In the night room Page 0,92

into that warehouse was that it had MICHIGAN painted on its facade. What really drew you in was the part of your childhood you had blotted out.”

I started the car and turned up the A/C. Cool air streamed from the vents, lowering the temperature layer by layer, from the floor mats up.

“Was it going to be beautiful, your ending?”

“I think it was, yes.” I backed out of our space beneath the tree and headed toward the exit. “When I thought about it, it seemed very beautiful.”

“And I screwed it up for both of us.”

“No, I did,” I told her. “In the book that’s just about to be published, I implied that Joseph Kalendar had killed his daughter. His spirit, or whatever you want to call it, has been after me ever since he found out. He’s enraged.”

“What does my father want? What is he looking for?”

I got us back on the road out of Willard and moving toward 224. What did Joseph Kalendar want from me? I remembered the name of the little Ohio town where Willy and I had stumbled across Mr. Davy’s splendid Lodge and within Room 119, overlooking the parking lot, first fallen into each other’s arms. “Restitution,” I said. “That’s what the old madman is looking for.”

“Well, I want it too. What was the story about my husband’s murder? Did Mitchell kill him?”

“I’m not absolutely sure. I hadn’t worked it out yet.”

“Well, did Mitchell take those pictures?”

“Probably.”

“How come a man at that hotel in Nanterre told me he was checked out, and ten minutes later another man said he was still there?”

“I was going to figure that out later.”

“Would a banker really ever transfer money like that, without a signature?”

“Probably only in Hendersonia,” I said.

Neither one of us noticed the mud-slathered Mercury Mountaineer that had been trailing us, always six or seven cars back, since we’d left the restaurant.

27

From Timothy Underhill’s journal

About an hour east of the Indiana border, an enormous building surrounded by acres of parking lot loomed up on the right side of the highway. We could see it coming long before we got close enough even to make out any details. I took it for an enclosed shopping mall until I noticed that the building was a giant box with no ornamentation but a sign that read SUPERSAVER KOSTKLUB.

“This is it, Willy,” I said to the silent, drooping woman beside me. We were down to our last half dozen candy bars. “We can buy enough candy here to see you through to Christmas.” The huge store would have ATM machines, too.

Willy said nothing. She had not spoken since I’d answered her question about the banker. I knew she was reacting to everything she had learned in the restaurant, all that overwhelming information that had descended upon her after she’d made her great, shining leap into the dark. It must have felt like the single greatest capitulation of her life, for in effect her surrender had been to absolute and unknowable mystery. And after that I had taken her child from her, and in its place presented her with one of the darkest, most painful childhoods ever endured. The fact was, though, that Willy had endured it, because her father had not, after all, murdered her—Joseph Kalendar had loved his daughter at least enough to let her go on breathing. To that extent, Willy had been right about her earliest years: righter than I had been willing to admit.

I turned in to the huge parking lot and drove down the aisles, looking for an empty spot. She surprised me by breaking into my thoughts and saying, “Get me some good dark chocolate. With lots of cocoa in it, and not so sweet. The usual stuff, too, because that works better, although I don’t like it as much. And get a couple of boxes of confectioner’s sugar, some Coke, in the really big bottles, and some plastic glasses.”

I pulled in to a parking place that seemed about a quarter mile from the building and made the mistake of asking her how she felt.

“How are fictional characters supposed to feel? The hummingbird wings are beating away like crazy, and I think I have about half an hour before parts of me start to flicker out. This sucks. This is a really crappy deal. I was happier before you explained everything to me.”

I tried to say something that would have ended up leaking a soupy, self-conscious semiprofundity. Willy saved us both by speaking over me.

“Go on, get