Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

In 1987, Joyce Carol Oates made her first explicit venture into the mystery genre with a novel published under the pseudonym Rosamund Smith; but she was always one of the great masters of psychological suspense, and the following story ranks with her best...

1. The Approach of Mr. Starr

Had he stepped out of nowhere, or had he been watching her for some time, even more than he’d claimed, and for a different purpose? — she shivered to think that, yes, probably, she had many times glimpsed him in the village, or in the park, without really seeing him: him, and the long gleaming black limousine she would not have known to associate with him even had she noticed him: the man who called himself Mr. Starr.

As, each day, her eyes passed rapidly and lightly over any number of people both familiar to her and strangers, blurred as in the background of a film in which the foreground is the essential reality, the very point of the film.

She was seventeen. It was in fact the day after her birthday, a bright gusty January day, and she’d been running in the late afternoon, after school, in the park overlooking the ocean, and she’d just turned to head toward home, pausing to wipe her face, adjust her damp cotton headband, feeling the accelerated strength of her heartbeat and the pleasant ache of her leg muscles: and she glanced up, shy, surprised, and there he stood, a man she had never knowingly seen before. He was smiling at her, his smile broad and eager, hopeful, and he stood in such a way, leaning lightly on a cane, as to block her way on the path; yet tentatively too, with a gentlemanly, deferential air, so as to suggest that he meant no threat. When he spoke, his voice sounded hoarse as if from disuse. “Excuse me! — hello! Young lady! I realize that this is abrupt, and an intrusion on your privacy, but I am an artist, and I am looking for a model, and I wonder if you might be interested in posing for me? Only here, I mean, in the park — in full daylight! I am willing to pay, per hour—”

Sybil stared at the man. Like most young people she was incapable of estimating ages beyond thirty-five — this strange person might have been in his forties, or well into his fifties. His thin, lank hair was the color of antique silver — perhaps he was even older. His skin was luridly pale, grainy, and rough; he wore glasses with lenses so darkly tinted as to suggest the kind of glasses worn by the blind; his clothes were plain, dark, conservative — a tweed jacket that fitted him loosely, a shirt buttoned tight to the neck, and no tie, highly polished black leather shoes in an outmoded style. There was something hesitant, even convalescent in his manner, as if, like numerous others in this coastal Southern California town with its population of the retired, the elderly, and the infirm, he had learned by experience to carry himself with care; he could not entirely trust the earth to support him. His features were refined, but worn; subtly distorted, as if seen through wavy glass, or water.

Sybil didn’t like it that she couldn’t see the man’s eyes. Except to know that he was squinting at her, hard. The skin at the corners of his eyes was whitely puckered as if, in his time, he’d done a good deal of squinting and smiling.

Quickly, but politely, Sybil murmured, “No, thank you, I can’t.”

She was turning away, but still the man spoke, apologetically, “I realize this is a — surprise, but, you see, I don’t know how else to make inquiries. I’ve only just begun sketching in the park, and—”

“Sorry!”

Sybil turned, began to run, not hurriedly, by no means in a panic, but at her usual measured pace, her head up and her arms swinging at her sides. She was, for all that she looked younger than her seventeen years, not an easily frightened girl, and she was not frightened now; but her face burned with embarrassment. She hoped that no one in the park who knew her had been watching — Glencoe was a small town, and the high school was about a mile away. Why had that preposterous man approached her?

He was calling after her, probably waving his cane after her — she didn’t dare look back. “I’ll be here tomorrow! My name is Starr! Don’t judge me too quickly — please! I’m true to my word! My name is Starr! I’ll pay you, per hour” — and here he cited an exorbitant sum, nearly twice what Sybil made babysitting or working as a librarian’s assistant at the branch library near her home, when she could get hired.

She thought, astonished, He must be mad!

2. The Temptation

No sooner had Sybil Blake escaped from the man who called himself Starr, running up Buena Vista Boulevard to Santa Clara, up Santa Clara to Meridian, and so to home, than she began to consider that Mr. Starr’s offer was, if preposterous, very tempting. She had never modeled of course, but, in art class at the high school, some of her classmates had modeled, fully clothed, just sitting or standing about in ordinary poses, and she and others had sketched them, or tried to — it was really not so easy as it might seem, sketching the lineaments of the human figure; it was still more difficult, sketching an individual’s face. But modeling, in itself, was effortless, once you overcame the embarrassment of being stared at. It was, you might argue, a morally neutral activity.

What had Mr. Starr said — Only here, in the park. In full daylight.

I’m true to my word!

And Sybil needed money, for she was saving for college; she was hoping too to attend a summer music institute at U.C. Santa Barbara. (She was a voice student, and she’d been encouraged by her choir director at the high school to get good professional training.) Her Aunt Lora Dell Blake, with whom she lived, and had lived since the age of two years eight months, was willing to pay her way — was determined to pay her way — but Sybil felt uneasy about accepting money from Aunt Lora, who worked as a physical therapist at a medical facility in Glencoe, and whose salary, at the top of the pay structure available to her as a state employee, was still modest by California standards. Sybil reasoned that her Aunt Lora Dell could not be expected to support her forever.

A long time ago, Sybil had lost her parents, both of them together, in one single cataclysmic hour, when she’d been too young to comprehend what Death was, or was said to be. They had died in a boating accident on Lake Champlain, Sybil’s mother at the age of twenty-six, Sybil’s father at the age of thirty-one, very attractive young people, a “popular couple” as Aunt Lora spoke of them, choosing her words with care, and saying very little more. For why ask, Aunt Lora seemed to be warning Sybil, — you will only make yourself cry. As soon as she could manage the move, and as soon as Sybil was placed permanently in her care, Aunt Lora had come to California, to this sun-washed coastal town midway between Santa Monica and Santa Barbara. Glencoe was less conspicuously affluent than either of these towns, but, with its palm-lined streets, its sunny placidity, and its openness to the ocean, it was the very antithesis, as Aunt Lora said, of Wellington, Vermont, where the Blakes had lived for generations. (After their move to California, Lora Dell Blake had formally adopted Sybil as her child: thus Sybil’s name was Blake, as her mother’s had been. If asked what her father’s name had been, Sybil would have had to think before recalling, dimly, “Conte.”) Aunt Lora spoke so negatively of New England in general and Vermont in particular, Sybil felt no nostalgia for it; she had no sentimental desire to visit her birthplace, not even to see her parents’ graves. From Aunt Lora’s stories, Sybil had the idea that Vermont was damp and cold twelve months of the year, and frigidly, impossibly cold in winter; its wooded mountains were unlike the beautiful snow-capped mountains of the West, and cast shadows upon its small, cramped, depopulated, and impoverished old towns. Aunt Lora, a transplanted New Englander, was vehement in her praise of California — “With the Pacific Ocean to the west,” she said, “it’s like a room with one wall missing. Your instinct is to look out, not back; and it’s a good instinct.”

Lora Dell Blake was the sort of person who delivers statements with an air of inviting contradiction. But, tall, rangy, restless, belligerent, she was not the sort of person most people wanted to contradict.

Indeed, Aunt Lora had never encouraged Sybil to ask questions about her dead parents, or about the tragic accident that had killed them; if she had photographs, snapshots, mementos of life back in Wellington, Vermont, they were safely hidden away, and Sybil had not seen them. “It would just be too painful,” she told Sybil, “—for us both.” The remark was both a plea and a warning.

Of course, Sybil avoided the subject.

She prepared carefully chosen words, should anyone happen to ask her why she was living with her aunt, and not her parents; or, at least, one of her parents. But — this was Southern California, and very few of Sybil’s classmates were living with the set of parents with whom they’d begun. No one asked.

An orphan? — I’m not an orphan, Sybil would say. I was never an orphan because my Aunt Lora was always there.

I was two years old when it happened, the accident.

No, I don’t remember.

But no one asked.

Sybil told her Aunt Lora nothing about the man in the park — the man who called himself Starr — she’d put him out of her mind entirely and yet, in bed that night, drifting into sleep, she found herself thinking suddenly of him, and seeing him again, vividly. That silver hair, those gleaming black shoes. His eyes hidden behind dark glasses. How tempting, his offer! — though there was no question of Sybil accepting it. Absolutely not.

Still, Mr. Starr seemed harmless. Well-intentioned. An eccentric, of course, but interesting. She supposed he had money, if he could offer her so much to model for him. There was something not contemporary about him. The set of his head and shoulders. That air about him of gentlemanly reserve, courtesy — even as he’d made his outlandish request. In Glencoe, in the past several years, there had been a visible increase in homeless persons and derelicts, especially in the oceanside park, but Mr. Starr was certainly not one of these.

Then Sybil realized, as if a door, hitherto locked, had swung open of its own accord, that she’d seen Mr. Starr before... somewhere. In the park, where she ran most afternoons for an hour? In downtown Glencoe? On the street? — in the public library? In the vicinity of Glencoe Senior High School? — in the school itself, in the auditorium? Sybil summoned up a memory as if by an act of physical exertion: the school choir, of which she was a member, had been rehearsing Handel’s Messiah the previous month for their annual Christmas pageant, and Sybil had sung her solo part, a demanding part for contralto voice, and the choir director had praised her in front of the others... and she’d seemed to see, dimly, a man, a stranger, seated at the very rear of the auditorium, his features distinct but his grey hair striking, and wasn’t this man miming applause, clapping silently? There. At the rear, on the aisle. It frequently happened that visitors dropped by rehearsals — parents or relatives of choir members, colleagues of the music director. So no one took special notice of the stranger sitting unobtrusively at the rear of the auditorium. He wore dark, conservative clothes of the kind to attract no attention, and dark glasses hid his eyes. But there he was. For Sybil Blake. He’d come for Sybil. But, at the time, Sybil had not seen.

Nor had she seen the man leave. Slipping quietly out of his seat, walking with a just perceptible limp, leaning on his cane.

3. The Proposition

Sybil had no intention of seeking out Mr. Starr, nor even of looking around for him, but, the following afternoon, as she was headed home after her run, there, suddenly, the man was — taller than she recalled, looming large, his dark glasses winking in the sunlight, and his pale lips stretched in a tentative smile. He wore his clothes of the previous day except he’d set on his head a sporty plaid golfing cap that gave him a rakish, yet wistful, air, and he’d tied, as if in haste, a rumpled cream-colored silk scarf around his neck. He was standing on the path in approximately the same place as before, and leaning on his cane; on a bench close by were what appeared to be his art supplies, in a canvas duffel bag of the sort students carried. “Why, hello!” he said, shyly but eagerly, “—I didn’t dare hope you would come back, but—” his smile widened as if on the verge of desperation, the puckered skin at the corners of his eyes tightened, “—I hoped.”

After running, Sybil always felt good: strength flowed into her legs, arms, lungs. She was a delicate-boned girl, since infancy prone to respiratory infections, but such vigorous exercise had made her strong in recent years; and with physical confidence had come a growing confidence in herself. She laughed, lightly, at this strange man’s words, and merely shrugged, and said, “Well — this is my park, after all.” Mr. Starr nodded eagerly, as if any response from her, any words at all, was of enormous interest. “Yes, yes,” he said, “—I can see that. Do you live close by?”

Sybil shrugged. It was none of his business, was it, where she lived? “Maybe,” she said.

“And your — name?” He stared at her, hopefully, adjusting his glasses more firmly on his nose. “—My name is Starr.”

“My name is — Blake.”

Mr. Starr blinked, and smiled, as if uncertain whether this might be a joke. “ ‘Blake’—? An unusual name for a girl,” he said.

Sybil laughed again, feeling her face heat. She decided not to correct the misunderstanding.

Today, prepared for the encounter, having anticipated it for hours, Sybil was distinctly less uneasy than she’d been the day before: the man had a business proposition to make to her, that was all. And the park was an open, public, safe place, as familiar to her as the small neat yard of her Aunt Lora’s house.

So, when Mr. Starr repeated his offer, Sybil said, yes, she was interested after all; she did need money, she was saving for college. “For college? — really? So young?” Mr. Starr said, with an air of surprise. Sybil shrugged, as if the remark didn’t require any reply. “I suppose, here in California, young people grow up quickly,” Mr. Starr said. He’d gone to get his sketch-pad, to show Sybil his work, and Sybil turned the pages with polite interest, as Mr. Starr chattered. He was, he said, an “amateur artist” — the very epitome of the “amateur” — with no delusions regarding his talent, but a strong belief that the world is redeemed by art — “And the world, you know, being profane, and steeped in wickedness, requires constant, ceaseless redemption.” He believed that the artist “bears witness” to this fact; and that art can be a “conduit of emotion” where the heart is empty. Sybil, leafing through the sketches, paid little attention to Mr. Starr’s tumble of words; she was struck by the feathery, uncertain, somehow worshipful detail in the drawings, which, to her eye, were not so bad as she’d expected, though by no means of professional quality. As she looked at them, Mr. Starr came to look over her shoulder, embarrassed, and excited, his shadow falling over the pages. The ocean, the waves, the wide rippled beach as seen from the bluff — palm trees, hibiscus, flowers — a World War II memorial in the park — mothers with young children — solitary figures huddled on park benches — bicyclists — joggers — several pages of joggers: Mr. Starr’s work was ordinary, even commonplace, but certainly earnest. Sybil saw herself amid the joggers, or a figure she guessed must be herself, a young girl with shoulder-length dark hair held off her face by a headband, in running pants and a sweatshirt, caught in mid-stride, legs and swinging arms caught in motion — it was herself, but so clumsily executed, the profile so smudged, no one would have known. Still, Sybil felt her face grow warmer, and she sensed Mr. Starr’s anticipation like a withheld breath.

Sybil did not think it quite right for her, aged seventeen, to pass judgment on the talent of a middle-aged man, so she merely murmured something vague and polite and positive; and Mr. Starr, taking the sketch pad from her, said, “Oh, I know — I’m not very good, yet. But I propose to try.” He smiled at her, and took out a freshly laundered white handkerchief, and dabbed at his forehead, and said, “Do you have any questions about posing for me, or shall we begin? — we’ll have at least three hours of daylight, today.”

“Three hours!” Sybil exclaimed. “That long?”

“If you get uncomfortable,” Mr. Starr said quickly, “—we’ll simply stop, wherever we are.” Seeing that Sybil was frowning, he added, eagerly, “We’ll take breaks every now and then, I promise. And, and—” seeing that Sybil was still indecisive, “—I’ll pay you for a full hour’s fee, for any part of an hour.” Still Sybil stood, wondering if, after all, she should be agreeing to this, without her Aunt Lora, or anyone, knowing: wasn’t there something just faintly odd about Mr. Starr, and about his willingness to pay her so much for doing so little? And wasn’t there something troubling (however flattering) about his particular interest in her? Assuming Sybil was correct, and he’d been watching her... aware of her... for at least a month. “I’ll be happy to pay you in advance, Blake.”

The name Blake sounded very odd in this stranger’s mouth. Sybil had never before been called by her last name only.

Sybil laughed nervously, and said, “You don’t have to pay me in advance — thanks!”

So Sybil Blake, against her better judgment, became a model, for Mr. Starr.

And, despite her self-consciousness, and her intermittent sense that there was something ludicrous in the enterprise, as about Mr. Starr’s intense, fussy, self-important manner as he sketched her (he was a perfectionist, or wanted to give that impression: crumpling a half-dozen sheets of paper, breaking out new charcoal sticks, before he began a sketch that pleased him), the initial session was easy, effortless. “What I want to capture,” Mr. Starr said, “—is, beyond your beautiful profile, Blake, — and you are a beautiful child! — the brooding quality of the ocean. That look to it, d’you see? — of it having consciousness of a kind, actually thinking. Yes, brooding!”

Sybil, squinting down at the white-capped waves, the rhythmic crashing surf, the occasional surfers riding their boards with their remarkable amphibian dexterity, thought that the ocean was anything but brooding.

“Why are you smiling, Blake?” Mr. Starr asked, pausing. “Is something funny? — am I funny?”

Quickly Sybil said, “Oh, no, Mr. Starr, of course not.”

“But I am, I’m sure,” he said happily. “And if you find me so, please do laugh!”

Sybil found herself laughing, as if rough fingers were tickling her. She thought of how it might have been... had she had a father, and a mother: her own family, as she’d been meant to have.

Mr. Starr was squatting now on the grass close by and peering up at Sybil with an expression of extreme concentration. The charcoal stick in his fingers moved rapidly. “The ability to laugh,” he said, “is the ability to live — the two are synonymous. You’re too young to understand that right now, but one day you will.” Sybil shrugged, wiping her eyes. Mr. Starr was talking grandly. “The world is fallen and profane — the opposite of ‘sacred,’ you know, is ‘profane.’ It requires ceaseless vigilance — ceaseless redemption. The artist is one who redeems by restoring the world’s innocence, where he can. The artist gives, but does not take away, nor even supplant.”

Sybil said, skeptically, “But you want to make money with your drawings, don’t you?”

Mr. Starr seemed genuinely shocked. “Oh, my, no. Adamantly, no.”

Sybil persisted, “Well, most people would. I mean, most people need to. If they have any talent” — she was speaking with surprising bluntness, an almost childlike audacity — “they need to sell it, somehow.”

As if he’d been caught out in a crime, Mr. Starr began to stammer apologetically, “It’s true, Blake, I... I am not like most people, I suppose. I’ve inherited some money — not a fortune, but enough to live on comfortably for the rest of my life. I’ve been traveling abroad,” he said, vaguely, “—and, in my absence, interest accumulated.”

Sybil asked doubtfully, “You don’t have any regular profession?”

Mr. Starr laughed, startled. Up close, his teeth were chunky and irregular, slightly stained, like aged ivory piano keys. “But, dear child,” he said, “this is my profession — ‘redeeming the world’!”

And he fell to sketching Sybil with renewed enthusiasm.

Minutes passed. Long minutes. Sybil felt a mild ache between her shoulder blades. A mild uneasiness in her chest. Mr. Starr is mad. Is Mr. Starr ‘mad’? Behind her, on the path, people were passing by, there were joggers, bicyclists — Mr. Starr, lost in a trance of concentration, paid them not the slightest heed. Sybil wondered if anyone knew her, and was taking note of this peculiar event. Or was she, herself, making too much of it? She decided she would tell her Aunt Lora about Mr. Starr that evening, tell Aunt Lora frankly how much he was paying her. She both respected and feared her aunt’s judgment: in Sybil’s imagination, in that unexamined sphere of being we call the imagination, Lora Dell Blake had acquired the authority of both Sybil’s deceased parents.

Yes, she would tell Aunt Lora.

After only an hour and forty minutes, when Sybil appeared to be growing restless and sighed several times, unconsciously, Mr. Starr suddenly declared the session over. He had, he said, three promising sketches, and he didn’t want to exhaust her, or himself. She was coming back tomorrow—?

“I don’t know,” Sybil said. “Maybe.”

Sybil protested, though not very adamantly, when Mr. Starr paid her the full amount, for three hours’ modeling. He paid her in cash, out of his wallet — an expensive kidskin wallet brimming with bills. Sybil thanked him, deeply embarrassed, and eager to escape. Oh, there was something shameful about the transaction!

Up close, she was able — almost — to see Mr. Starr’s eyes through the dark-tinted lenses of his glasses. Some delicacy of tact made her glance away quickly but she had an impression of kindness — gentleness.

Sybil took the money, and put it in her pocket, and turned, to hurry away. With no mind for who might hear him, Mr. Starr called after her, “You see, Blake? — Starr is true to his word. Always!”

4. Is the Omission of Truth a Lie, or Only an Omission?

“Well! — tell me how things went with you today, Sybil!” Lora Dell Blake said, with such an air of bemused exasperation, Sybil understood that, as so often, Aunt Lora had something to say that really couldn’t wait — her work at the Glencoe Medical Center provided her with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of comical and outrageous anecdotes. So, deferring to Aunt Lora, as they prepared supper together as usual, and sat down to eat it, Sybil was content to listen, and to laugh.

For it was funny, if outrageous too — the latest episode in the ongoing folly at the Medical Center.

Lora Dell Blake, in her late forties, was a tall, lanky, restless woman; with close-cropped greying hair; sand-colored eyes and skin; a generous spirit, but a habit of sarcasm. Though she claimed to love Southern California — “You don’t know what paradise is, unless you’re from somewhere else” — she seemed in fact an awkwardly transplanted New Englander, with expectations and a sense of personal integrity, or intransigence, quite out of place here. She was fond of saying she did not suffer fools gladly, and so it was. Overqualified for her position at the Glencoe Medical Center, she’d had no luck in finding work elsewhere, partly because she did not want to leave Glencoe and “uproot” Sybil while Sybil was still in high school; and partly because her interviews were invariably disasters — Lora Dell Blake was incapable of being, or even seeming, docile, tractable, “feminine,” hypocritical.

Lora was not Sybil’s sole living relative — there were Blakes, and Contes, back in Vermont — but Lora had discouraged visitors to the small stucco bungalow on Meridian Street, in Glencoe, California; she had not in fact troubled to reply to letters or cards since, having been granted custody of her younger sister’s daughter, at the time of what she called “the tragedy,” she’d picked up and moved across the continent, to a part of the country she knew nothing about — “My intention is to erase the past, for the child’s sake,” she said, “and to start a new life.”

And: “For the child, for poor little Sybil — I would make any sacrifice.”

Sybil, who loved her aunt very much, had the vague idea that there had been, many years ago, protests, queries, telephone calls — but that Aunt Lora had dealt with them all, and really had made a new and “uncomplicated” life for them. Aunt Lora was one of those personalities, already strong, that is strengthened, and empowered, by being challenged; she seemed to take an actual zest in confrontation, whether with her own relatives or her employers at the Medical Center — anyone who presumed to tell her what to do. She was especially protective of Sybil, since, as she often said, they had no one but each other.

Which was true. Aunt Lora had seen to that.

Though Sybil had been adopted by her aunt, there was never any pretense that she was anything but Lora’s niece, not her daughter. Nor did most people, seeing the two together, noting their physical dissimilarities, make that mistake.

So it happened that Sybil Blake grew up knowing virtually nothing about her Vermont background except its general tragic outline: her knowledge of her mother and father, the precise circumstances of their deaths, was as vague and unexamined in her consciousness as a childhood fairy tale. For whenever, as a little girl, Sybil would ask her aunt about these things, Aunt Lora responded with hurt, or alarm, or reproach, or, most disturbingly, anxiety. Her eyes might flood with tears — Aunt Lora, who never cried. She might take Sybil’s hands in both her own, and squeeze them tightly, and looking Sybil in the eyes, say, in a quiet, commanding voice, “But, darling, you don’t want to know.”

So too, that evening, when, for some reason, Sybil brought up the subject, asking Aunt Lora how, again, exactly, had her parents died, Aunt Lora looked at her in surprise; and, for a long moment, rummaging in the pockets of her shirt for a pack of cigarettes that wasn’t there (Aunt Lora had given up smoking the previous month, for perhaps the fifth time), it seemed almost that Lora herself did not remember.

“Sybil, honey — why are you asking? I mean, why now?”

“I don’t know,” Sybil said evasively. “I guess — I’m just asking.”

“Nothing happened to you at school, did it?”

Sybil could not see how this question related to her own, but she said, politely, “No, Aunt Lora. Of course not.”

“It’s just that out of nowhere — I can’t help but wonder why,” Aunt Lora said, frowning, “—you should ask.”

Aunt Lora regarded Sybil with worried eyes: a look of such suffocating familiarity that, for a moment, Sybil felt as if a band were tightening around her chest, making it impossible to breathe. Why is my wanting to know a test of my love for you? — why do you do this, Aunt Lora, every time? She said, an edge of anger to her voice, “I was seventeen years old last week, Aunt Lora. I’m not a child any longer.”

Aunt Lora laughed, startled. “Certainly you’re not a child!”

Aunt Lora then sighed, and, in a characteristic gesture, meaning both impatience and a dutiful desire to please, ran both hands rapidly through her hair and began to speak. She assured Sybil that there was little to know, really. The accident — the tragedy — had happened so long ago. “Your mother, Melanie, was twenty-six years old at the time — a beautiful sweet-natured young woman, with eyes like yours, cheekbones like yours, pale wavy hair. Your father, George Conte, was thirty-one years old — a promising young lawyer, in his father’s firm — an attractive, ambitious man—” And here as in the past Aunt Lora paused, as if in the very act of summoning up this long-dead couple, she had forgotten them; and was simply repeating a story, a family tale, like one of the more extreme of her tales of the Glencoe Medical Center, worn smooth by countless tellings.

“A boating accident — Fourth of July—” Sybil coaxed, “—and I was with you, and—”

“You were with me, and Grandma, at the cottage — you were just a little girl!” Aunt Lora said, blinking tears from her eyes, “—and it was almost dusk, and time for the fireworks to start. Mommy and Daddy were out in Daddy’s speedboat — they’d been across the lake, at the Club—”

“And they started back across the lake — Lake Champlain—”

“—Lake Champlain, of course: it’s beautiful, but treacherous, if a storm comes up suddenly—”

“And Daddy was at the controls of the boat—”

“—and, somehow, they capsized. And drowned. A rescue boat went out immediately, but it was too late.” Aunt Lora’s mouth turned hard. Her eyes glistening with tears, as if defiantly. “They drowned.”

Sybil’s heart was beating painfully. She was certain there must be more, yet she herself could remember nothing — not even herself, that two-year-old child, waiting for Mommy and Daddy who were never to arrive. Her memory of her mother and father was vague, dim, featureless, like a dream that, even as it seems about to drift into consciousness, retreats farther into darkness. She said, in a whisper, “It was an accident. No one was to blame.”

Aunt Lora chose her words with care. “No one was to blame.”

There was a pause. Sybil looked at her aunt, who was not now looking at her. How lined, even leathery, the older woman’s face was getting! — all her life she’d been reckless, indifferent, about sun, wind, weather, and now, in her late forties, she might have been a decade older. Sybil said, tentatively, “No one was to blame—?”

“Well, if you must know,” Aunt Lora said. “—there was evidence he’d been drinking. They’d been drinking. At the Club.”

Sybil could not have been more shocked had Aunt Lora reached over and pinched the back of her hand. “Drinking—?” She had never heard this part of the story before.

Aunt Lora continued, grimly, “But not enough, probably, to have made a difference.” Again she paused. She was not looking at Sybil. “Probably.”

Sybil, stunned, could not think of anything further to say, or to ask.

Aunt Lora was on her feet, pacing. Her close-cropped hair was disheveled and her manner fiercely contentious, as if she were arguing her case before an invisible audience as Sybil looked on. “What fools! I tried to tell her! ‘Popular’ couple — ‘attractive’ couple — lots of friends — too many friends! That Goddamned Champlain Club, where everyone drank too much! All that money, and privilege! And what good did it do! She — Melanie — so proud of being asked to join — proud of marrying him — throwing her life away! That’s what it came to, in the end. I’d warned her it was dangerous — playing with fire — but would she listen? Would either of them listen? To Lora? — to me? When you’re that age, so ignorant, you think you will live forever — you can throw your life away—”

Sybil felt ill, suddenly. She walked swiftly out of the room, shut the door to her own room, stood in the dark, beginning to cry.

So that was it, the secret. The tawdry little secret — drinking, drunkenness — behind the “tragedy.”

With characteristic tact, Aunt Lora did not knock on Sybil’s door, but left her alone for the remainder of the night.

Only after Sybil was in bed, and the house darkened, did she realize she’d forgotten to tell her aunt about Mr. Starr — he’d slipped her mind entirely. And the money he’d pressed into her hand, now in her bureau drawer, rolled up neatly beneath her underwear, as if hidden...

Sybil thought, guiltily, I can tell her tomorrow.

5. The Hearse

Crouched in front of Sybil Blake, eagerly sketching her likeness, Mr. Starr was saying, in a quick, rapturous voice, “Yes, yes, like that! — yes! Your face uplifted to the sun like a blossoming flower! Just so!” And: “There are only two or three eternal questions, Blake, which, like the surf, repeat themselves endlessly: ‘Why are we here?’ — ‘Where have we come from, and where are we going?’ — ‘Is there purpose to the Universe, or merely chance?’ These questions the artist seems to express in the images he knows.” And: “Dear child, I wish you would tell me about yourself. Just a little!”

As if, in the night, some changes had come upon her, some new resolve, Sybil had fewer misgivings about modeling for Mr. Starr this afternoon. It was as if they knew each other well, somehow: Sybil was reasonably certain that Mr. Starr was not a sexual pervert, nor even a madman of a more conventional sort; she’d glimpsed his sketches of her, which were fussy, overworked, and smudged, but not bad as likenesses. The man’s murmurous chatter was comforting in a way, hypnotic as the surf, no longer quite so embarrassing — for he talked, most of the time, not with her but at her, and there was no need to reply. In a way, Mr. Starr reminded Sybil of her Aunt Lora, when she launched into one of her comical anecdotes about the Glencoe Medical Center. Aunt Lora was more entertaining than Mr. Starr, but Mr. Starr was more idealistic.

His optimism was simpleminded, maybe. But it was optimistic.

For this second modeling session, Mr. Starr had taken Sybil to a corner of the park where they were unlikely to be disturbed. He’d asked her to remove her headband, and to sit on a bench with her head dropping back, her eyes partly shut, her face uplifted to the sun — an uncomfortable pose at first, until, lulled by the crashing surf below, and Mr. Starr’s monologue, Sybil began to feel oddly peaceful, floating.

Yes, in the night some change had come upon her. She could not comprehend its dimensions, nor even its tone. She’d fallen asleep crying bitterly but had awakened feeling — what? Vulnerable, somehow. And wanting to be so. Uplifted. Like a blossoming flower.

That morning, Sybil had forgotten another time to tell her Aunt Lora about Mr. Starr, and the money she was making — such a generous amount, and for so little effort! She shrank from considering how her aunt might respond, for her aunt was mistrustful of strangers, and particularly of men... Sybil reasoned that, when she did tell Aunt Lora, that evening, or tomorrow morning, she would make her understand that there was something kindly and trusting and almost childlike about Mr. Starr. You could laugh at him, but laughter was somehow inappropriate.

As if, though middle-aged, he had been away somewhere, sequestered, protected, out of the adult world. Innocent and, himself, vulnerable.

Today too he’d eagerly offered to pay Sybil in advance for modeling, and, another time, Sybil had declined. She would not have wanted to tell Mr. Starr that, were she paid in advance, she might be tempted to cut the session even shorter than otherwise.

Mr. Starr was saying, hesitantly, “Blake? — can you tell me about—” and here he paused, as if drawing a random, inspired notion out of nowhere “—your mother?”

Sybil hadn’t been paying close attention to Mr. Starr. Now she opened her eyes and looked directly at him.

Mr. Starr was perhaps not so old as she’d originally thought, nor as old as he behaved. His face was a handsome face, but oddly roughened — the skin like sandpaper. Very sallow, sickly pale. A faint scar on his forehead above his left eye, the shape of a fish hook, or a question mark. Or was it a birthmark? — or, even less romantically, some sort of skin blemish? Maybe his roughened, pitted skin was the result of teenaged acne, nothing more.

His tentative smile bared chunky damp teeth.

Today Mr. Starr was bareheaded, and his thin, fine, uncannily silver hair was stirred by the wind. He wore plain, nondescript clothes, a shirt too large for him, a khaki-colored jacket or smock with rolled-up sleeves. At close range, Sybil could see his eyes through the tinted lenses of his glasses: they were small, deep-set, intelligent, glistening. The skin beneath was pouched and shadowed, as if bruised.

Sybil shivered, peering so directly into Mr. Starr’s eyes. As into another’s soul, when she was unprepared.

Sybil swallowed, and said, slowly, “My mother is... not living.”

A curious way of speaking! — for why not say, candidly, in normal usage, My mother is dead.

For a long painful moment Sybil’s words hovered in the air between them; as if Mr. Starr, discountenanced by his own blunder, seemed not to want to hear.

He said, quickly, apologetically, “Oh — I see. I’m sorry.”

Sybil had been posing in the sun, warmly mesmerized by the sun, the surf, Mr. Starr’s voice, and now, as if wakened from a sleep of which she had not been conscious, she felt as if she’d been touched — prodded into wakefulness. She saw, upside-down, the fussy smudged sketch Mr. Starr had been doing of her, saw his charcoal stick poised above the stiff white paper in an attitude of chagrin. She laughed, and wiped at her eyes, and said, “It happened a long time ago. I never think of it, really.”

Mr. Starr’s expression was wary, complex. He asked, “And so — do you — live with your — father?” The words seemed oddly forced.

“No, I don’t. And I don’t want to talk about this any more, Mr. Starr, if it’s all right with you.”

Sybil spoke pleadingly, yet with an air of finality.

“Then — we won’t! We won’t! We certainly won’t!” Mr. Starr said quickly. And fell to sketching again, his face creased in concentration.

And so the remainder of the session passed in silence.

Again, as soon as Sybil evinced signs of restlessness, Mr. Starr declared she could stop for the day — he didn’t want to exhaust her, or himself.

Sybil rubbed her neck, which ached mildly; she stretched her arms, her legs. Her skin felt slightly sun- or wind-burnt and her eyes felt seared, as if she’d been staring directly into the sun. Or had she been crying? — she couldn’t remember.

Again, Mr. Starr paid Sybil in cash, out of his kidskin wallet brimming with bills. His hand shook just visibly as he pressed the money into Sybil’s. (Embarrassed, Sybil folded the bills quickly and put them in her pocket. Later, at home, she would discover that Mr. Starr had given her ten dollars too much: a bonus, for almost making her cry?) Though it was clear that Sybil was eager to get away, Mr. Starr walked with her up the slope in the direction of the Boulevard, limping, leaning on his cane, but keeping a brisk pace. He asked if Sybil — of course, he called her Blake: “dear Blake” — would like to have some refreshment with him in a café nearby? — and when Sybil declined, murmured, “Yes, yes, I understand — I suppose.” He then asked if Sybil would return the following day, and when Sybil did not say no, added that, if she did, he would like to increase her hourly fee in exchange for asking of her a slightly different sort of modeling — “A slightly modified sort of modeling, here in the park, or perhaps down on the beach, in full daylight of course, as before, and yet, in its way—” Mr. Starr paused nervously, seeking the right word, “—experimental.”

Sybil asked doubtfully, “ ‘Experimental’—?”

“I’m prepared to increase your fee, Blake, by half.”

“What kind of ‘experimental’?”

“Emotion.”

“What?”

“Emotion. Memory. Interiority.”

Now that they were emerging from the park, and more likely to be seen, Sybil was glancing uneasily about: she dreaded seeing someone from school, or, worse yet, a friend of her aunt’s. Mr. Starr gestured as he spoke, and seemed more than ordinarily excited. “—‘Interiority.’ That which is hidden to the outer eye. I’ll tell you in more detail tomorrow, Blake,” he said. “You will meet me here tomorrow?”

Sybil murmured, “I don’t know, Mr. Starr.”

“Oh, but you must! — please.”

Sybil felt a tug of sympathy for Mr. Starr. He was kind, and courteous, and gentlemanly; and, certainly, very generous. She could not imagine his life except to see him as a lonely, eccentric man without friends. Uncomfortable as she was in his presence, she yet wondered if perhaps she was exaggerating his eccentricity: what would a neutral observer make of the tall limping figure, the cane, the canvas duffel bag, the polished black leather shoes that reminded her of a funeral, the fine thin beautiful silver hair, the dark glasses that winked in the sunshine...? Would such an observer, seeing Sybil Blake and Mr. Starr together, give them a second glance?

“Look,” Sybil said, pointing, “—a hearse.”

At a curb close by there was a long sleekly black car with dark-tinted, impenetrable windows. Mr. Starr laughed, and said, embarrassed, “I’m afraid, Blake, that isn’t a hearse, you know — it’s my car.”

“Your car?”

“Yes. I’m afraid so.”

Now Sybil could see that the vehicle was a limousine, idling at the curb. Behind the wheel was a youngish driver with a visored cap on his head; in profile, he appeared Oriental. Sybil stared, amazed. So Mr. Starr was wealthy, indeed.

He was saying, apologetically, yet with a kind of boyish pleasure, “I don’t drive, myself, you see! — a further handicap. I did, once, long ago, but — circumstances intervened.” Sybil was thinking that she often saw chauffeur-driven limousines in Glencoe, but she’d never known anyone who owned one before. Mr. Starr said, “Blake, may I give you a ride home? — I’d be delighted, of course.”

Sybil laughed, as if she’d been tickled, hard, in the ribs.

“A ride? In that?” she asked.

“No trouble! Absolutely!” Mr. Starr limped to the rear door and opened it with a flourish, before the driver could get out to open it for him. He squinted back at Sybil, smiling hopefully. “It’s the least I can do for you, after our exhausting session.”

Sybil was smiling, staring into the shadowy interior of the car. The uniformed driver had climbed out, and stood, not quite knowing what to do, watching. He was a Filipino, perhaps, not young after all but with a small, wizened face; he wore white gloves. He stood very straight and silent, watching Sybil.

There was a moment when it seemed, yes, Sybil was going to accept Mr. Starr’s offer, and climb into the rear of the long sleekly black limousine, so that Mr. Starr could climb in behind her, and shut the door upon them both; but, then, for some reason she could not have named — it might have been the smiling intensity with which Mr. Starr was looking at her, or the rigid posture of the white-gloved driver — she changed her mind and called out, “No thanks!”

Mr. Starr was disappointed, and Mr. Starr was hurt — you could see it in his downturned mouth. But he said, cheerfully, “Oh, I quite understand, Blake — I am a stranger, after all. It’s better to be prudent, of course. But, my dear, I will see you tomorrow—?”

Sybil shouted, “Maybe!” and ran across the street.

6. The Face

She stayed away from the park. Because I want to, because I can.

Thursday, in any case, was her voice lesson after school. Friday, choir rehearsal; then an evening with friends. On Saturday morning she went jogging, not in the oceanside park but in another park, miles away, where Mr. Starr could not have known to look for her. And, on Sunday, Aunt Lora drove them to Los Angeles for a belated birthday celebration, for Sybil — an art exhibit, a dinner, a play.

So, you see, I can do it. I don’t need your money, or you.

Since the evening when Aunt Lora had told Sybil about her parents’ boating accident — that it might have been caused by drinking — neither Sybil nor her aunt had cared to bring up the subject again. Sybil shuddered to think of it. She felt properly chastised, for her curiosity.

Why do you want to know? — you will only make yourself cry.

Sybil had never gotten around to telling Aunt Lora about Mr. Starr, nor about her modeling. Even during their long Sunday together. Not a word about her cache of money, hidden away in a bureau drawer.

Money for what? — for summer school, for college.

For the future.

Aunt Lora was not the sort of person to spy on a member of her household but she observed Sybil closely, with her trained clinician’s eye. “Sybil, you’ve been very quiet lately — there’s nothing wrong, I hope?” she asked, and Sybil said quickly, nervously, “Oh, no! What could be wrong?”

She was feeling guilty about keeping a secret from Aunt Lora, and she was feeling quite guilty about staying away from Mr. Starr.

Two adults. Like twin poles. Of course, Mr. Starr was really a stranger — he did not exist in Sybil Blake’s life, at all. Why did it feel to her, so strangely, that he did?

Days passed, and instead of forgetting Mr. Starr, and strengthening her resolve not to model for him, Sybil seemed to see the man, in her mind’s eye, ever more clearly. She could not understand why he seemed attracted to her, she was convinced it was not a sexual attraction but something purer, more spiritual, and yet — why? Why her?

Why had he visited her high school, and sat in upon a choir rehearsal? Had he known she would be there? — or was it simply accident?

She shuddered to think of what Aunt Lora would make of this, if she knew. If news of Mr. Starr got back to her.

Mr. Starr’s face floated before her. Its pallor, its sorrow. That look of convalescence. Waiting. The dark glasses. The hopeful smile. One night, waking from a particularly vivid, disturbing dream, Sybil thought for a confused moment that she’d seen Mr. Starr in the room — it hadn’t been just a dream! How wounded he looked, puzzled, hurt. Come with me, Sybil. Hurry. Now. It’s been so long. He’d been waiting for her in the park for days, limping, the duffel bag slung over his shoulder, glancing up hopefully at every passing stranger.

Behind him, the elegantly gleaming black limousine, larger than Sybil remembered; and driverless.

Sybil? — Sybil? Mr. Starr called, impatiently.

As if, all along, he’d known her real name. And she had known he’d known.

7. The Experiment

So, Monday afternoon, Sybil Blake found herself back in the park, modeling for Mr. Starr.

Seeing him in the park, so obviously awaiting her, Sybil had felt almost apologetic. Not that he greeted her with any measure of reproach (though his face was drawn and sallow, as if he hadn’t been sleeping well, nor even questioned her mutely with his eyes Where have you been? Certainly not! He smiled happily when he saw her, limping in her direction like a doting father, seemingly determined not to acknowledge her absence of the past four days. Sybil called out, “Hello, Mr. Starr!” and felt, yes, so strangely, as if things were once again right.

“How lovely! — and the day is so fine! — ‘in full daylight’ — as I promised!” Mr. Starr cried.

Sybil had been jogging for forty minutes, and felt very good, strengthened. She removed her damp yellow headband and stuffed it in her pocket. When Mr. Starr repeated the terms of his proposition of the previous week, restating the higher fee, Sybil agreed at once, for of course that was why she’d come. How, in all reasonableness, could she resist?

Mr. Starr took some time before deciding upon a place for Sybil to pose — “It must be ideal, a synthesis of poetry and practicality.” Finally, he chose a partly crumbling stone ledge overlooking the beach in a remote corner of the park. He asked Sybil to lean against the ledge, gazing out at the ocean. Her hands pressed flat against the top of the ledge, her head uplifted as much as possible, within comfort. “But today, dear Blake, I am going to record not just the surface likeness of a lovely young girl,” he said, “—but memory, and emotion, coursing through her.”

Sybil took the position readily enough. So invigorated did she feel from her exercise, and so happy to be back again in her role as model, she smiled out at the ocean as at an old friend. “What kind of memory and emotion, Mr. Starr?” she asked.

Mr. Starr eagerly took up his sketch pad and a fresh stick of charcoal. It was a mild day, the sky placid and featureless, though, up the coast, in the direction of Big Sur, massive thunderclouds were gathering. The surf was high, the waves powerful, hypnotic. One hundred yards below, young men in surfing gear, carrying their boards lightly as if they were made of papier-mâché, prepared to enter the water.

Mr. Starr cleared his throat, and said, almost shyly, “Your mother, dear Blake. Tell me all you know — all you can remember — about your mother.”

“My mother?”

Sybil winced and would have broken her position, except Mr. Starr put out a quick hand, to steady her. It was the first time he had touched her in quite that way. He said gently, “I realize it’s a painful subject, Blake, but — will you try?”

Sybil said, “No. I don’t want to.”

“You won’t, then?”

“I can’t.”

“But why can’t you, dear? — any memory of your mother would do.”

“No.”

Sybil saw that Mr. Starr was quickly sketching her, or trying to — his hand shook. She wanted to reach out to snatch the charcoal stick from him and snap it in two. How dare he! God damn him!

“Yes, yes,” Mr. Starr said hurriedly, an odd, elated look on his face, as if, studying her so intently, he was not seeing her at all, “—yes, dear, like that. Any memory — any! So long as it’s yours.”

Sybil said, “Whose else would it be?” She laughed, and was surprised that her laughter sounded like sobbing.

“Why, many times innocent children are given memories by adults; contaminated by memories not their own,” Mr. Starr said somberly. “In which case the memory is spurious. Inauthentic.”

Sybil saw her likeness on the sheet of stiff white paper, upside-down. There was something repulsive about it. Though she was wearing her usual jogging clothes (a shirt, running pants) Mr. Starr made it look as if she were wearing a clinging, flowing gown; or, maybe, nothing at all. Where her small breasts would have been were swirls and smudges of charcoal, as if she were on the brink of dissolution. Her face and head were vividly drawn, but rather raw, crude, and exposed.

She saw too that Mr. Starr’s silver hair had a flat metallic sheen this afternoon; and his beard was faintly visible, metallic too, glinting on his jaws. He was stronger than she’d thought. He had knowledge far beyond hers.

Sybil resumed her position. She stared out at the ocean — the tall, cresting, splendidly white-capped waves. Why was she here, what did this man want out of her? She worried suddenly that, whatever it was, she could not provide it.

But Mr. Starr was saying, in his gentle, murmurous voice, “There are people — primarily women! — who are what I call ‘conduits of emotion.’ In their company, the half-dead can come alive. They need not be beautiful women or girls. It’s a matter of blood-warmth. The integrity of the spirit.” He turned the page of his sketch pad, and began anew, whistling thinly through his teeth. “Thus an icy-cold soul, in the presence of one so blessed, can regain something of his lost self. Sometimes!”

Sybil tried to summon forth a memory, an image at least, of her mother. Melanie. Twenty-six at the time. Eyes... cheekbones... pale wavy hair. A ghostly face appeared but faded almost at once. Sybil sobbed involuntarily. Her eyes stung with tears.

“—sensed that you, dear Blake — is your name Blake, really? — are one of these. A ‘conduit of emotion’ — of finer, higher things. Yes, yes! My intuition rarely misguides me!” Mr. Starr spoke as, hurriedly, excitedly, he sketched Sybil’s likeness. He was squatting close beside her, on his haunches; his dark glasses winked in the sun. Sybil knew, should she glance at him, she would not be able to see his eyes.

Mr. Starr said, coaxingly, “Don’t you remember anything — at all — about your mother?”

Sybil shook her head, meaning she didn’t want to speak.

“Her name. Surely you know her name?”

Sybil whispered, “Mommy.”

“Ah, yes: ‘Mommy.’ To you, that would have been her name.”

“Mommy — went away. They told me—”

“Yes? Please continue!”

“—Mommy was gone. And Daddy. On the lake—”

“Lake? Where?”

“Lake Champlain. In Vermont, and New York, Aunt Lora says—”

“ ‘Aunt Lora’—?”

“Mommy’s sister. She was older. Is older. She took me away. She adopted me. She—”

“And is ‘Aunt Lora’ married?”

“No. There’s just her and me.”

“What happened on the lake?”

“—it happened in the boat, on the lake. Daddy was driving the boat, they said. He came for me too but — I don’t know if that was that time or some other time. I’ve been told, but I don’t know.”

Tears were streaming down Sybil’s face now; she could not maintain her composure. But she managed to keep from hiding her face in her hands. She could hear Mr. Starr’s quickened breath, and she could hear the rasping sound of the charcoal against the paper.

Mr. Starr said gently, “You must have been a little girl when — whatever it was — happened.”

“I wasn’t little to myself. I just was.”

“A long time ago, was it?”

“Yes. No. It’s always — there.”

“Always where, dear child?”

“Where I, I — see it.”

“See what?”

“I — don’t know.”

“Do you see your mommy? Was she a beautiful woman? — did she resemble you?”

“Leave me alone — I don’t know.”

Sybil began to cry. Mr. Starr, repentant, or wary, went immediately silent.

Someone — it must have been bicyclists — passed behind them, and Sybil was aware of being observed, no doubt quizzically: a girl leaning forward across a stone ledge, face wet with tears, and a middle-aged man on his haunches busily sketching her. An artist and his model. An amateur artist, an amateur model. But how strange, that the girl was crying! And the man so avidly recording her tears!

Sybil, eyes closed, felt herself indeed a conduit of emotion — she was emotion. She stood upon the ground but she floated free. Mr. Starr was close beside her, anchoring her, but she floated free. A veil was drawn aside, and she saw a face — Mommy’s face — a pretty heart-shaped face — something both affectionate and petulant in that face — how young Mommy was! — and her hair up, brown-blond lovely hair, tied back in a green silk scarf. Mommy hurried to the phone as it rang, Mommy lifted the receiver. Yes? yes? oh hello — for the phone was always ringing, and Mommy was always hurrying to answer it, and there was always that expectant note to her voice, that sound of hope, surprise— Oh, hello.

Sybil could no longer maintain her pose. She said, “Mr. Starr, I am through for the day, I am sorry.” And, as the startled man looked after her, she walked away. He began to call after her, to remind her that he hadn’t paid her, but, no, Sybil had had enough of modeling for the day. She broke into a run, she escaped.

8. A Long Time Ago...

A girl who’d married too young: was that it?

That heart-shaped face, the petulant pursed lips. The eyes widened in mock-surprise: Oh, Sybil, what have you done...?

Stooping to kiss little Sybil, little Sybil giggling with pleasure and excitement, lifting her chubby baby arms to be raised in Mommy’s and carried in to bed.

Oh honey, you’re too big for that now. Too heavy!

Perfume wafting from her hair, loose to her shoulders, pale golden-brown, wavy. A rope of pearls around her neck. A low-cut summer dress, a bright floral print, like wallpaper. Mommy!

And Daddy, where was Daddy?

He was gone, then he was back. He’d come to her, little Sybil, to take her in the boat, the motor was loud, whining, angry as a bee buzzing and darting around her head, so Sybil was crying, and someone came, and Daddy went away again. She’d heard the motor rising, then fading. The churning of the water she couldn’t see from where she stood, and it was night too, but she wasn’t crying and no one scolded.

She could remember Mommy’s face, though they never let her see it again. She couldn’t remember Daddy’s face.

Grandma said, You’ll be all right, poor little darling, you’ll be all right, and Aunt Lora too, hugging her tight, Forever now you’ll be all right, Aunt Lora promised. It was scary to see Aunt Lora crying: Aunt Lora never cried, did she?

Lifting little Sybil in her strong arms to carry her in to bed but it wasn’t the same. It would never be the same again.

9. The Gift

Sybil is standing at the edge of the ocean.

The surf crashes and pounds about her... water streams up the sand, nearly wetting her feet. What a tumult of cries, hidden within the waves! She feels like laughing, for no reason. You know the reason: he has returned to you.

The beach is wide, clean, stark, as if swept with a giant broom. A landscape of dreamlike simplicity. Sybil has seen it numberless times but today its beauty strikes her as new. Your father: your father they told you was gone forever: he has returned to you. The sun is a winter sun, but warm, dazzling. Poised in the sky as if about to rapidly descend. Dark comes early because, after all, it is winter here, despite the warmth. The temperature will drop twenty degrees in a half-hour. He never died: he has been waiting for you all these years. And now he has returned.

Sybil begins to cry. Hiding her face, her burning face, in her hands. She stands flatfooted as a little girl and the surf breaks and splashes around her and now her shoes are wet, her feet, she’ll be shivering in the gathering chill. Oh, Sybil!

When Sybil turned, it was to see Mr. Starr sitting on the beach. He seemed to have lost his balance and fallen — his cane lay at his feet, he’d dropped the sketch pad, his sporty golfing cap sat crooked on his head. Sybil, concerned, asked what was wrong, — she prayed he hadn’t had a heart attack! — and Mr. Starr smiled weakly and told her quickly that he didn’t know, he’d become dizzy, felt the strength go out of his legs, and had had to sit. “I was overcome suddenly, I think, by your emotion! — whatever it was,” he said. He made no effort to get to his feet but sat there awkwardly, damp sand on his trousers and shoes. Now Sybil stood over him and he squinted up at her, and there passed between them a current of — was it understanding? sympathy? recognition?

Sybil laughed to dispel the moment and put out her hand for Mr. Starr to take, so that she could help him stand. He laughed too, though he was deeply moved, and embarrassed. “I’m afraid I make too much of things, don’t I?” he said. Sybil tugged at his hand (how big his hand was! how strong the fingers, closing about hers!) and, as he heaved himself to his feet, grunting, she felt the startling weight of him — an adult man, and heavy.

Mr. Starr was standing close to Sybil, not yet relinquishing her hand. He said, “The experiment was almost too successful, from my perspective! I’m almost afraid to try again.”

Sybil smiled uncertainly up at him. He was about the age her own father would have been — wasn’t he? It seemed to her that a younger face was pushing out through Mr. Starr’s coarse, sallow face. The hooklike quizzical scar on his forehead glistened oddly in the sun.

Sybil politely withdrew her hand from Mr. Starr’s and dropped her eyes. She was shivering — today, she had not been running at all, had come to meet Mr. Starr for purposes of modeling, in a blouse and skirt, as he’d requested. She was bare-legged and her feet, in sandals, were wet from the surf.

Sybil said, softly, as if she didn’t want to be heard, “I feel the same way, Mr. Starr.”

They climbed a flight of wooden steps to the top of the bluff, and there was Mr. Starr’s limousine, blackly gleaming, parked a short distance away. At this hour of the afternoon the park was well populated; there was a gay giggling bevy of high school girls strolling by, but Sybil took no notice. She was agitated, still; weak from crying, yet oddly strengthened, elated too. You know who he is. You always knew. She was keenly aware of Mr. Starr limping beside her, and impatient with his chatter. Why didn’t he speak directly to her, for once?

The uniformed chauffeur sat behind the wheel of the limousine, looking neither to the right nor the left, as if at attention. His visored cap, his white gloves. His profile like a profile on an ancient coin. Sybil wondered if the chauffeur knew about her — if Mr. Starr talked to him about her. Suddenly she was filled with excitement, that someone else should know.

Mr. Starr was saying that, since Sybil had modeled so patiently that day, since she’d more than fulfilled his expectations, he had a gift for her — “In addition to your fee, that is.”

He opened the rear door of the limousine, and took out a square white box, and, smiling shyly, presented it to Sybil. “Oh, what is it?” Sybil cried. She and Aunt Lora rarely exchanged presents any longer, it seemed like a ritual out of the deep past, delightful to rediscover. She lifted the cover of the box, and saw, inside, a beautiful purse; an over-the-shoulder bag; kidskin, the hue of rich dark honey. “Oh, Mr. Starr — thank you,” Sybil said, taking the bag in her hands. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” “Why don’t you open it, dear?” Mr. Starr urged, so Sybil opened the bag, and discovered money inside — fresh-minted bills — the denomination on top was twenty dollars. “I hope you didn’t overpay me again,” Sybil said, uneasily, “—I never have modeled for three hours yet. It isn’t fair.” Mr. Starr laughed, flushed with pleasure. “Fair to whom?” he asked. “What is ‘fair’? — we do what we like.”

Sybil raised her eyes shyly to Mr. Starr’s and saw that he was looking at her intently — at least, the skin at the corners of his eyes was tightly puckered. “Today, dear, I insist upon driving you home,” he said, smiling. There was a new authority in his voice that seemed to have something to do with the gift Sybil had received from him. “It will soon be getting chilly, and your feet are wet.” Sybil hesitated. She had lifted the bag to her face, to inhale the pungent kidskin smell: the bag was of a quality she’d never owned before. Mr. Starr glanced swiftly about, as if to see if anyone was watching; he was still smiling. “Please do climb inside, Blake! — you can’t consider me a stranger, now.”

Still, Sybil hesitated. Half teasing, she said, “You know my name isn’t Blake, don’t you, Mr. Starr? — how do you know?”

Mr. Starr laughed, teasing too. “Isn’t it? What is your name, then?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Should I know?”

“Shouldn’t you?”

There was a pause. Mr. Starr had taken hold of Sybil’s wrist; lightly, yet firmly. His fingers circled her thin wrists with the subtle pressure of a watchband.

Mr. Starr leaned close, as if sharing a secret. “Well, I did hear you sing your solo, in your wonderful Christmas pageant at the high school! I must confess, I’d sneaked into a rehearsal too — no one questioned my presence. And I believe I heard the choir director call you — is it ‘Sybil’?”

Hearing her name in Mr. Starr’s mouth, Sybil felt a sensation of vertigo. She could only nod, mutely, yes.

“Is it? — I wasn’t sure if I’d heard correctly. A lovely name, for a lovely girl. And ‘Blake’ — is ‘Blake’ your surname?”

Sybil murmured, “Yes.”

“Your father’s name?”

“No. Not my father’s name.”

“Oh, and why not? Usually, you know, that’s the case.”

“Because—” And here Sybil paused, confused, uncertain what to say. “It’s my mother’s name. Was.”

“Ah, really! I see,” Mr. Starr laughed. “Well, truly, I suppose I don’t, but we can discuss it another time. Shall we—?”

He meant, shall we get into the car; he was exerting pressure on Sybil’s wrist, and, though kindly as always, seemed on the edge of impatience. Sybil stood flatfooted on the sidewalk, wanting to acquiesce; yet, at the same time, uneasily thinking that, no, she should not. Not yet.

So Sybil pulled away, laughing nervously, and Mr. Starr had to release her, with a disappointed downturning of his mouth. Sybil thanked him, saying she preferred to walk. “I hope I will see you tomorrow, then? — ‘Sybil’?” Mr. Starr called after her. “Yes?”

But Sybil, hugging her new bag against her chest, as a small child might hug a stuffed animal, was walking quickly away.

Was the black limousine following her, at a discreet distance?

Sybil felt a powerful compulsion to look back, but did not.

She was trying to recall if, ever in her life, she’d ridden in such a vehicle. She supposed there had been hired, chauffeur-drawn limousines at her parents’ funerals, but she had not attended those funerals; had no memory of anything connected with them, except the strange behavior of her grandmother, her Aunt Lora, and other adults — their grief, but, underlying that grief, their air of profound and speechless shock.

Where is Mommy, she’d asked, where is Daddy, and the replies were always the same: Gone away.

And crying did no good. And fury did no good. Nothing little Sybil could do, or say, or think did any good. That was the first lesson, maybe.

But Daddy isn’t dead, you know he isn’t. You know, and he knows, why he has returned.

10. “Possessed”

Aunt Lora was smoking again! — back to two packs a day. And Sybil understood guiltily that she was to blame.

For there was the matter of the kidskin bag. The secret gift. Which Sybil had hidden in the farthest corner of her closet, wrapped in plastic, so the smell of it would not permeate the room. (Still, you could smell it — couldn’t you? A subtle pervasive smell, rich as any perfume?) Sybil lived in dread that her aunt would discover the purse, and the money; though Lora Dell Blake never entered her niece’s room without an invitation, somehow, Sybil worried, it might happen. She had never kept any important secret from her aunt in her life, and this secret both filled her with a sense of excitement and power, and weakened her, in childish dread.

What most concerned Lora, however, was Sybil’s renewed interest in that — as in, “Oh, honey, are you thinking about that again? Why?”

That was the abbreviated euphemism for what Lora might more fully call “the accident” — “the tragedy” — “your parents’ deaths.”

Sybil, who had never shown more than passing curiosity about that in the past, as far as Lora could remember, was now in the grip of what Lora called “morbid curiosity.” That mute, perplexed look in her eyes! That tremulous, though sometimes a bit sullen, look to her mouth! One evening, lighting up a cigarette with shaking fingers, Lora said, bluntly, “Sybil, honey, this tears my heart out. What is it you want to know?”

Sybil said, as if she’d been waiting for just this question, “Is my father alive?”

“What?”

“My father. George Conte. Is he — maybe — alive?”

The question hovered between them, and, for a long pained moment, it seemed almost that Aunt Lora might snort in exasperation, jump up from the table, walk out of the room. But then she said, shaking her head adamantly, dropping her gaze from Sybil’s, “Honey, no. The man is not alive.” She paused. She smoked her cigarette, exhaled smoke vigorously through her nostrils; seemed about to say something further; changed her mind; then said, quietly, “You don’t ask about your mother, Sybil. Why is that?”

“I — believe that my mother is dead. But—”

“But—?”

“My — my father—”

“—isn’t?”

Sybil said, stammering, her cheeks growing hot, “I just want to know. I want to see a, a — grave! A death certificate!”

“I’ll send to Wellington for a copy of the death certificate,” Aunt Lora said slowly. “Will that do?”

“You don’t have a copy here?”

“Honey, why would I have a copy here?”

Sybil saw that the older woman was regarding her with a look of pity, and something like dread. She said, stammering, her cheeks warm, “In your — legal things. Your papers. Locked away—”

“Honey, no.”

There was a pause. Then Sybil said, half-sobbing, “I was too young to go to their funeral. So I never saw. Whatever it was — I never saw. Is that it? They say that’s the reason for the ritual — for displaying the dead.”

Aunt Lora reached over to take Sybil’s hand. “It’s one of the reasons, honey,” she said. “We meet up with it all the time, at the medical center. People don’t believe that loved ones are dead — they know, but can’t accept it; the shock is just too much to absorb at once. And, yes, it’s a theory, that if you don’t see a person actually dead — if there isn’t a public ceremony to define it — you may have difficulty accepting it. You may—” and here Aunt Lora paused, frowning, “—be susceptible to fantasy.”

Fantasy! Sybil stared at her aunt, shocked. But I’ve seen him, I know. I believe him and not you!

The subject seemed to be concluded for the time being. Aunt Lora briskly stubbed out her cigarette and said, “I’m to blame — probably. I’d been in therapy for a couple of years after it happened and I just didn’t want to talk about it any longer, so when you’d asked me questions, over the years, I cut you off; I realize that. But, you see, there’s so little to say — Melanie is dead, and he is dead. And it all happened a long time ago.”

That evening, Sybil was reading in a book on memory she’d taken out of the Glencoe Public Library: It is known that human beings are “possessed” by an unfathomable number of dormant memory-traces, of which some can be activated under special conditions, including excitation by stimulating points in the cortex. Such traces are indelibly imprinted in the nervous system and are commonly activated by mnemonic stimuli — words, sights, sounds, and especially smells. The phenomenon of déjà vu is closely related to these experiences, in which a “doubling of consciousness” occurs, with the conviction that one has lived an experience before. Much of human memory, however, includes subsequent revision, selection, and fantasizing...

Sybil let the book shut. She contemplated, for the dozenth time, the faint red marks on her wrist, where Mr. Starr — the man who called himself Mr. Starr — had gripped her, without knowing his own strength.

Nor had Sybil been aware, at the time, that his fingers were so strong; and had clasped so tightly around her wrist.

11. “Mr. Starr” — or “Mr. Conte”

She saw him, and saw that he was waiting for her. And her impulse was to run immediately to him, and observe, with childish delight, how the sight of her would illuminate his face. Here! Here I am! It was a profound power that seemed to reside in her, Sybil Blake, seventeen years old — the power to have such an effect upon a man whom she scarcely knew, and who did not know her.

Because he loves me. Because he’s my father. That’s why.

And if he isn’t my father—

It was late afternoon of a dull, overcast day. Still, the park was populated at this end; joggers were running, some in colorful costumes. Sybil was not among them, she’d slept poorly the previous night, thinking of — what? Her dead mother who’d been so beautiful? — her father whose face she could not recall (though, yes surely, it was imprinted deep, deep in the cells of her memory)? — her Aunt Lora who was, or was not, telling her the truth, and who loved her more than anyone on earth? And Mr. Starr of course.

Or Mr. Conte.

Sybil was hidden from Mr. Starr’s gaze as, with an air of smiling expectancy, he looked about. He was carrying his duffel bag and leaning on his cane. He wore his plain, dark clothes; he was bareheaded, and his silvery hair shone; if Sybil were closer, she would see light winking in his dark glasses. She had noticed the limousine, parked up on the Boulevard a block away.

A young woman jogger ran past Mr. Starr, long-legged, hair flying, and he looked at her, intently — watched her as she ran out of sight along the path. Then he turned back, glancing up toward the street, shifting his shoulders impatiently. Sybil saw him check his wristwatch.

Waiting for you. You know why.

And then, suddenly — Sybil decided not to go to Mr. Starr after all. The man who called himself Starr. She changed her mind at the last moment, unprepared for her decision except to understand that, as, quickly, she walked away, it must be the right decision: her heart was beating erratically, all her senses alert, as if she had narrowly escaped great danger.

12. The Fate of “George Conte”

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays Lora Dell Blake attended an aerobics class after work, and on these evenings she rarely returned home before seven o’clock. Today was a Friday, at four: Sybil calculated she had more than enough time to search out her aunt’s private papers, and to put everything back in order, well before her aunt came home.

Aunt Lora’s household keys were kept in a top drawer of her desk, and one of these keys, Sybil knew, was to a small aluminum filing cabinet beside the desk, where confidential records and papers were kept. There were perhaps a dozen keys, in a jumble, but Sybil had no difficulty finding the right one. “Aunt Lora, please forgive me,” she whispered. It was a measure of her aunt’s trust of her that the filing cabinet was so readily unlocked.

For never in her life had Sybil Blake done such a thing, in violation of the trust between herself and her aunt. She sensed that, unlocking the cabinet, opening the sliding drawers, she might be committing an irrevocable act.

The drawer was jammed tight with manila folders, most of them well-worn and dog-eared. Sybil’s first response was disappointment — there were hundreds of household receipts, financial statements, Internal Revenue records dating back for years. Then she discovered a packet of letters dating back to the 1950s, when Aunt Lora would have been a young girl. There were a few snapshots, a few formally posed photographs — one of a strikingly beautiful, if immature-looking, girl in a high-school graduation cap and gown, smiling at the camera with glossy lips. On the rear was written “Melanie, 1969.” Sybil stared at this likeness of her mother — her mother long before she’d become her mother — and felt both triumph and dismay: for, yes, here was the mysterious Melanie, and, yet, was this the Melanie the child knew? — or, simply, a high school girl, Sybil’s own approximate age, the kind who, judging from her looks and self-absorbed expression, would never have been a friend of Sybil’s?

Sybil put the photograph back, with trembling fingers. She was half grateful that Aunt Lora had kept so few mementos of the past — there could be fewer shocks, revelations.

No photographs of the wedding of Melanie Blake and George Conte. Not a one.

No photographs, so far as Sybil could see, of her father “George Conte” at all.

There was a single snapshot of Melanie with her baby daughter Sybil, and this Sybil studied for a long time. It had been taken in summer, at a lakeside cottage; Melanie was posing prettily, in a white dress, with her baby snug in the crook of her arm, and both were looking toward the camera, as if someone had just called out to them, to make them laugh — Melanie with a wide, glamorous, yet sweet smile, little Sybil gaping open-mouthed. Here Melanie looked only slightly more mature than in the graduation photograph: her pale brown hair, many shades of brown and blond, was shoulder-length, and upturned; her eyes were meticulously outlined in mascara, prominent in her heart-shaped face.

In the foreground, on the grass, was the shadow of a man’s head and shoulders — George Conte, perhaps? The missing person.

Sybil stared at this snapshot, which was wrinkled and dog-eared. She did not know what to think, and, oddly, she felt very little: for was the infant in the picture really herself, Sybil Blake, if she could not remember?

Or did she in fact remember, somewhere deep in her brain, in memory-traces that were indelible?

From now on, she would “remember” her mother as the pretty, self-assured young woman in this snapshot. This image, in full color, would replace any other.

Reluctantly, Sybil slid the snapshot back in its packet. How she would have liked to keep it! — but Aunt Lora would discover the theft, eventually. And Aunt Lora must be protected against knowing that her own niece had broken into her things, violated the trust between them.

The folders containing personal material were few, and quickly searched. Nothing pertaining to the accident, the “tragedy”? — not even an obituary? Sybil looked in adjacent files, with increasing desperation. There was not only the question of who her father was, or had been, but the question, nearly as compelling, of why Aunt Lora had eradicated all trace of him, even in her own private files. For a moment Sybil wondered if there had ever been any “George Conte” at all: maybe her mother had not married, and that was part of the secret? Melanie had died in some terrible way, terrible at least in Lora Dell Blake’s eyes, thus the very fact must be hidden from Sybil, after so many years? Sybil recalled Aunt Lora saying, earnestly, a few years ago, “The only thing you should know, Sybil, is that your mother — and your father — would not want you to grow up in the shadow of their deaths. They would have wanted you — your mother especially — to be happy.”

Part of this legacy of happiness, Sybil gathered, had been for her to grow up as a perfectly normal American girl, in a sunny, shadowless place with no history, or, at any rate, no history that concerned her. “But I don’t want to be happy, I want to know,” Sybil said aloud.

But the rest of the manila files, jammed so tightly together they were almost inextricable, yielded nothing.

So, disappointed, Sybil shut the file drawer, and locked it.

But what of Aunt Lora’s desk drawers? She had a memory of their being unlocked, thus surely containing nothing of significance; but now it occurred to her that, being unlocked, one of these drawers might in fact contain something Aunt Lora might want to keep safely hidden. So, quickly, with not much hope, Sybil looked through these drawers, messy, jammed with papers, clippings, further packets of household receipts, old programs from plays they’d seen in Los Angeles — and, in the largest drawer, at the very bottom, in a wrinkled manila envelope with “MEDICAL INSURANCE” carefully printed on its front, Sybil found what she was looking for.

Newspaper clippings, badly yellowed, some of them spliced together with aged cellophane tape—

So Sybil Blake learned, in the space of less than sixty seconds, the nature of the tragedy from which her Aunt Lora had shielded her for nearly fifteen years.

Her father was indeed a man named George Conte, and this man had shot her mother Melanie to death, in their speedboat on Lake Champlain, and pushed her body overboard. He had tried to kill himself too but had only critically wounded himself with a shot to the head. He’d undergone emergency neurosurgery, and recovered; he was arrested, tried, and convicted of second-degree murder; and sentenced to between twelve and nineteen years in prison, at the Hartshill State Prison in northern Vermont.

Sybil sifted through the clippings, her fingers numb. So this was it! This! Murder, attempted suicide! — not mere drunkenness and an “accident” on the lake.

Aunt Lora seemed to have stuffed the clippings in an envelope in haste, or in revulsion; with some, photographs had been torn off, leaving only their captions — “Melanie and George Conte, 1975,” “Prosecution witness Lora Dell Blake leaving courthouse.” Those photographs of George Conte showed a man who surely did resemble “Mr. Starr”: younger, dark-haired, with a face heavier in the jaws and an air of youthful self-assurance and expectation. There. Your father. “Mr. Starr.” The missing person.

There were several photographs too of Melanie Conte, including one taken for her high-school yearbook, and one of her in a long, formal gown with her hair glamorously upswept — “Wellington woman killed by jealous husband.” There was a wedding photograph of the couple looking very young, attractive, and happy; a photograph of the “Conte family at their summer home”; a photograph of “George Conte, lawyer, after 2nd-degree murder verdict” — the convicted man, stunned, down-looking, being taken away handcuffed between two grim sheriff’s men. Sybil understood that the terrible thing that had happened in her family had been of enormous public interest in Wellington, Vermont, and that this was part of its terribleness, its shame.

What had Aunt Lora said? — she’d been in therapy for some time afterward, thus did not want to relive those memories.

And she’d said, It all happened a long time ago.

But she’d lied, too. She had looked Sybil full in the face and lied, lied. Insisting that Sybil’s father was dead when she knew he was alive.

When Sybil herself had reason to believe he was alive.

My name is Starr! Don’t judge me too quickly!

Sybil read, and reread, the aged clippings. There were perhaps twenty of them. She gathered two general things: that her father George Conte was from a locally prominent family, and that he’d had a very capable attorney to defend him at his trial; and that the community had greatly enjoyed the scandal, though, no doubt, offering condolences to the grieving Blake family. The spectacle of a beautiful young wife murdered by her “jealous” young husband, her body pushed from an expensive speedboat to sink in Lake Champlain — who could resist? The media had surely exploited this tragedy to its fullest.

Now you see, don’t you, why your name had to be changed. Not “Conte,” the murderer, but “Blake,” the victim, is your parent.

Sybil was filled with a child’s rage, a child’s inarticulate grief— Why, why! This man named George Conte had, by a violent act, ruined everything!

According to the testimony of witnesses, George Conte had been “irrationally” jealous of his wife’s friendship with other men in their social circle; he’d quarreled publicly with her upon several occasions, and was known to have a drinking problem. On the afternoon of July Fourth, the day of the murder, the couple had been drinking with friends at the Lake Champlain Club for much of the afternoon, and had then set out in their boat for their summer home, three miles to the south. Midway, a quarrel erupted, and George Conte shot his wife several times with a .32 caliber revolver, which, he later confessed, he’d acquired for the purpose of “showing her I was serious.” He then pushed her body overboard, and continued on to the cottage where, in a “distraught state,” he tried to take his two-year-old daughter Sybil with him, back to the boat — saying that her mother was waiting for her. But the child’s grandmother and aunt, both relatives of the murdered woman, prevented him from taking her, so he returned to the boat alone, took it out a considerable distance onto the lake, and shot himself in the head. He collapsed in the idling boat, and was rescued by an emergency medical team and taken to a hospital in Burlington where his life was saved.

Why, why did they save his life? — Sybil thought bitterly. She’d never felt such emotion, such outrage, as she felt for this person George Conte: “Mr. Starr.” He’d wanted to kill her too, of course — that was the purpose of his coming home, wanting to get her, saying her mother wanted her. Had Sybil’s grandmother and Aunt Lora not stopped him, he would have shot her too, and dumped her body into the lake, and ended it all by shooting himself — but not killing himself. A bungled suicide. And then, after recovering, a plea of “not guilty” to the charge of murder.

A charge of second-degree murder, and a sentence of only twelve to nineteen years. So, he was out. George Conte was out. As “Mr. Starr,” the amateur artist, the lover of the beautiful and the pure, he’d found her out, and he’d come for her.

And you know why.

13. “Your Mother Is Waiting For You”

Sybil Blake returned the clippings to the envelope so conspicuously marked “MEDICAL INSURANCE,” and returned the envelope to the very bottom of the unlocked drawer in her aunt’s desk. She closed the drawer carefully, and, though she was in an agitated state, looked about the room to see if she’d left anything inadvertently out of place; any evidence that she’d been in here at all.

Yes, she’d violated the trust Aunt Lora had had in her. Yet Aunt Lora had lied to her too, these many years. And so convincingly.

Sybil understood that she could never again believe anyone fully. She understood that those who love us can, and will, lie to us; they may act out of a moral conviction that such lying is necessary, and this may in fact be true — but, still, they lie.

Even as they look into your eyes and insist they are telling the truth.

Of the reasonable steps Sybil Blake might have taken, this was the most reasonable: she might have confronted Lora Dell Blake with the evidence she’d found and with her knowledge of what the tragedy had been, and she might have told her about “Mr. Starr.”

But she hated him so. And Aunt Lora hated him. And, hating him as they did, how could they protect themselves against him, if he chose to act? For Sybil had no doubt, now, her father had returned to her to do her harm.

If George Conte had served his prison term, and been released from prison, if he was free to move about the country like any other citizen, certainly he had every right to come to Glencoe, California. In approaching Sybil Blake, his daughter, he had committed no crime. He had not threatened her, he had not harassed her, he had behaved in a kindly, courteous, generous way; except for the fact (in Aunt Lora’s eyes this would be an outrageous, unspeakable fact) that he had misrepresented himself.

“Mr. Starr” was a lie, an obscenity. But no one had forced Sybil to model for him, nor to accept an expensive gift from him. She had done so willingly. She had done so gratefully. After her initial timidity, she’d been rather eager to be so employed.

For “Mr. Starr” had seduced her — almost.

Sybil reasoned that if she told her aunt about “Mr. Starr,” their lives would be irrevocably changed. Aunt Lora would be upset to the point of hysteria. She would insist upon going to the police. The police would rebuff her, or, worse yet, humor her. And what if Aunt Lora went to confront “Mr. Starr” herself?

No, Sybil was not going to involve her aunt. Nor implicate her in any way.

“I love you too much,” Sybil whispered. “You are all I have.”

To avoid seeing Aunt Lora that evening, or, rather, to avoid being seen by her, Sybil went to bed early, leaving a note on the kitchen table explaining that she had a mild case of the flu. Next morning, when Aunt Lora looked in Sybil’s room, to ask her worriedly how she was, Sybil smiled wanly and said she’d improved; but, still, she thought she would stay home from school that day.

Aunt Lora, ever vigilant against illness, pressed her hand against Sybil’s forehead, which did seem feverish. She looked into Sybil’s eyes, which were dilated. She asked if Sybil had a sore throat, if she had a headache, if she’d had an upset stomach or diarrhea, and Sybil said no, no, she simply felt a little weak, she wanted to sleep. So Aunt Lora believed her, brought her Bufferin and fruit juice and toast with honey, and went off quietly to leave her alone.

Sybil wondered if she would ever see her aunt again.

But of course she would: she had no doubt, she could force herself to do what must be done.

Wasn’t her mother waiting for her?

A windy, chilly afternoon. Sybil wore warm slacks and a wool pullover sweater and her jogging shoes. But she wasn’t running today. She carried her kidskin bag, its strap looped over her shoulder.

Her handsome kidskin bag, with its distinctive smell.

Her bag, into which she’d slipped, before leaving home, the sharpest of her aunt’s several finely honed steak knives.

Sybil Blake hadn’t gone to school that day but she entered the park at approximately three-forty-five, her usual time. She’d sighted Mr. Starr’s long elegantly gleaming black limousine parked on the street close by, and there was Mr. Starr himself, waiting for her.

How animated he became, seeing her! — exactly as he’d been in the past. It seemed strange to Sybil that, somehow, to him, things were unchanged.

He imagined her still ignorant, innocent. Easy prey.

Smiling at her. Waving. “Hello, Sybil!”

Daring to call her that — “Sybil.”

He was hurrying in her direction, limping, using his cane. Sybil smiled. There was no reason not to smile, thus she smiled. She was thinking with what skill Mr. Starr used that cane of his, how practiced he’d become. Since the injury to his brain? — or had there been another injury, suffered in prison?

Those years in prison, when he’d had time to think. Not to repent — Sybil seemed to know he had not repented — but, simply, to think.

To consider the mistakes he’d made, and how to unmake them.

“Why, my dear, hello! — I’ve missed you, you know,” Mr. Starr said. There was an edge of reproach to his voice but he smiled to show his delight. “I won’t ask where were you, now you’re here. And carrying your beautiful bag—”

Sybil peered up at Mr. Starr’s pale, tense, smiling face. Her reactions were slow at first, as if numbed; as if she were, for all that she’d rehearsed this, not fully wakened — a kind of sleepwalker.

“And — you will model for me this afternoon? Under our new, improved terms?”

“Yes, Mr. Starr.”

Mr. Starr had his duffel bag, his sketch pad, his charcoal sticks. He was bareheaded, and his fine silver hair blew in the wind. He wore a slightly soiled white shirt with a navy-blue silk necktie and his old tweed jacket; and his gleaming black shoes that put Sybil in mind of a funeral. She could not see his eyes behind the dark lenses of his glasses but she knew by the puckered skin at the corners of his eyes that he was staring at her intently, hungrily. She was his model, he was the artist, when could they begin? Already, his fingers were flexing in anticipation.

“I think, though, we’ve about exhausted the possibilities of this park, don’t you, dear? It’s charming, but rather common. And so finite,” Mr. Starr was saying, expansively. “Even the beach, here in Glencoe. Somehow it lacks — amplitude. So I was thinking — I was hoping — we might today vary our routine just a bit, and drive up the coast. Not far — just a few miles. Away from so many people, and so many distractions.” Seeing that Sybil was slow to respond, he added, warmly, “I’ll pay you double, Sybil — of course. You know you can trust me by now, don’t you? Yes?”

That curious, ugly little hook of a scar in Mr. Starr’s forehead — its soft pale tissue gleamed in the whitish light. Sybil wondered was that where the bullet had gone in.

Mr. Starr had been leading Sybil in the direction of the curb, where the limousine was waiting, its engine idling almost soundlessly. He opened the door. Sybil, clutching her kidskin bag, peered inside, at the cushioned, shadowy interior. For a moment, her mind was blank. She might have been on a high board, about to dive into the water, not knowing how she’d gotten to where she was, or why. Only that she could not turn back.

Mr. Starr was smiling eagerly, hopefully. “Shall we? Sybil?”

“Yes, Mr. Starr,” Sybil said, and climbed inside.