Carol O'Connell - Bone by Bone

"Yes, a very handsome young man."

"When he was a teenager, my wife described him as beautiful-and inadvertently charming. Or did she say accidentally? Something about his smile. No, I'm wrong. She said it was his eyes. When my wife spoke to Oren, he made her feel like the center of the universe. She said I didn't come off well by comparison."

"So it wouldn't surprise your wife… those rumors of an accidentally charming boy accidentally falling into strange beds when school was out- but the husbands were still at work."

"I can't say what's true or not." Jim Web turned to the window. "All I ever saw with my own eyes was a bad case of twisted puppy love."

Ferris leaned forward. "You mean the Winston girl?" This was another bit of Coventry lore that he had collected two decades ago, just the snatch of a story that had no beginning and no end.

The postmaster removed his bifocals and turned to the window, his watery eyes in soft focus, looking at some middle ground of memory. "Isabelle and Oren, they made me feel young again at least three times a week. You see, the judge's boys used to switch off on picking up the mail. This was before we had rural delivery. Back then, I knew the faces of everyone in this town, even the ones that lived out in the woods. Everybody picked up their mail at the post office-except for Mrs. Underwood, the old lady who used to live in Mr. Swahn's house. The boys would pick up her mail, too-not that there was much.

"Anyway, it's not like Josh and Oren had a schedule. I never knew which boy it would be or when he'd show up. But little Belle Winston always knew, and she always beat Oren Hobbs into town. Now this only happened in the summer. The rest of the year she went to a boarding school in the East. Belle was about eleven, I'd say. On fine summer days, she'd come flying into town, little legs churning up dust, long hair flying. She'd run in the door and ask for her mail like it was a matter of life or death- and couldn't my clerk understand that speed was everything to her? And then she'd just stand by the lobby window, watching the street. Sometimes ten, fifteen minutes would go by. Such a patient little girl."

"She was waiting for Oren Hobbs."

The postmaster nodded, never taking his eyes from the window. "The minute she saw him coming, she'd slowly open the front door like she had all the time in the world." Smiling, he tapped the window glass, as though he might be watching this story play out. "She'd saunter down the stairs and pass him on the sidewalk out there-like she didn't notice that boy was alive."

"Did Oren notice her?"

"You bet. The second he saw Belle, the boy's eyes were glued to the sidewalk, or sometimes he'd find something fascinating to look at on the other side of the street-until she passed him by. The boy always took a deep breath before he turned around to watch her walk away. This went on all summer long for years and years. It was the greatest little love affair that almost happened."

Done with old memories, the postmaster donned his glasses again, prepared to see the world as it was today. "You can hear rumors anywhere- and from people who tell them better than me." He jerked one thumb back at the windowpane. "But that's the only secret Oren Hobbs ever had that I ever knew about-me and the rest of the town."

When Ferris Monty turned to the window, it was easy enough to pick out the distinctive copper shingles of the tower atop the Winston lodge. No doubt young Isabelle Winston had used that high ground to keep track of the boy she fancied. He wondered if that habit had lasted into her teenage years. Had she been spying on Oren Hobbs the last time the boy walked into the woods with his little brother?

If Sarah Winston had not been a devoted follower of the birder's life, she might have had a career as an artist; this was the opinion of ornithologist Isabelle Winston. The renderings in her mother's journals were beautiful. Exotic birds with brilliant plumage did not exist in this part of the world, and yet there they were, singing and dancing with common sparrows and crows. These were the guests of the annual birthday ball.

It was a temptation to hurry through these books, but something important might be missed. Invisible spiders had not crept up on her mother in a single day. That kind of damage took years, but Isabelle examined every page with the hope of finding a signal event. She looked up from her reading to glance at the deck beyond the glass wall and the telescopes positioned to see the world from here, if the world be Coventry. Her mother's journals never hinted at life elsewhere.

"Let's see," she whispered to her sleeping mother, who had passed out after a midday binge. "When did it all start to go wrong?"

She climbed the tall ladder on wheels and, by one hand, rolled it along the high circular shelf. The dates on the book spines told her she was approaching the largest event in her own reckoning, the vanishing of Joshua Hobbs. She scanned the labels of months and years, then pulled down a volume out of order, a sneak preview of things to come, and she opened it to leaf through the pages. This journal only depicted birds of prey. One stood out from the rest. Isabelle's first thought was borrowed from an old fairy tale-and twisted a bit.

What strange, crazy eyes you have-what long teeth.

On these pages, Coventry had lost its charm and become a nightmare state where monsters roamed, walking birds with fangs and curled knives for talons.

That was Ad Winston on the phone." Hannah's wooden clogs clattered down the cellar stairs. "He says the reporters won't be bothering us today. They're all joining up with the sheriff's search party."

Approaching the table, she seemed pleased to find her last batch of laundry folded and neatly stacked by Oren and the judge. Smiling, she inspected their work. "From the kitchen window, I could see bits and pieces of a long line of trucks and cars moving uphill through the trees."

The housekeeper frowned at three stray socks with no mates, and Oren waited for the old magic that had made him Hannah's laundry slave when he was six years old. As she rolled the orphan socks, each one became a pair, and he never caught her pulling the mates from her pockets.

"I wonder what Cable uses for brains." She glanced at the cellar window. "He should've waited till morning. Not enough daylight left to search a whole mountain."

No problem. Oren knew it would be a short outing for all concerned, no bivouac, no campfires under the stars. The searchers would stumble upon the rest of his brother's bones long before dark.

William Swahn gripped his cane tighter. Some days, any weight on his twisted leg would cause him pain, and he had pills for that, but medication fogged his mind. He limped across the wide foyer, cursing his mistake in reconnecting the doorbell. Upon opening the center panel, he saw Sarah's redheaded daughter standing on the other side of the iron grille.

"Belle." What a happy and awkward surprise. How would he explain why he had not paid her a visit since her return to Coventry?

"Hello, William."

The door opened wide, and the pretty woman in blue jeans entered the foyer, lifting her face to receive a hello kiss. At their last meeting, she had been sixteen years old and had to stand on her toes to kiss him goodbye.

Stepping back a pace, she said, "So you remembered my name."

Isabelle's rebukes had never been understated.

He led the way into the library. "I remember every woman who ever proposed to me." And now he could see that this occasion had slipped her mind. "You were shorter then, only four years old."