when she"d given him the carefully written directions for what she wanted done, and the times when she"d given him money for his work and to buy materials. Nice working for a person who didn"t ride him all the time. Even nicer working for someone who paid cash up front.

Now the old man spoke his opinion. "That"s a pretty fancy gate you"re putting up there. Lots of ornamental crosses in the ironwork. But what"s that shiny stuff threaded all through the scrollwork?"

"Lady wanted it done that way. Mrs. Reid wanted all the iron pickets topped with crosses, and the gate to match." Josh answered reluctantly. It wasn"t good business to talk about his customer"s foibles. Folks who moved this far away from even a little town like McKenna usually valued their privacy. And he valued their business. There wasn"t much else going in McKenna for a jack-of-all-trades.

"That wire looks like it"s real silver." The old man leaned closer, peering at the wire without touching it. Then he turned his head slowly, following the gleam of the silver wire as it snaked the full length of the fence. It was real silver wire, ordered through the jeweler in town. Mrs. Reid had told Josh to run it in and out of the close-set pickets for the full perimeter of the fence. He"d thought it a terrible waste of her money and told her so. He"d warned her that someone might just see and decide to help themselves to it. She"d insisted, and the customer was always right. He"d done as she"d asked. He just hoped that it would make the young woman feel a bit safer. She was a pale, sickly sort to begin with, and her eyes were all full of sorrow, as if she were pining away.

"And is that garlic planted all along the fence?"

"Yes sir." Josh was feeling more than a bit irritated and less inclined to talk by the minute. He"d promised Mrs. Reid that the gate would be ready by tonight. She"d been looking forward to the completion of this project for weeks. A substantial bonus was riding on it, and this fellow was delaying him.

Now the man had stepped back to regard all of Josh"s careful handiwork. As the old man"s gaze traveled along the fence, his hand touched the silver cross at his throat. "Crosses worked into the ironwork of the gates, and each wooden picket is a cross at the top. And Saint-John"s-wort and wolfsbane planted all along the outside of the fence."

"Yes sir. That"s what the lady wanted done and so I did it. You and I might think it"s a bit silly, but it"s her fence and her yard, so she has the right to have it as she wants." Josh stood slowly, stretched the kink out of his back, and then stooped to pick up the heavy iron gate. Real wrought iron and heavy as all get-out. She could have had one that looked just like it for a fraction of the cost. She"d insisted on cold iron.

"And what"s all that concrete there, that trough running through the yard."

It stung to hear his handiwork called a trough. Josh answered slowly. "It"s a water feature. It"s not turned on yet; the owner didn"t want it started until all the rest of the work was done. She"ll have a little stream that encircles the house. She calls it a moat. She hasn"t decided yet if she wants stepping-stones or an ornamental bridge for crossing it. She hasn"t chosen the lilies for it either. I told her she might want to put koi in there. Be real pretty."

"Yes. It would. Moving water is always pretty. Here. Let me give you a hand with that gate," the old man offered, surprising Josh and making him feel a bit more kindly toward him. The visitor"s canvas satchel clanked heavily when he set it down. The old fellow was stronger than he looked. He helped lift the gate and then held it steady while Josh aligned the two halves of the hinges. "She say why she wanted all this stuff done?" the man asked him, his voice tight with the effort of holding the gate steady.

Josh didn"t want to answer him, but it seemed stingy to be rude while the fellow was still holding the gate in place for him. He took a breath and then spoke reluctantly. "She"s afraid of vampires." The pin was being stubborn about dropping down into the hinge. He wriggled it hopefully, and it dropped a quarter inch. "All this stuff, the crosses and the silver, the garlic and wolfsbane, and all this stuff is supposed to keep vampires away. They can"t cross it, she says. You and I might think that"s silly, but she says her husband was killed by a vampire, and she"s never gotten over it. Never been able to forget it, never been able to forgive it." The little holes for the pin were not lining up. Josh grunted as he tried to edge the pieces into a better alignment. "I think she"s a little bit crazy, but she pays me on time."

"She told you all that?" The man gasped out the words. Evidently holding up the wrought-iron gate was a harder task for him than Josh had thought.

"Yeah. Lift a little more, I nearly got the hinges lined up. She said it happened a long time ago, but it couldn"t have been that long. She doesn"t look any older than my kid sister, and she"s just twenty-two. That"s one pin in, just let me get the second one. Mrs. Reid said she loved her husband more than life itself, more than she loved herself. Kind of funny. She"s said that to me about six times now. That she wishes she"d realized sooner that she loved him more than life itself. That it would have changed everything."

The stranger lost his grip on the gate for a second, but it was all right. Josh had just slid the pin into place. "You can let go now," he told the man.

The old man did, and then he turned abruptly away. He coughed a couple of times and then pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose. When he spoke, his voice was hoa.r.s.e. "She in there now, you think?"

"Oh, sure. She works at night, sleeps days. I think she"s a writer or something. She told me that on the phone first time she called me. *Hope you don"t mind me calling so late, but I"m a night person," she said. I suspect she doesn"t sleep well at night. Too afraid of the vampires." He shook his head in sympathy for the woman. "Well. Just about done here. Only thing left to do is set the stop for the gate, and then start her water flowing. Should be done just about sunset. Then I"ll get my pay and be gone."

The old man turned, wiped his face with his handkerchief, and then turned back to him. The lines on his face seemed deeper. He cleared his throat. "So she"ll be coming out to pay you tonight?"

"Like clockwork. Every Thursday, right about sundown. Always pays cash, and last time, there were three old silver certificates mixed in with the regular bills. I showed them to her and told her that they were worth more than the others, that she should sell them to a coin collector or something. She just laughed and said money was just paper to her and that I could do whatever I wanted with them. She"s a nice lady."

The old man cleared his throat again. "I might just stand here and wait with you for her to come out. That okay with you?"

"Sure. I don"t mind. Long as you don"t mind me finishing up my ch.o.r.e here." He was getting more and more uncomfortable with the man"s questions. He decided to take a direct approach. "Look, Mister, if you"re a visitor, you can go knock on her door. I"m not the watchman or anything like that. I"m just the local handyman, doing odd jobs. She might already be awake."

"I think I"ll just wait here with you, if it"s all the same to you. It"s a pleasure to watch a workman finish a task. Always good to see a job finished. Especially one that"s been a long time in the works." A thin smile came to the old man"s face.

Well, he was an odd duck. "Fine with me." Josh shrugged. There wasn"t much left for him to do. He had a piece of iron pipe to pound into the ground, and then a sack of dry Redi-Mix and just enough water in a jerrican to finish up the job. Once the pipe was set in the ground, the catch for the gate would drop into it and hold it shut until someone lifted the latch. He"d already wrapped the latch handle in silver wire like she"d requested. He"d done that job on his workbench the night before, trying to lay the coils smooth and flat. He"d done a pretty good job, he thought. The silver looked nice against the black of the wrought iron.

The man was mostly quiet as he watched Josh work. Once he took out a pocket watch and consulted it, and then glanced up at the sky. "Going to be dark soon," he commented, and Josh nodded. He troweled the concrete flat and checked his work with a level. "That"s done," he said, and with a grunt and a groan, he got to his feet. As he packed up his tools and tidied away the empty Redi-Mix bag, the lights in the cottage came on. "And just in time," he added.

The stranger didn"t say a word. He just stood, staring toward the house, so silent he seemed to be holding his breath. His right hand stole into his coat pocket. He stared at the cottage door, and when the porch light came on, he gave a small gasp. A moment later, the door opened and Mrs. Reid stood framed in it. The porch light lit her as if it were a spotlight on a stage. She was dressed, as she always was, in what Josh had come to think of as her mourning dress. It was a simple shirtwaist dress, like something his mother might have worn in her youth, in a sensible dark fabric. Her hair framed her brow in two smooth dark wings that were pulled back into a loose bun at the back of her neck. Her makeup was perfect, but dated, as if she"d copied it from an old magazine. She looked at the both of them and did not speak.

"Evening, Mrs. Reid. I"m just finishing up here," he said, when the silence seemed to stretch a bit too long.

"And just when you said you would," she replied. Her voice was pleasant and husky and her words articulated. Her eyes moved from him to the stranger. Josh waited for the man to say something. When he didn"t, he filled in.

"I try to make my estimates as exact as I can. And when you"ve been a handyman as long as I have, well, you get a fair idea of how long a job should take. Now, this cement is still wet, so try to use the gate latch as little as possible until it"s set."

"I won"t use it at all," she promised promptly. But she seemed to aim her words at the man next to him. The stranger spoke suddenly.

"I got a letter. All these years of trying to track you down, and suddenly a letter comes and tells me exactly where you are. I should have known it came from you."

She nodded slowly.

"So, all those years, did you know where I was?"