The Seven Ten

The Seven Ten

I didn't recognize the number, but the area code was the one I'd grown up with in Blue Ridge Summit, Pa., and I was sure I was right--for an instant, the product of subterranean desires--I knew the caller, the girl who once upon a time lived next door on Deerpark Lane, as it happened. Her family was the house at the top of the circle. We were in the middle, up-slope of the Wilson house at the Deerpark turn off of Fairfield Way, Fairfield being the road we took to Gettysberg National Park. This girl went with me and my parents to Gettysberg a few times, and further on for a July fourth holiday visit to the West Lampeter County fair in Lancaster, where, when I was six years old, I learned you could actually buy a live cow at auction and bring it home. Things were for sale, more than I could dream of.

Our two yards were a single grass lawn, indistinguishable color, our parcel and theirs. There were two brass plates on barely visible cement piles, one at the Lane and the other at the edge of the woods. A stretched string between them was the boundary, which I was helpful with years later after I'd settled in California. Cordelia had moved to Europe long before her father next door died, and I happened to be visiting my folks at the time the widow had realtors over. I saw them wandering around in back with maps, and I showed them what they were looking for. The widow, though, decided to stay on indefinitely. In the year after the funeral, my parents had that talk, the one where they weren't getting any younger. They had the one kid, me, forty now, settled in California, and living with a woman with a teenage son. The woman had warned me: I was a glutton for punishment.

My folks had bought a house in High Point, North Carolina. That settled, they had me back for the other talk: what did I want to do with the house? Then they moved.

So I was all by myself in Blue Ridge Summit when Cordelia called. It blew through my mind that she was working out dates for a week in the summer to be with her mother, and wondered if I was planning a visit with my folks. We didn't have to do any heavy coordinating. I would be there to greet her flight at Dulles. We could catch up on the drive.

There were a lot of memories. We had a housekeeper. In the second grade Cordelia stayed at my house after school until her mother got home. On the way home we stopped to drop stuff at her house, and took the opportunity to wrestle on her bed, which evolved by the growing processes these things follow to an inner description of myself as the loser, which, between her and me, was fine by me, and I would agree to let myself be tied up, hands behind my back. If I couldn't get free in a certain length of time, she was the winner, and I got a hand spanking, on the bare. The way this worked was that defeat was victory, and I sensed, as she must have too, that there was more of this past is prologue stuff coming to be in our developmental arcs. We were as precocious as nature would allow in the second grade.

She was still thirty-nine, born in November, where I was a summer baby, July. We were both born in the same hospital in DC, and dredging memories about each other would be as effortless as reading off road signs. Speaking of signs, I was still seeing us as we once were in the woods in Blue Ridge Summit: the pressure exerted on my groin in the hug I imagined she'd bestow on me would be plenty of permission to pull into a motel and initiate activities for the coming week. What she wanted was what I wanted. I would be driving along waiting for an offer.

But the call wasn't Cordelia Bennett.

A coming to reality blinked on when the woman at the other end of the line said, "Mr. Douglas, I think we should start over."

"I'm sorry," I said, "what did you say?"

"Is there someone there with you?"

"I'm alone."

"I thought you were talking with someone else," she said.

"What did you say your name was?"

"Are you okay?"

"If I ever catch up," I said. "Am I correct recalling something about selling the house?"

"I'm with Boyle Realty. Faith Boyle."

"Yes, of course. You asked me to call you Faith. God, I can't tell you how I bollixed that."

"You grew up in the Douglas house," she said.

"Third generation," I said.

"I saw the car in the drive this morning. I had your number. You know, two and two makes whatever I want it to be."

"Whatever it is, you're close. Two choices. One: if I decide to keep the house, I'm lost. Fifty years of glue and tape went into the repairs."

"You need help?"

I had the doors of the shed open when the Mercedes pulled up. The door of a compact entry level luxury model, deep green, opened about halfway, then a leg reached a high heel shoe to the gravel, then the torso bent backwards to fiddle around with something in the passenger seat. So the first sight of Faith was a high heel coming off a charcoal stocking foot, replaced with a broad-based orange walking shoe. Then the other foot.

"Had to clean up the desk," she called. "I'm Faith. No benefits accrue from joking around with hope and charity."

I closed the shed. "My grandparents wouldn't think of parting with a washing tub and wringer."

"That should be an easy decision. Or would it? That was their life."

"The washer-dryer in the kitchen doesn't seem like anything I'll miss."

"You grew up with it," she said.

"Did a lot of growing up in boarding school. My parents worked in the State Department."

Her phone was in her hand. She held it to her ear. "Hi, honey, I'll be back after lunch." She looked at me. "I don't want to interfere."

"If you have to be somewhere?"

She did her free-as-a-bird gesture: a hand went here, the other over there, a blink, and a baby shrug. "If I can be of help."

"Come on in the kitchen."

I opened a screen door to a mudroom, jumped around her to open another screen door into the kitchen. She went to the center of a large tiled square area, spun a few circles, and came to rest censoring her thoughts.

"What were you thinking of doing?" she said.

"I was in this room when you called. My third try for inspiration. A sink, fridge, cutting board, a hot water heater. They work. What do I need?"

"You're not married." A note off key possibly. "I mean, perhaps, you're missing a woman's touch? What I mean is you're planning on living here yourself. There's plenty of time to let changes grow on you."

"I'm in from California. I was hoping to get this done in a week."

"You mentioned two choices," she said.

"Sell," I said. "There's that. Leave it to someone else. It's their headache."

She laughed. "I know plenty of people who would enjoy the headache, if you're interested." She pointed at a doorway. "Mind if I have a look?"

We entered a room that was once a dining room. A bed and bureau and bedroom stuff had been moved down from the second floor.

"Your mother's things?" she said.

"Grandmother's. My parents worked around it. Didn't want to throw it out; didn't want to move it back upstairs; the reason why they decided to move."

"They left it to you."

"I have a confession," I said. "I can't decide."

"Not uncommon," she said. "But."

"Yeah. Third option is not an option. I can't just let it sit till next summer. What do I do?"

"Under the circumstances," she said, "if you're asking me, I'd have a drink."

"At your command," I said.

I opened a cabinet door in the kitchen.

"What's that there?" she said.

"Four Roses."

"It jumps out at me."

I took the bottle and two juice glasses to the side porch. She was in a tailored skirt and white blouse. She got a Kleenex from a pocket and wiped the back and arms of an oak chair, and turned the cushion over. I set the bottle on a serving tray and took a chair I'd been using these three days. She poured.

"You had things done for you, I think."

"My parents decided," I said. "Two to one carried the vote. Indecision became a habit. No, actually, I was thinking a characteristic. Gets in the way sometimes. Been seeing someone for it."

"We could all use a helping hand once in a while."

"A mistress Elizabeth helps me," I said.

She beat out a steady tap on her glass. "I don't want to get out of line. You don't mean a dominatrix?"

"She's why I wouldn't leave the Bay area."

She put her glass down, crossed her legs, and tugged the edge of her skirt. She ran her tongue over her teeth while she thought the next remark through. It took a minute. She put her left hand, fingers splayed, to her chin and cheek. She'd come to a decision. So had I. I knew what I wanted. I heard her ask me to strip. As clearly as if she'd made the sounds. She had that dominant demeanor, but male dominant fantasies are rarely female dominant fantasies, and I knew that the less out of me in these moments the better. I knew that, or had so decided that's what I knew. Leave it to the woman.

"What do you do in California?" she said.

"Answer to a woman at an agency," I said. She expected more. "My group doesn't share the name," I added.

"You could work from here?"

"Or move laterally. Other agencies."

"I'm curious," she said. "You called me Cordelia."

"The girl in the Bennett house at the top of the circle," I said. "We were close without ever dating. We used to meet in the woods and wait for the seven ten."

"The seven ten?" She had a sip. A pinky went up: "The train. Got it."

"Haven't seen her since the summer of my first year in college."

"You expected a call?"

"When I heard your voice, I thought it was her."

"Apologies in order," she said.

"Oh no, I'm delighted we met. The sword of Damocles. I'm glad you're here to catch it."

She was a drink swirler. Slowed the drinking. "You expected her for the seven ten tonight?"

"Saw her the summer leaving for my year in college. Just turned eighteen. We'd rendezvoused in the woods. Took a minute off for a wave goodbye to the engineer. It was the last time I saw her. Silly, but I can't say I didn't expect her tonight."

"Uncanny."

"Everything important in my life happened over there in the woods. My first sexual favor at thirteen."

"My first?" she said. "I was sitting in the back seat of a car in my undies smoking. I asked him what do we do now? You know, you think the heavens should open."

"Well, I had to earn the privilege."

"She charged?"

"Removed a switch from the limb of a tree. Pants off. You can believe she charged."

"On the bare? You were thirteen?"

"Once it started getting hard, she took over. We had some weird hormones."

"Let me guess. Onwards and upwards."

"Not exactly," I said. "I often held my ankles."

"The bare thing you did. She decided when?"

"Some nights were cold."

"Amazing," she said. "The grand design of the true art of spanking revealed in the woods. How old are you?"

"Today, forty."

She kept her fingers still. Her eyes worked it out. "You two were before my time. I must have been eight. I knew a girl. She got pregnant in the woods. Tell me if I'm out of line. You live with anyone? The reason I ask is, don't whips leave marks?"

"And cuts. It's a factor built into my perversion."

"Where do you get it? I mean, below the waist?"

"Buttocks, upper thighs. An occasional errant stroke can fetch a shriek."

"I'm wondering if I met her," she said. "I'd be about fourteen when you two were eighteen."

"She boarded at Emily Swift Academy in DC. No clue where those girls shopped. Not here."

She put her index fingers together, and had them go up to a steeple and down. "How often do you see Mistress Elizabeth?"

"It used to be once every few weeks. It's been a while now. Around Easter was our last session."

She stood and brushed off, and checked the sleeve of her blouse. "I've got to check in at the office."

We took the porch steps to her car. She got in and looked over the steering wheel.

"I suppose we should be on a first name basis. But. Here we are. I might come back. And I might not. If I do come back, I want you to know I'm not indecisive."

"A whipping." My thought was her thought. "We might talk it over."

"I won't need another shot of whisky, Mr. Douglas."

"If I say yes, you'll be back?"

"This has been a long day already," she said. "You weren't listening. From the proverbial thirty thousand feet, you're a decent man. A pretty good looking man, too. Actually, darn good looking. Having said that, you are not getting a sexual favor. In fact, I'm expecting the favor."

"I'm with you," I said.

"If I come back have the bottle available if you wish."

"When can I expect you?"

She backed to the Lane, swung the wheel, and drove off. I went to the porch, left the bottle and put the glasses on the sink.

It was five after seven. A freight has been coming out of West Virginia through a sliver of Maryland since I was able to remember. All over again, it was on the trestle tonight struggling up the grade. At seven-ten it would reach the crest and blow a whistle and drop off the summit and head to Harrisburg, and be on time tomorrow. I always assumed it was a round trip. It never came back this way.

As the train gave off its whistle of triumph, a car drove up and switched the headlights off. Faith had arrived. She let herself past me onto the porch and into the front room. She put a dressage whip vertically on the deep cushioned chair. She had changed to jeans, a blue blouse, matching blue tennis shoes. She took leather cuffs from a sack, folded the sack and put it on the chair. A bannister followed the back stairs to the second floor. Faith crossed the room. She reached above her head to where she could grip the square base of a baluster, but not the next higher. She let go with the sudden motion of having decided the bannister would do.

She looked at her watch. "Expecting anyone? Shut your phone off. Thirty minutes, Mr. Douglas. You're on the clock. Get your things off."

I kicked my sandals off, no socks, stripped standing to a motionless pose with my thumbs under the elastic that advertised a brand name on the shorts.

"You either do what I say, or you don't. If you don't, please just shut up about it. I'll figure it out. The shorts come off."

The shorts came off. "Hold your wrists out."

I wasn't thinking, as in not thinking anything through. I'd been around the block. Dominants let you know they expect, above all else, or included in all else, a degree of maturity in an experienced submissive. For skilled players, the preliminaries run on automatic pilot. Not having to bother with the nickel and dime aggravations from neurotics getting into harness pays dividends down the road. The mistress will summon her artistic energy for the main event. Being helpful is appreciated. I've been thanked.

The wrist straps had that leathery glow of workmanship, the fine tuned pieces you could long ago get your hands on if you knew the craftsman in the third floor cold water walk up off Castro. Faith knew who to ask? I kept that surprise to myself. "Where'd you get these?" went unsaid. Obediently I held my right wrist out. The strap looped around and overlapped itself. The ends locked together with a brass latch. That closed the loop. Then the other hand. There was a lets help each other out friendliness in a busy bee attention to detail. "You're a sweetheart, doing great, a super trooper, that should hold you." She did her due diligence until satisfied I wasn't wiggling out and wandering off.

I closed my eyes, reminded of the professional atmosphere in San Francisco. The dominatrix is an institution. The successful outfits enjoy dedicated repeat clientele. Friendliness and good manners are the backbone of excruciatingly correct behavior: rules that toe the line; a rule broken just so and the abject confession; the condign punishment.

"Stand here facing the stairs. Hold your arms up." She had a think part way up the stairs, leaning into an elbow on a step. She worked something out twirling leather ties.

"Look at me," she said. She stood up and pulled her belt off. She wrapped the belt around two posts and pushed the ends of the belt away from the stairs. "Just hold the ends of the belt. You're on your honor. Don't let go. Can I trust you?"

I had to think. Who knows?

She squeezed my hands, pressing each hand tight into the belt. She dropped a hand to my cheek: a double slap. "We're good."

She took a minute. The next step was forming. She opened her sack and took out material used in the manufacture of blue jeans.

"We won't be in touch for a while," she said. "What's your first name?"

"James."

"James, then, I don't know if you're getting what you want, or more, or less, or what you will tell Elizabeth, but here goes. Wish me the best. Hold your head back."

A wide canvas went over my mouth, knotted in back. "It's already worth it, Mr. Douglas. I can't hear a word."

I'm used to being asked if I'm ready. She looked at her watch. Her beginnings? A stroke at the waist. She knew her way around a whip. Oh, God, did it do the trick. A foot shot off the floor. The right ankle hit my cock, and held the elevated position. That kept the right leg in protective care. It was keeping itself out of the way of where the whip and buttock would, on my estimation, meet on the next stroke. Win some, lose some. The thigh was in the wrong place. It couldn't help but be where the cheek should have been, and got the next one, which forced the leg a fraction higher, and generated a twist to where, standing where she was, the tip of the whip would connect with the inside of the left leg. The left leg was all that there was of me down there. A dressage always comes to the end of its reach somewhere.

"You're going to spin yourself around," she said. Plenty of patience. She patted a cheek. "Let's get you back."

Always amazed. I asked for this, and always the flesh is weak, on the brink of all-out rebellion, which never arrives, held in check, balanced by some lust gratified in this quaint expression of intimacy. And the same response at the third stroke: the same starting position; the same leg back up, and the same jerk sideways.

My chest was below the level of the steps, so, again, a twist I did, and a waste of effort, no evasion possible. I was facing out, where, finally, the belt, straining in the last twist, kept me planted, and the leg with the foot grounded was, from any direction, getting the next one. She had her tempo from four on, and, as far as she seemed to care, the heck with where I kept my ass. Looking me in the eye now, the impacts were spaced on a guess. She'd flick her wrist at a dancing leg just about when my breath was recovering composure.

She breezed right through the classical six of the best, and switched arms finally at eight. No way to know what training a woman you just meet has had, what she knows about conventions, and certainly no reason the classics would mean squat. That she was doing it wrong? Too late for giving her the right and wrong. Someone ought to let her know.

She changed her swinging arm. She took the whip in her left hand. Same tempo, a backhand. She followed around like a partner in a dance. When a stroke was on its way, I'd shift and know about where I was getting it. She lost track by my count, the eight was at least ten at the pause.

"I looked it up," she said. "Two dozen, an industry standard. We're not there. Don't tear the bannister down."

Two dozen? I blinked twice. Thank you. I took four, a kindness now. She looked in my eyes, the soul of the governess, perhaps some extra kindliness, but basically the look had a question: an encore? I nodded. She obliged, losing count in a flurry until my sudden lurch off both feet: as good as a scream. And it was over, and she was putting her belt on, the subtext being the next encounter was far away in San Francisco, and I'd be wishing I was back here in my abandoned world. I would sure miss her.

Some lovely strangeness floated in the mechanical act of getting dressed.

The window was down in her car. I couldn't ask her to stay. "I'll see you tomorrow morning," I said. "I'm ready."

"You don't build civilizations in a night. We'll see."

Come again? Where did civilizations come in here?

It was my first brush with an alarm, as if the remark was what was left of the taillights of her car swinging onto Fairfield Way, a spirit that lingered here in an act of infantile silliness that might not allow itself to be forgotten. In the morning I stopped at Annie's Barn across the line in West Virginia, took a booth where you used to be able to watch a tire changed at the Tyre Despot, showing off the fine art of spelling, mountaineer cute. But the business had moved. I nursed coffee until nine, waited another fifteen minutes, and went home, and discovered Faith had left her phone on the porch railing. The whip was at the top step, the wrist restraints tied to the decorative handle. I was to take them to California for safe-keeping?

I called Boyle Realty.

"Ralph Boyle, speaking."

"This is James Douglas, the Douglas house on Deerpark. I've made up my mind. I'd like to speak with Faith. If she's in, I'd like to give her the commission."

"There's no Faith with us," he said.

"She was looking at the property yesterday. She forgot her phone. I could drop it off."

There was no answer.

"Faith Boyle?" I said.

"No Faith Boyle either."

I located her number on my log, and pushed the number. There was no phone with that number. She'd erased herself. In a couple seconds it was worse: I had everything wrong, but worse, what was wrong was inside out and upside down. I'd backed up to the mirror this morning. She'd been here done that. The woman who called herself Faith Boyle was up to something.

Less than a minute later I had the phone number figured out. Take it easy, relax a couple seconds, a sip of water, find the knot and open that baby. Think: the Agency explained the phone. They made phones that didn't exist on the open market, that were here for the one call and up someone's ass in Tokyo, in a coat button in Istanbul, glued to a photon in Kansas City. I knew I didn't have to know phones, but only that this Faith and her phone were the fabric of unreality the average Joe would be getting into running down an explanation of how the hell it all happened. She was their local lady. A pro on special assignment? They had the dossier on me. They gave Faith what she needed to know. I was the memo from San Francisco: drop by this fucker's place, chat him up, and for the next step, what?

This is where I had to get in the car and pick a way out of town. Go to where the next step would come to me. What the world were they up to?

They had the Montgomery County Track and Field championships at Damascus high school in 2003. That was my junior year, and that was the public school system, but there was this kid who was good enough to make the Olympics, and some of the team went over there to see him compete. I stopped in the lot at the high school, and put my brain at rest at the top of the stands where I'd experienced history. An athlete who looked like me missed the national interscholastic half-mile record by two tenths of a second.

Cordelia was irrelevant. That wrung the nostalgia out of some spurious déjà vu. It was outrageous that my employer would set up an encounter that hovered in some hidden intent, but exist in a design I was meant to discover. A test? I was up for promotion, bigger and better? Of course, no warning, throw him off the end of the pier. Rather, make the pier vanish everywhere he isn't. I was supposed to sort that out.

But if it came to me, the pith and moment of the last couple days, who do I tell? And if... what... came to me? There was that diaphanous what was what? Presumably the resolution of a puzzle would come into being? I'd be enlightened? But I already was. It seemed that way.

I drove back to Blue Ridge Summit with the relief that life moves on, though I couldn't get loose of the feel of an intangible spirit moving quietly beyond my little bean brain. I was failing a vital problem in the moment.

It was getting to the late afternoon, and a definite order had evolved from the jumble of the encounter with Faith. I was ready to clean up and drink to no more loose ends. Pulling off Deerpark, I saw a figure on a rocker on the front porch of the Bennett house. From the gray hair and a quiet grandeur of old age at a distance, it was likely I was seeing Cordelia's mother alone with some memory, and I walked over with no particular intention but that this might be the last time we see each other.

She was the only person who had said in my presence that I had my mother's lean frame. She called my first name as I reached the porch steps, and invited me to sit with her. She apologized. Her housekeeper was making dinner. She'd be along presently, and I could join her in an aperitif.

"James, it is so nice to see you. You look very handsome I might add. Always thought you were the best looking boy in Blue Ridge Summit. Your mother said you'd be by to take care of the house. Do you have a buyer?"

"Getting to that," I said. I almost said I'd had a realtor out. "I was planning on leaving Saturday, but I'm rebooking another week. This will take longer than I expected."

"You were thinking of keeping the house?"

"The woman I'm living with has seen photographs. Loves the charm of an historical mansion. If I asked her to have a look at it with an open mind, however."

"You're thinking of getting married?"

"She has a son going into ninth grade. We're thinking about having our own. Leaving California? I could bring it up that I was toying with it. She grew up in a small city in Minnesota. We talk about the sociology of midwestern life when we don't have anything to do. What are your plans, if I might ask?"

"Die in this house where my husband died is the plan."

"Cordelia is still in Italy? Turin is it?"

She looked off in the distance, drew herself back to the present and spoke to her lap. "I never told your mother, James. We heard the message in the morning that Cordelia was injured in an accident. We were with her when she died.

A wave of loss paralyzed my body. "I never heard."

"The loss of our only child was a personal loss. We didn't want to share. There were no announcements in the papers."

Tears filled my eyes, ran down, and fell off my jaw.

"Afterwards, we were evasive," she said. "The occasions I passed your mom, I was to be sure to let her know when Cordelia would be home. You weren't married. Neither was Cordelia. After we returned from Italy, your mom noticed something had happened to me. She never said anything."

"I'd like to visit the grave," I said.

"A beautiful place overlooking Lago Maggiore. I have the address upstairs. Can you drop by tomorrow afternoon? This time is fine."

"Is there anyone I could talk to, someone who knew her?"

"We met a few people at the service. No one from here, and for that matter, I couldn't tell you where they were from. Cordelia mumbled that there was a woman with her in the accident. She asked repeatedly how her companion was. Could she see her? But there wasn't anyone else. The first responders were positive that no one could have wandered off on their own power."

The meeting with Ms. Bennett dissolved rapidly. I excused myself. When I reached the bottom step she said, "Cordelia never thought of herself as someone from here. She knew you and your folks. That was about it for people around here. You were her only friend."

"She chose university in Rome," I said. "I learned the last night we were together. It's been twenty-two years."

On arrival at Dulles, deplaning a flight from San Francisco in late summer, the humidity is the one reality that does hit you. I lay on my bed that night on a towel in disbelief: that two neighbors, as compatible culturally and temperamentally as our two families were, could keep the loss of a child a secret for ten years amazed me. That they could work around an unknown known emotionally was the fact. Every moment of weakness that might open a trickle or a torrent had to be closed off.

The next day I didn't do much of anything but find walls to put my back up against and look at what was there of the house that I hadn't bothered earlier to see. When Ms. Bennett appeared on her porch, I headed over, determined that I would soon be making arrangements for a trip to Italy.

On the porch, there were introductions to a domestic who lived in Maryland. She took my order for a ginger ale. Mrs. Bennett said they had been back to the upper western shore of Lake Maggiore each year until her husband died. An envelope was on the table. I kept the envelope in my lap.

"I didn't sleep," I said. "I've decided, I'm staying on this coming year at the house, at least until Christmas."

"Yesterday," she said, "I knew the look of someone when they're busy deciding. What changed your mind?"

"Last night I had the crazy thought that on our last night together, Cordelia had asked me to go to Italy with her. Fairly convinced of that."

"The two of you never married," she said. She nodded at the envelope. "Oh, you'll find notes of the accident. You can have them."

"You know what else," I said. "It was around midnight, the strangest chill caused me to go downstairs and find where I'd been at seven-ten. I hadn't heard the train."

"Of course, the trestle was condemned," she said. "The railroad people wouldn't put up the money. The train hasn't been along that line for ten years. Your parents must have told you."

"What? Two nights ago," I said. "The train passed, right on time."

"I'm not saying what you heard, James. I'm just saying the train stopped running ten years ago."

I finished my drink, thanked Mrs. Bennett, and went to the house determined to call the railroad, and sort out the facts, but I didn't feel the ground I was standing on was what I was accustomed to feeling. All around was an uncertainty. I'd heard a train. Mrs. Bennett knew what she knew. Then again the railroad wouldn't need her permission to clear a run. Once in a while they sent one through. But. Had I heard what I'd expected to hear?

And there was Faith. Hadn't she arrived at the moment I heard the train whistle? I couldn't question that. All I could be sure of, this mix-up wasn't the Agency.

I opened the envelope. I'd need a destination to work out an itinerary. On some stapled yellow paper were notes in a woman's hand dated a week of September 2016. Mrs. Bennett had put down, maybe from memory, what she recalled of her daughter's last thoughts. On the second page was a name: Faith. I went back to the top of the page to read carefully. Reading down I picked up connections. Mrs. Bennett was hearing Cordelia referring to herself. She seemed familiar with the name, like this was a middle name, a family name, used between parent and child. It popped into my head that Cordelia had used the name, but it had been a long time ago, and I was imagining so much, I couldn't summon the effort for locating the truth of the past, and let it go.

I went into the kitchen to get a bottle of whisky, but remembered it was out on the porch.

And I hadn't rinsed the glasses. It occurred that I had Faith's DNA. There was Mrs. Bennett for comparison. There were likely other avenues available from family members who'd used genealogy outfits to track their roots. The Agency could be useful now, but the heck with it. All I'd discover is that losing the house was too much. I'd moved to California and left here what I needed to cope with life. I took a shower and washed out the glasses and poured myself the antidote to all this nonsense. A couple of shots later I'd be comfortable. I expected Faith would be along when the train arrived. The train would be where it was supposed to be.