carefully. The filth had dried overnight, and it flecked off into the old woman’s hand as she held the shirt to the light.
She sniffed at it, and her face wrinkled even more deeply as she recoiled from the smell of rotting seaweed. Her face tightened, and she turned toward the laundry-room door with an air of determination.
She found Rose and Jack Conger sitting silently in the dining room, and would have noticed the strain in the air if she hadn’t had other things on her mind. She stumped into the room without her usual pause, and Jack looked up curiously. Mrs. Goodrich ignored him.
“Miz Rose,” she complained, her Yankee twang taking on a hint of outrage. “Just look at these. I don’t know how I’m supposed to get things like this clean.” She held the shirt up for Rose’s inspection, primarily because the filth showed up better against the white of the shirt than the blue of the denim. Mrs. Goodrich was a great believer in the best effects delivering the best result. She shook the shirt slightly, for good measure, and was gratified to see some of the dried mud flutter to the carpet. The vacuum would take care of that.
“What is it?” Rose asked curiously. “It looks like mud.”
“Mud? You call that mud? I call it slime.” She held the shirt nearer, and Rose was able to get a good whiff.
“It smells like dead fish,” Rose commented, wondering what was expected of her. “Whose is it?”
“Miss Sarah’s,” Mrs. Goodrich stated. “I don’t know what that child’s been, up to, but it should be stopped. She didn’t get this dirt from playing in the yard, or even the field. I don’t know how I can get it out.” She did know, of course, but saw no point in admitting it. Over the years she had discovered that life was much easier if she feigned incompetence, and this seemed like a good time to exercise that knowledge.
“Well, do your best,” Rose said, still not sure how she was supposed to deal with the situation. “I don’t really see how we can find out where she picked up that dirt, under the circumstances.”
Mrs. Goodrich, her feelings aired, stumped back out of the room, leaving the air filled with grumblings. Rose thought she heard a reference to things like this not happening in the old days, and wondered if it could have been true. Then she saw Jack staring at her, and suddenly felt uncomfortable. Briefly she wondered what had happened to the peace they had had so recently.
“Well, what was I supposed to say?” she said, feeling a little guilty but not sure why.
“Nothing,” Jack said. “Don’t worry about the dirt—Mrs. Goodrich can handle that with a good hard look. But where did Sarah pick it up?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Rose snapped. “Why don’t you ask her?”
“That’s cruel, Rose, Jack said quietly. And not just to me. It’s cruel to Sarah, too.”
Rose took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly, willing the tension from her body. She chewed her lower lip for a moment, then tried to smile at her husband.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Of course you’re right. But, God, Jack, what am I supposed to do about it? If she went somewhere by herself, there’s absolutely no way in the world that we’re going to find out where it was.”
“It probably has something to do with the scratches,” Jack said.
Rose nodded. “And she could have gotten those anywhere.”
Then they looked at each other and they both remembered. Early this morning, Rose had looked in on Sarah. The child had thrown her blanket off in the night, and as Rose bent to cover her she saw that Sarah’s hands were badly scratched, and one knee was scraped. But she had been clean. The wounds had been clean too. They’d assumed that something had happened during the night, that the wounds had been somehow self-inflicted. But now, with the filthy clothing, they had to reassess the whole thing. They each avoided the subject in a different way: Rose by stirring her coffee moodily, Jack by mopping up the last of his egg with a piece of danish.
“It did smell like the sea,” Rose said at last.
“Around here everything smells like the sea,” Jack countered.
“I suppose she could have decided to go down to the beach.”
“In the middle of the night?” Jack said. “Besides, that trail’s not slimy, and it’s an easy trail. Even if it was pitch-black, all you have to do