A Century of Great Suspense Stories

The People Across the Canyon Margaret Millar

The novel How Like an Angel (1962) shows an eerie prescience: many of its characters are early versions of the hippies who came to dominate the Southern California social landscape in just a few years. Angel is Margaret Millar’s (1915–1994) darkest and most complex novel, but it is only one of her many masterpieces, which include An Air that Kills (1957), A Stranger in my Grave (1960), and The Murder of Miranda (1979). Some critics suggested that she was a more accomplished writer than her husband, Ross Macdonald (Ken Millar), a contention she always angrily denied. But her humility to the contrary, many argue that she was the single best writer of mysteries ever. The shame was that she never had a huge hit. She was somewhere between a cult and a coterie writer. Her vengeance is that her books are fresh as ever — brooding, frightening, and frequently hilarious right in the middle of all the terror. Her social eye was merciless and she delighted in lynching pomposity in all its forms. She is one of those rare writers of any stripe whose prose can be read aloud to great effect. Just open one of her books at random and start reading. You’ll find something quotable soon enough.

The first time the Bortons realized that someone had moved into the new house across the canyon was one night in May when they saw the rectangular light of a television set shining in the picture window. Marion Borton knew it had to happen eventually, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept the idea of neighbors in a part of the country she and Paul had come to consider exclusively their own.

They had discovered the site, had bought six acres, and built the house over the objections of the bank, which didn’t like to lend money on unimproved property, and of their friends who thought the Bortons were foolish to move so far out of town. Now other people were discovering the spot, and here and there through the eucalyptus trees and the live oaks, Marion could see half-finished houses.

But it was the house directly across the canyon that bothered her most; she had been dreading this moment ever since the site had been bulldozed the previous summer.

“There goes our privacy.” Marion went over and snapped off the television set, a sign to Paul that she had something on her mind which she wanted to transfer to his. The transference, intended to halve the problem, often merely doubled it.

“Well, let’s have it,” Paul said, trying to conceal his annoyance.

“Have what?”

“Stop kidding around. You don’t usually cut off Perry Mason in the middle of a sentence.”

“All I said was, there goes our privacy.”

“We have plenty left,” Paul said.

“You know how sounds carry across the canyon.”

“I don’t hear any sounds.”

“You will. They probably have ten or twelve children and a howling dog and a sports car.”

“A couple of children wouldn’t be so bad — at least, Cathy would have someone to play with.”

Cathy was eight, in bed now, and ostensibly asleep, with the night light on and her bedroom door open just a crack.

“She has plenty of playmates at school,” Marion said, pulling the drapes across the window so that she wouldn’t have to look at the exasperating rectangle of light across the canyon. “Her teacher tells me Cathy gets along with everyone and never causes any trouble. You talk as if she’s deprived or something.”

“It would be nice if she had more interests, more children of her own age around.”

“A lot of things would be nice if. I’ve done my best.”

Paul knew it was true. He’d heard her issue dozens of weekend invitations to Cathy’s schoolmates. Few of them came to anything. The mothers offered various excuses: poison oak, snakes, mosquitoes in the creek at the bottom of the canyon, the distance of the house from town in case something happened and a doctor was needed in a hurry... these excuses, sincere and valid as they were, embittered Marion. “For heaven’s sake, you’d think we lived on the moon or in the middle of a jungle.”

“I guess a couple of children would be all right,” Marion said. “But please, no sports car.”

“I’m afraid that’s out of our hands.”

“Actually, they might even be quite nice people.”

“Why not? Most people are.”

Both Marion and Paul had the comfortable feeling that something had been settled, though neither was quite sure what. Paul went over and turned the television set back on. As he had suspected, it was the doorman who’d killed the nightclub owner with a baseball bat, not the blonde dancer or her young husband or the jealous singer.

It was the following Monday that Cathy started to run away.

Marion, ironing in the kitchen and watching a quiz program on the portable set Paul had given her for Christmas, heard the school bus groan to a stop at the top of the driveway. She waited for the front door to open and Cathy to announce in her high thin voice, “I’m home, Mommy.”

The door didn’t open.

From the kitchen window Marion saw the yellow bus round the sharp curve of the hill like a circus cage full of wild captive children screaming for release.

Marion waited until the end of the program, trying to convince herself that another bus had been added to the route and would come along shortly, or that Cathy had decided to stop off at a friend’s house and would telephone any minute. But no other bus appeared, and the telephone remained silent.

Marion changed into her hiking boots and started off down the canyon, avoiding the scratchy clumps of chapparal and the creepers of poison oak that looked like loganberry vines.

She found Cathy sitting in the middle of the little bridge that Paul had made across the creek out of two fallen eucalyptus trees. Cathy’s short plump legs hung over the logs until they almost touched the water. She was absolutely motionless, her face hidden by a straw curtain of hair. Then a single frog croaked a warning of Marion’s presence and Cathy responded to the sound as if she were more intimate with nature than adults were, and more alert to its subtle communications of danger.

She stood up quickly, brushing off the back of her dress and drawing aside the curtain of hair to reveal eyes as blue as the periwinkles that hugged the banks of the creek.

“Cathy.”

“I was only counting waterbugs while I was waiting. Forty-one.”

“Waiting for what?”

“The ten or twelve children, and the dog.”

“What ten or twelve chil—” Marion stopped. “I see. You were listening the other night when we thought you were asleep.”

“I wasn’t listening,” Cathy said righteously. “My ears were hearing.”

Marion restrained a smile. “Then I wish you’d tell those ears of yours to hear properly. I didn’t say the new neighbors had ten or twelve children, I said they might have. Actually, it’s very unlikely. Not many families are that big these days.”

“Do you have to be old to have a big family?”

“Well, you certainly can’t be very young.”

“I bet people with big families have station wagons so they have room for all the children.”

“The lucky ones do.”

Cathy stared down at the thin flow of water carrying fat little minnows down to the sea. Finally she said, “They’re too young, and their car is too small.”

In spite of her aversion to having new neighbors, Marion felt a quickening of interest. “Have you seen them?”

But the little girl seemed deaf, lost in a water world of minnows and dragonflies and tadpoles.

“I asked you a question, Cathy. Did you see the people who just moved in?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Before you came. Their name is Smith.”

“How do you know that?”

“I went up to the house to look at things and they said, hello, little girl, what’s your name? And I said, Cathy, what’s yours? And they said Smith. Then they drove off in the little car.”

“You’re not supposed to go poking around other people’s houses,” Marion said brusquely. “And while we’re at it, you’re not supposed to go anywhere after school without first telling me where you’re going and when you’ll be back. You know that perfectly well. Now why didn’t you come in and report to me after you got off the school bus?”

“I didn’t want to.”

“That’s not a satisfactory answer.”

Satisfactory or not, it was the only answer Cathy had. She looked at her mother in silence, then she turned and darted back up the hill to her own house.

After a time Marion followed her, exasperated and a little confused. She hated to punish the child, but she knew she couldn’t ignore the matter entirely — it was much too serious. While she gave Cathy her graham crackers and orange juice, she told her, reasonably and kindly, that she would have to stay in her room the following day after school by way of learning a lesson.

That night, after Cathy had been tucked in bed, Marion related the incident to Paul. He seemed to take a less serious view of it than Marion, a fact of which the listening child became well aware.

“I’m glad she’s getting acquainted with the new people,” Paul said. “It shows a certain degree of poise I didn’t think she had. She’s always been so shy.”

“You’re surely not condoning her running off without telling me?”

“She didn’t run far. All kids do things like that once in a while.”

“We don’t want to spoil her.”

“Cathy’s always been so obedient I think she has us spoiled. Who knows, she might even teach us a thing or two about going out and making new friends.” He realized, from past experience, that this was a very touchy subject. Marion had her house, her garden, her television sets; she didn’t seem to want any more of the world than these, and she resented any implication that they were not enough. To ward off an argument he added, “You’ve done a good job with Cathy. Stop worrying... Smith, their name is?”

“Yes.”

“Actually, I think it’s an excellent sign that Cathy’s getting acquainted.”

At three the next afternoon the yellow circus cage arrived, released one captive, and rumbled on its way.

“I’m home, Mommy.”

“Good girl.”

Marion felt guilty at the sight of her: the child had been cooped up in school all day, the weather was so warm and lovely, and besides Paul hadn’t thought the incident of the previous afternoon too important.

“I know what,” Marion suggested, “let’s you and I go down to the creek and count waterbugs.”

The offer was a sacrifice for Marion because her favorite quiz program was on and she liked to answer the questions along with the contestants. “How about that?”

Cathy knew all about the quiz program; she’d seen it a hundred times, had watched the moving mouths claim her mother’s eyes and ears and mind. “I counted the waterbugs yesterday.”

“Well, minnows, then.”

“You’ll scare them away.”

“Oh, will I?” Marion laughed self-consciously, rather relieved that Cathy had refused her offer and was clearly and definitely a little guilty about the relief. “Don’t you scare them?”

“No. They think I’m another minnow because they’re used to me.”

“Maybe they could get used to me, too.”

“I don’t think so.”

When Cathy went off down the canyon by herself Marion realized, in a vaguely disturbing way, that the child had politely but firmly rejected her mother’s company. It wasn’t until dinner time that she found out the reason why.

“The Smiths,” Cathy said, “have an Austin-Healey.”

Cathy, like most girls, had never shown any interest in cars, and her glib use of the name moved her parents to laughter.

The laughter encouraged Cathy to elaborate. “An Austin-Healey makes a lot of noise — like Daddy’s lawn mower.”

“I don’t think the company would appreciate a commercial from you, young lady,” Paul said. “Are the Smiths all moved in?”

“Oh, yes. I helped them.”

“Is that a fact? And how did you help them?”

“I sang two songs. And then we danced and danced.”

Paul looked half pleased, half puzzled. It wasn’t like Cathy to perform willingly in front of people. During the last Christmas concert at the school she’d left the stage in tears and hidden in the cloak room... Well, maybe her shyness was only a phase and she was finally getting over it.

“They must be very nice people,” he said, “to take time out from getting settled in a new house to play games with a little girl.”

Cathy shook her head. “It wasn’t games. It was real dancing — like on Ed Sullivan.”

“As good as that, eh?” Paul said, smiling. “Tell me about it.”

“Mrs. Smith is a nightclub dancer.”

Paul’s smile faded, and a pulse began to beat in his left temple like a small misplaced heart. “Oh? You’re sure about that, Cathy?”

“Yes.”

“And what does Mr. Smith do?”

“He’s a baseball player.”

“You mean that’s what he does for a living?” Marion asked. “He doesn’t work in an office like Daddy?”

“No, he just plays baseball. He always wears a baseball cap.”

“I see. What position does he play on the team?” Paul’s voice was low.

Cathy looked blank.

“Everybody on a ball team has a special thing to do. What does Mr. Smith do?”

“He’s a batter.”

“A batter, eh? Well, that’s nice. Did he tell you this?”

“Yes.”

“Cathy,” Paul said, “I know you wouldn’t deliberately lie to me, but sometimes you get your facts a little mixed up.”

He went on in this vein for some time but Cathy’s story remained unshaken: Mrs. Smith was a nightclub dancer, Mr. Smith a professional baseball player, they loved children, and they never watched television.

“That, at least, must be a lie,” Marion said to Paul later when she saw the rectangular light of the television set shining in the Smiths’ picture window. “As for the rest of it, there isn’t a nightclub within fifty miles, or a professional ball club within two hundred.”

“She probably misunderstood. It’s quite possible that at one time Mrs. Smith was a dancer of sorts and that he played a little baseball.”

Cathy, in bed and teetering dizzily on the brink of sleep, wondered if she should tell her parents about the Smiths’ child — the one who didn’t go to school.

She didn’t tell them; Marion found out for herself the next morning after Paul and Cathy had gone. When she pulled back the drapes in the living room and opened the windows she heard the sharp slam of a screen door from across the canyon and saw a small child come out on the patio of the new house. At that distance she couldn’t tell whether it was a boy or a girl. Whichever it was, the child was quiet and well behaved; only the occasional slam of the door shook the warm, windless day.

The presence of the child, and the fact that Cathy hadn’t mentioned it, gnawed at Marion’s mind all day. She questioned Cathy about it as soon as she came home.

“You didn’t tell me the Smiths have a child.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know why not.”

“Is it a boy or a girl?”

“Girl.”

“How old?”

Cathy thought it over carefully, frowning up at the ceiling. “About ten.”

“Doesn’t she go to school?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“She doesn’t want to.”

“That’s not a very good reason.”

“It is her reason,” Cathy said flatly. “Can I go out to play now?”

“I’m not sure you should. You look a little feverish. Come here and let me feel your forehead.”

Cathy’s forehead was cool and moist, but her cheeks and the bridge of her nose were very pink, almost as if she’d been sunburned.

“You’d better stay inside,” Marion said, “and watch some cartoons.”

“I don’t like cartoons.”

“You used to.”

“I like real people.”

She means the Smiths, of course, Marion thought as her mouth tightened. “People who dance and play baseball all the time?”

If the sarcasm had any effect on Cathy she didn’t show it. After waiting until Marion had become engrossed in her quiz program, Cathy lined up all her dolls in her room and gave a concert for them, to thunderous applause.

“Where are your old Navy binoculars?” Marion asked Paul when she was getting ready for bed.

“Oh, somewhere in the sea chest, I imagine. Why?”

“I want them.”

“Not thinking of spying on the neighbors, are you?”

“I’m thinking of just that,” Marion said grimly.

The next morning, as soon as she saw the Smith child come out on the patio, Marion went downstairs to the storage room to search through the sea chest. She located the binoculars and was in the act of dusting them off when the telephone started to ring in the living room. She hurried upstairs and said breathlessly, “Hello?”

“Mrs. Borton?”

“Yes.”

“This is Miss Park speaking, Cathy’s teacher.”

Marion had met Miss Park several times at P.T.A. meetings and report-card conferences. She was a large, ruddy-faced, and unfailingly cheerful young woman — the kind, as Paul said, you wouldn’t want to live with but who’d be nice to have around in an emergency. “How are you, Miss Park?”

“Oh, fine, thank you, Mrs. Borton. I meant to call you yesterday but things were a bit out of hand around here, and I knew there was no great hurry to check on Cathy; she’s such a well-behaved little girl.”

Even Miss Park’s loud, jovial voice couldn’t cover up the ominous sound of the word check. “I don’t think I quite understand. Why should you check on Cathy?”

“Purely routine. The school doctor and the health department like to keep records of how many cases of measles or flu or chicken pox are going the rounds. Right now it looks like the season for mumps. Is Cathy all right?”

“She seemed a little feverish yesterday afternoon when she got home from school, but she acted perfectly normal when she left this morning.”

Miss Park’s silence was so protracted that Marion became painfully conscious of things she wouldn’t otherwise have noticed — the weight of the binoculars in her lap, the thud of her own heartbeat in her ears. Across the canyon the Smith child was playing quietly and alone on the patio. There is definitely something the matter with that girl, Marion thought. Perhaps I’d better not let Cathy go over there any more, she’s so imitative. “Miss Park, are you still on the line? Hello? Hello—”

“I’m here,” Miss Park’s voice seemed fainter than usual, and less positive. “What time did Cathy leave the house this morning?”

“Eight, as usual.”

“Did she take the school bus?”

“Of course. She always does.”

“Did you see her get on?”

“I kissed her goodbye at the front door,” Marion said. “What’s this all about, Miss Park?”

“Cathy hasn’t been at school for two days, Mrs. Borton.”

“Why, that’s absurd, impossible! You must be mistaken.” But even as she was speaking the words, Marion was raising the binoculars to her eyes: the little girl on the Smiths’ patio had a straw curtain of hair and eyes as blue as the periwinkles along the creek banks.

“Mrs. Borton, I’m not likely to be mistaken about which of my children are in class or not.”

“No. No, you’re... you’re not mistaken, Miss Park. I can see Cathy from here — she’s over at the neighbor’s house.”

“Good. That’s a load off my mind.”

“Off yours, yes,” Marion said. “Not mine.”

“Now we mustn’t become excited, Mrs. Borton. Don’t make too much of this incident before we’ve had a chance to confer. Suppose you come and talk to me during my lunch hour and bring Cathy along. We’ll all have a friendly chat.”

But it soon became apparent, even to the optimistic Miss Park, that Cathy didn’t intend to take part in any friendly chat. She stood by the window in the classroom, blank-eyed, mute, unresponsive to the simplest questions, refusing to be drawn into any conversation even about her favorite topic, the Smiths. Miss Park finally decided to send Cathy out to play in the schoolyard while she talked to Marion alone.

“Obviously,” Miss Park said, enunciating the word very distinctly because it was one of her favorites, “obviously, Cathy’s got a crush on this young couple and has concocted a fantasy about belonging to them.”

“It’s not so obvious what my husband and I are going to do about it.”

“Live through it, the same as other parents. Crushes like this are common at Cathy’s age. Sometimes the object is a person, a whole family, even a horse. And, of course, to Cathy a nightclub dancer and a baseball player must seem very glamorous indeed. Tell me, Mrs. Borton, does she watch television a great deal?”

Marion stiffened. “No more than any other child.”

Oh, dear, Miss Park thought sadly, they all do it; the most confirmed addicts are always the most defensive. “I just wondered,” she said. “Cathy likes to sing to herself and I’ve never heard such a repertoire of television commercials.”

“She picks things up very fast.”

“Yes. Yes, she does indeed.” Miss Park studied her hands, which were always a little pale from chalk dust and were even paler now because she was angry — at the child for deceiving her, at Mrs. Borton for brushing aside the television issue, at herself for not preventing, or at least anticipating, the current situation, and perhaps most of all at the Smiths who ought to have known better than to allow a child to hang around their house when she should obviously be in school.

“Don’t put too much pressure on Cathy about this,” she said finally, “until I talk the matter over with the school psychologist. By the way, have you met the Smiths, Mrs. Borton?”

“Not yet,” Marion said grimly. “But believe me, I intend to.”

“Yes, I think it would be a good idea for you to talk to them and make it clear that they’re not to encourage Cathy in this fantasy.”

The meeting came sooner than Marion expected.

She waited at the school until classes were dismissed, then she took Cathy into town to do some shopping. She had parked the car and she and Cathy were standing hand in hand at a corner waiting for a traffic light to change; Marion was worried and impatient, Cathy still silent, unresisting, inert, as she had been ever since Marion had called her home from the Smiths’ patio.

Suddenly Marion felt the child’s hand tighten in a spasm of excitement. Cathy’s face had turned so pink it looked ready to explode and with her free hand she was waving violently at two people in a small cream-colored sports car — a very pretty young woman with blonde hair in the driver’s seat, and beside her a young man wearing a wide friendly grin and a baseball cap. They both waved back at Cathy just before the lights changed and then the car roared through the intersection.

“The Smiths,” Cathy shouted, jumping up and down in a frenzy. “That was the Smiths.”

“Sssh, not so loud. People will—”

“But it was the Smiths!”

“Hurry up before the light changes.”

The child didn’t hear. She stood as if rooted to the curb, staring after the cream-colored car.

With a little grunt of impatience Marion picked her up, carried her across the road, and let her down quite roughly on the other side. “There. If you’re going to act like a baby, I’ll carry you like a baby.”

“I saw the Smiths!”

“All right. What are you so excited about? It’s not very unusual to meet someone in town whom you know.”

“It’s unusual to meet them.”

“Why?”

“Because it is.” The color was fading from Cathy’s cheeks, but her eyes still looked bedazzled, quite as if they’d seen a miracle.

“I’m sure they’re very unique people,” Marion said coldly. “Nevertheless they must stop for groceries like everyone else.”

Cathy’s answer was a slight shake of her head and a whisper heard only by herself: “No, they don’t, never.”

When Paul came home from work Cathy was sent to play in the front yard while Marion explained matters to him. He listened with increasing irritation — not so much at Cathy’s actions but at the manner in which Marion and Miss Park had handled things. There was too much talking, he said, and too little acting.

“The way you women beat around the bush instead of tackling the situation directly, meeting it head-on — fantasy life. Fantasy life, my foot! Now we’re going over to the Smiths right this minute and talk to them and that will be that. End of fantasy. Period.”

“We’d better wait until after dinner. Cathy missed her lunch.”

Throughout the meal Cathy was pale and quiet. She ate nothing and spoke only when asked a direct question; but inside herself the conversation was very lively, the dinner a banquet with dancing, and afterward a wild, windy ride in the roofless car...

Although the footpath through the canyon provided a shorter route to the Smiths’ house, the Bortons decided to go more formally, by car, and to take Cathy with them. Cathy, told to comb her hair and wash her face, protested: “I don’t want to go over there.”

“Why not?” Paul said. “You were so anxious to spend time with them that you played hooky for two days. Why don’t you want to see them now?”

“Because they’re not there.”

“How do you know?”

“Mrs. Smith told me this morning that they wouldn’t be home tonight because she’s putting on a show.”

“Indeed?” Paul said grim faced. “Just where does she put on these shows of hers?”

“And Mr. Smith has to play baseball. And after that they’re going to see a friend in the hospital who has leukemia.”

“Leukemia, eh?” He didn’t have to ask how Cathy had found out about such a thing; he’d watched a semidocumentary dealing with it a couple of nights ago. Cathy was supposed to have been sleeping.

“I wonder,” he said to Marion when Cathy went to comb her hair, “just how many ‘facts’ about the Smiths have been borrowed from television.”

“Well, I know for myself that they drive a sports car, and Mr. Smith was wearing a baseball cap. And they’re both young and good-looking. Young and good-looking enough,” she added wryly, “to make me feel — well, a little jealous.”

“Jealous?”

“Cathy would rather belong to them than to us. It makes me wonder if it’s something the Smiths have or something the Bortons don’t have.”

“Ask her.”

“I can’t very well—”

“Then I will, dammit,” Paul said. And he did.

Cathy merely looked at him innocently. “I don’t know. I don’t know what you mean.”

“Then listen again. Why did you pretend that you were the Smiths’ little girl?”

“They asked me to be. They asked me to go with them.”

“They actually said, Cathy, will you be our little girl?”

“Yes.”

“Well, by heaven, I’ll put an end to this nonsense,” Paul said, and strode out to the car.

It was twilight when they reached the Smiths’ house by way of the narrow, hilly road. The moon, just appearing above the horizon, was on the wane, a chunk bitten out of its side by some giant jaw. A warm dry wind, blowing down the mountain from the desert beyond, carried the sweet scent of pittosporum.

The Smiths’ house was dark, and both the front door and the garage were locked. Out of defiance or desperation, Paul pressed the door chime anyway, several times. All three of them could hear it ringing inside, and it seemed to Marion to echo very curiously — as if the carpets and drapes were too thin to muffle the sound vibrations. She would have liked to peer in through the windows and see for herself, but the venetian blinds were closed.

“What’s their furniture like?” she asked Cathy.

“Like everybody’s.”

“I mean, is it new? Does Mrs. Smith tell you not to put your feet on it?”

“No, she never tells me that,” Cathy said truthfully. “I want to go home now. I’m tired.”

It was while she was putting Cathy to bed that Marion heard Paul call to her from the living room in an urgent voice, “Marion, come here a minute.”

She found him standing motionless in the middle of the room, staring across the canyon at the Smiths’ place. The rectangular light of the Smiths’ television set was shining in the picture window of the room that opened onto the patio at the back of the Smiths’ house.

“Either they’ve come home within the past few minutes,” he said, “or they were there all the time. My guess is that they were home when we went over, but they didn’t want to see us, so they just doused the lights and pretended to be out. Well, it won’t work! Come on, we’re going back.”

“I can’t leave Cathy alone. She’s already got her pajamas on.”

“Put a bathrobe on her and bring her along. This has gone beyond the point of observing such niceties as correct attire.”

“Don’t you think we should wait until tomorrow?”

“Hurry up and stop arguing with me.”

Cathy, protesting that she was tired and that the Smiths weren’t home anyway, was bundled into a bathrobe and carried to the car.

“They’re home all right,” Paul said. “And by heaven they’d better answer the door this time or I’ll break it down.”

“That’s an absurd way to talk in front of a child,” Marion said coldly. “She has enough ideas without hearing—”

“Absurd is it? Wait and see.”

Cathy, listening from the back seat, smiled sleepily. She knew how to get in without breaking anything: ever since the house had been built, the real estate man who’d been trying to sell it always hid the key on a nail underneath the window box.

The second trip seemed a nightmarish imitation of the first: the same moon hung in the sky but it looked smaller now, and paler. The scent of pittosporum was funereally sweet, and the hollow sound of the chimes from inside the house was like the echo in an empty tomb.

“They must be crazy to think they can get away with a trick like this twice in one night,” Paul shouted. “Come on, we’re going around to the back.”

Marion looked a little frightened. “I don’t like trespassing on someone else’s property.”

“They trespassed on our property first.”

He glanced down at Cathy. Her eyes were half closed and her face was pearly in the moonlight. He pressed her hand to reassure her that everything was going to be all right and that his anger wasn’t directed at her, but she drew away from him and started down the path that led to the back of the house.

Paul clicked on his flashlight and followed her, moving slowly along the unfamiliar terrain. By the time he turned the corner of the house and reached the patio, Cathy was out of sight.

“Cathy,” he called. “Where are you? Come back here!”

Marion was looking at him accusingly. “You upset her with that silly threat about breaking down the door. She’s probably on her way home through the canyon.”

“I’d better go after her.”

“She’s less likely to get hurt than you are. She knows every inch of the way. Besides, you came here to break down the doors. All right, start breaking.”

But there was no need to break down anything. The back door opened as soon as Paul rapped on it with his knuckles, and he almost fell into the room.

It was empty except for a small girl wearing a blue bathrobe that matched her eyes.

Paul said, “Cathy. Cathy, what are you doing here?”

Marion stood with her hand pressed to her mouth to stifle the scream that was rising in her throat. There were no Smiths. The people in the sports car whom Cathy had waved at were just strangers responding to the friendly greeting of a child — had Cathy seen them before, on a previous trip to town? The television set was no more than a contraption rigged up by Cathy herself — an orange crate and an old mirror that caught and reflected the rays of the moon.

In front of it Cathy was standing, facing her own image. “Hello, Mrs. Smith. Here I am, all ready to go.”

“Cathy,” Marion said in a voice that sounded torn by claws. “What do you see in that mirror?”

“It’s not a mirror. It’s a television set.”

“What... what program are you watching?”

“It’s not a program, silly. It’s real. It’s the Smiths. I’m going away with them to dance and play baseball.”

“There are no Smiths,” Paul bellowed. “Will you get that through your head? There are no Smiths!”

“Yes, there are. I see them.”

Marion knelt on the floor beside the child. “Listen to me, Cathy. This is a mirror — only a mirror. It came from Daddy’s old bureau and I had it put away in the storage room. That’s where you found it, isn’t it? And you brought it here and decided to pretend it was a television set, isn’t that right? But it’s really just a mirror, and the people in it are us — you and Mommy and Daddy.”

But even as she looked at her own reflection, Marion saw it beginning to change. She was growing younger, prettier; her hair was becoming lighter and her cotton suit was changing into a dancing dress. And beside her in the mirror, Paul was turning into a stranger, a laughing-eyed young man wearing a baseball cap.

“I’m ready to go now, Mr. Smith,” Cathy said, and suddenly all three of them, the Smiths and their little girl, began walking away in the mirror. In a few moments they were no bigger than matchsticks — and then the three of them disappeared, and there was only the moonlight in the glass.

“Cathy,” Marion cried. “Come back, Cathy! Please come back!”

Propped up against the door like a dummy, Paul imagined he could hear above his wife’s cries the mocking muted roar of a sports car.