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When you believe life has n, you risk seeking signs instead of waiting to receive theantly as litter in the wake of a wind stor up in mushroom clusters

After the telephone call from Sister Jacinta, Anize the difference between a true pattern and a fancy, between a significance and an iffiness The coincidence of Nickie’s name, her behavior, the business with the slippers, Theresa’s reference to wind and chiestive, but not clearly evidence of otherworldly forces at work A phone call froher order of the fantastic, and you tended thereafter to see portentous es in every face that Nature turned toward you

Movereat phoenix pale of folded dead fronds beneath the green crown

A rat was a sye black beetle lay on its back, legs stiff, and sware froated top so loose that it creaked even in the sea’s faint exhalation, lay an empty bottle of hot sauce with a skull and crossbones on the label

On the other hand, three white doves arrowed across the sky, and seven pennies were arranged on the ri fountain, and on a bench lay a discarded paperback titled Your Bright Future

She decided to let Nickie’s instincts guide her The dog sniffed everything, fixated on nothing, and exhibited no suspicion By the golden’s example, Amy found her way to a less fevered interpretation of every shape and shadow, and then to a disinterest in signs

In fact, skepticisan to question whether the conversation with Sister Jacinta had actually occurred She could have dreaht, but maybe she only ue with a ghost

After the call, she had faced Nickie, put her arain They had awakened together in that cuddle If the call only happened in a dream, she had merely turned to Nickie in her sleep

By the time Amy returned to the motel room, she had decided not to tell Brian about Sister Mouse At least not yet Maybe when they were on the road

Before he had gone to bed the previous night, Brian had sent an e- Nickie, Vanessa sent a reply

She gave the address of a restaurant in Monterey at which she wanted Arabbed breakfast at a fast-food joint and ate on the hway 101 They should be in Monterey by noon

For the first three hours, Brian drove He said little, and riain custody of his daughter, he must be worried about the condition in which he would find her and about how

Aluhts, but he rose to the conversation only briefly each ti silence

Forced by his introspection into some self-analysis of her own, she admitted to herself that skepticism had not been the real reason she hesitated to tell Brian about the telephone call from Sister Jacinta Her dismissal of the visitation as just a drea the content of her conversation with the nun would require her to tell Brian the rest of the story she had been too exhausted and too euilt-to finish the previous night She had broken off that narrative with the death of Nickie at Mater Misericordiæ she tried to sue to tell the rest of it

After they parked in a lay-by to stretch their legs and to give Nickie a potty break, Amy drove the last two hours to Monterey She had to keep her eyes on the road now She had reason not to look at hiave her confidence to return to the past

Nevertheless, she could still only approach the an with the lighthouse

"Did I ever tell you, I lived in a lighthouse for a few years?"

"Wonderful architecture in hthouse years"

His tone i told hinized the false casualness of her revelation

"With satellite navigation, hthouses aren’t in service anymore Others have been automated-electricity instead of an oil brazier"

"Some are bed-and-breakfast inns"

"Yeah They renovate the caretaker’s house Sohthouse itself"

This lighthouse had stood on a rocky promontory in Connecticut She had been twenty when she moved there, twenty-four when she left

She did not explain what brought her to that place or mention whether she had been there alone or with others

Brian seemed to sense that questions would inhibit her and that the wrong question, asked too soon, would halt her altogether

She spoke of the rugged shore and the thrilling seascapes, of the spectacular views from the lantern roo details of the lightkeeper’s house

She dwelt at length on the beauty of the lighthouse itself, the walnut paneling of the round vestibule, the ornate fretwork of the circular iron staircase At the summit, in the lantern room, waited the rated series of priss at bottom and top, which reflected the rays of a one-thousand-watt halogen bulb to the center of the lens, aht was beamed outward, across the dark Atlantic

They arrived at the restaurant in Monterey as she finished telling him that, in the early nineteenth century, Fresnel lenses were so heavy, the only way to turn them-and make the beam sweep the coast-was to float thereat weight and reduce friction to a hly toxic Gradually, mercury flotation was phased out in favor of clockworks and counterweights, which were subsequently replaced by electric htkeepers were driven insane by rier in a chartered Learjet from Santa Barbara to Monterey

The steore black slacks, a white coat, a white shirt, and a black bowtie He had a British accent

Airborne at ten o’clock, Billy was served a late breakfast of strawberries in clotted cream, a lobster omelet, and toasted brioche with raisin butter

He’d left his suitcase of clothes at the hotel in Santa Barbara because, so, when everyone who needed to be dead was dead, he intended to resuht the second suitcase containing the guns The first was a Glock 18 with thirty-three rounds in its azine The second was a disasse Santa Barbara, he had taken the tabloid newspaper for gun aficionados out of the suitcase and had left it on the living-room coffee table He was not concerned that the publication would once s of the dog That had been a hallucination born of weariness Billy was rested and past all that Helater in the week Nothing ht hiazines, and when he opened one, the first thing he saas an advertisee spread, three well-tailored young olden retrievers

Billy closed theCoincidence

Suspecting that the saht appear in h the front azine, but opened it to the middle, where he wasThe story in front of hiolden retrievers

In the opening photograph, all three dogs were looking directly into the caested to Billy that s had known that he, Billy Pilgri at the, but he saw no laughter in their eyes, quite the opposite

Billy dropped the azine and went at once into the bathroo up Not throwing up indicated that he had pretty ained control of his nerves

He looked in the mirror, saw that sweat beaded his brow, and blotted his face with a towel After that, he looked good He wasn’t pale, but he pinched his cheeks anyway, to get le tear He winked at hi arrived, Billy had the restaurant under surveillance from a rental car parked across the street