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"Where did you get this idea to read dead things?" he asked "Frorandmother?"

"No She disapproved She was an old-fashioned devout Catholic To her, believing in the occult is a sin It puts the iree"

"I do and I don’t," Ivy said more softly than usual

After the raven finished the third cherry, the naed pits were left side by side on thesill, as if in acknowledgment of the household rules of neatness and order

"I never heard my mother’s voice," Ivy said

Billy did not knohat to make of that statement, and then he remembered that her mother had died in childbirth

Ivy said, "Since I was very little, I’ve knownterribly important to say to me"

For the first time he noticed a wall clock It had no second, minute, or hour hands

"This house has always been so quiet," Ivy said "So quiet You learn to listen here"

Billy listened

"The dead have things to tell us," Ivy said

With polished-anthracite eyes, the raven regarded its mistress

"The wall is thinner here," she said "The wall between the worlds A spiritthe e the nut meats in the bowl, she made the softest sy in the tea glasses

Ivy said, "Soht or in a particularly still ht when the horizon ss the sun and fully silences it, I know she’s calling me I can almost hear the quality of her voice… but not the words Not yet"

Billy thought of Barbara speaking froless to everyone else, yet fraught with enig as she was alluring If her innocence sometimes seemed to approach the immaculate, Billy warned himself that in her heart, as in the heart of every ht didn’t reach, where a calardless of whatever he hiht believe about life and death, and in spite of whatever impure motives Ivy entertained, if indeed she entertained any, Billy felt that she was sincere in her belief that her , and would eventually succeed More iment of his adaptive unconscious, that he was unable to write her off as a ht well have been washed thin, rinsed by so many years of silence

Her predictions based on haruspicy were seldom correct in any detail She blans, and would not abide suggestions that haruspicy itself was useless

Billy now understood her obstinacy If one could not read the future in the unique conditions of each dead thing, itto tell us and that a child waiting to hear the voice of a lost ht never hear it no matter hoell she listened or how silent and attentive she re roadsides, of dead mantises, of birds fallen from the sky

She silently walked her house, noiselessly shelled pistachios, softly spoke to the raven or did not speak at all, and at times the quiet became a perfect hush

Such a hush had fallen over them now, but Billy broke it

Interested less in Ivy’s analysis than in her reaction, watching her more intently than ever the bird had done, Billy said, "Sometimes psychopathic killers keep souvenirs to reh Billy’s coer than a reference to the heat, Ivy paused for a sip of tea, then returned to shelling He suspected that nothing anyone said to Ivy ever elicited a reaction of surprise, as if she always knehat the words would be before they were spoken

"I heard about this case," he continued, "where a serial killer cut off the face of a victim and kept it in a jar of formaldehyde"

Ivy scooped nut shells from the table and put them in the waste can beside her chair She didn’t drop them, but placed them in the can in such a way that they did not rattle

By watching Ivy, Billy could not tell if she had previously heard of the face thief or if instead this was news to her

"If you came upon that faceless body, ould you read from it? Not about the future, but about him, the killer"

"Theater," she said without hesitation

"I’m not sure what you mean"

"He likes theater"

"Why do you say that?"

"The dra off a face," she said

"I don’t make that connection"

From the shallow dish she took a cherry

"The theater is deception," she said "No actor plays hiht," and wait

She said, "In every role, an actor wears a false identity"

She put the cherry in her mouth A moment later, she spit the pit into the palm of her hand, and sed the fruit

Whether she meant to imply that the pit was the ultiain, Ivy met his eyes "He didn’t want the face because it was a face He wanted it because it was a mask"

Her eyes were more beautiful than readable, but he did not think that her insight chilled her as it did hi for the voices of the dead, you didn’t chill easily

He said, "Do you mean sometimes, when he’s alone and in the mood, he takes it out of the jar and wears it?"

"Maybe he does Or maybe he just wanted it because it reminded him of an important drama in his life, a favorite performance" Performance That word had been iht have repeated it knowingly, or in all innocence He could not tell She continued to meet his eyes "Do you think every face is a entle and kind as any saint, still had her secrets They were innocent, even charlass--but she still wore one"

He didn’t knohat she was telling him, what she meant for him to infer fro her directly would result in a htforward answer

Not that she necessarily meant to deceive Her conversation was frequently htforward, not by intention but because of her nature Everything she said sounded as limpid as a bell note to the ear--yet was sometimes Semi opaque to interpretation

Often her silences seehtdeaf

If he read her half well, Ivy was not deceiving hiested that every face, her own included, was a mask?

If Ivy visited Barbara only because Barbara had once been kind to her, and if she took photographs of dead things to Whispering Pines only because she took them everywhere, the photo of the mantis had no relationship to the trap in which Billy found hie of the freak

In which case, he could get up, go, and do what urgently needed to be done Yet he remained at the table