seemed to start slightly when Rose glanced at her, and Rose turned quickly back to her work. But she was careful to listen for her daughter’s slightest movement.
Sarah came into the room and began moving around, touching objects, picking things up to examine them, then putting them back where she had found them. Rose heard the small feet shuffling around the room, heard the tiny clicks as Sarah replaced the things she picked up. Then there was a silence, but Rose restrained herself from looking around to see what the girl was up to. Then she felt something touch her leg, and realized that Sarah had crept under the desk. Rose smiled to herself as she remembered how much fun she had had as a child pretending a desk was a cave. If her daughter was anything like she had been, she would be happy there the rest of the afternoon. Rose turned all her attention back to her work.
As the afternoon wore on, Rose was occasionally aware of movement under the desk, but it wasn’t until she felt something being fastened around her ankle that she finally put her work aside. She sat very still, wondering what it was that Sarah was attaching to her. She waited, expecting something to touch her other leg, and she wasn’t disappointed.
The girl was tying her feet together. Rose began planning the show she would put on for her daughter when Sarah had finished. She had tried the same trick as a child, tying her father’s shoestrings together as he sat at his desk, and had been gratified when he stood up, stumbled violently, then crashed around the room for almost a full minute before collapsing to the floor in a hopeless tangle. At the time it had never occurred to her that her father had not actually been out of control of the situation, and, indeed, it wasn’t until this very minute that she realized that he had put on the same carnival for her that she was about to stage for Sarah. Then she felt Sarah finish.
“Well,” she said loudly. “That’s that. I guess I’ll stretch my legs.” She could picture the child grinning and quivering with suppressed laughter beneath her.
Rose pushed away from the desk and moved her feet carefully to test the length of the string she was sure was hobbling her ankles. It seemed to very long indeed, and she wondered how she was going to be able to fake the thing convincingly.
It wasn’t until she was fully away from the desk that she realized that there was no string at all, that it was something entirely different that was around her ankles.
She reached down and felt something hard. When she looked, she felt her heart skip a beat, and had that feeling in her stomach that she often got when an elevator dropped away beneath her feet. It was the bracelet.
She pulled it from her ankle, forgetting about Sarah for the time being, and examined it carefully. Yes, it was the bracelet from the picture: gold set with a small opal. Tiny flecks of dirt clung to it, as if it had been lying outdoors for a long time. She stood up, intending to take it into the rear study for a careful comparison, and felt something else, something flopping against her other ankle.
She looked down once more, and didn’t immediately recognize the other object It was a pale, whitish color, but badly stained, and seemed to have a buckle of some kind on it Then she realized what it was.
A collar.
A cat’s plastic flea collar.
“Where in the world—” she muttered as she unfastened the collar from her ankle. She straightened up and examined the collar. It was dirty too, but it was not the same kind of dirt that was on the bracelet The collar bore specks of a reddish-brown substance. It took a while for Rose to realize that the substance looked like dried blood. When she did realize what it was, she stepped to the office door.
“Mrs. Goodrich,” she called. “Come here, please. Quickly.”
When she turned back to the study she realized that Sarah was still under the desk, tightly crouched, her small face peering out of the darkness like a rabbit trapped in a hole. Rose stared back at the child, not having any idea what to say. When Mrs. Goodrich appeared at the door, Rose hadn’t moved.
“I sure hope my pies don’t get ruined,” the old woman said, wiping her hands on