It was after seven, the sun slipping away into a blaze of red and orange, when Diana began her drive to Kay Todd's house. She found her listed in the county phone directory, a trailer court fifteen miles away in Grainger, a one-stoplight-and-post-office town west of New Cambridge. Diana had spent the day trying not to think about Kay Todd, her cigarettes, her leathery face. She went for a much-needed run. She scanned the want ads, circling three waitressing jobs and one position as a security guard. She cleaned the bathroom and kitchen in her apartment. But in the back of her head—and sometimes in the front—she heard Dan's voice.
It's impossible for this woman to know anything about your sister.
But what if she did?
Diana quickly found herself in the countryside. Her headlights illuminated the trees along the side of the road, and once she saw three deer in the tall grass, their eyes appearing in the headlights like glowing, yellow marbles. The approach of the car didn't bother them, and as Diana passed they bent their heads back to the ground, largely indifferent to the human life buzzing past them on the highway.
It wasn't lost on Diana that she was driving through a scene right out of one of her visions. New Cambridge was one in a series of small, south-central Ohio towns that dotted the landscape, but in between the towns there was nothing but farmland and trees, occasional houses and forgotten country roads. As Diana drove through the dark overhanging canopy of those trees and tried to comprehend the limitless spaces that stretched out beyond them, the countless ditches and deadfalls, the heavy logs and accumulated leaves, it seemed hard to believe that there weren't hundreds of bodies scattered in there, a collection of lives snuffed out and hidden away, forgotten by all but those who cared the most. She could dedicate the rest of her life to searching for the spot that seemed to be beckoning her—the vision of the clearing in the woods—and never find it, never even come close.
Then why send the vision if it didn't want to be found?
It had begun to seem like a cruel joke, just like the one Kay Todd might be playing on her.
Then why go see her? Why keep looking?
"Because there's nothing else," Diana said, her voice filling the empty space of the car. "Nothing else."
Light rain began to spit against Diana's windshield. She put the wipers on intermittently as she drove through the heart of Grainger. A diner, a clothing store, a police station. One long blink, and you'd miss it. Diana went a mile past the town, then made a right onto Pike Road, a narrow two-lane that went out into the unincorporated land around Grainger and showed up on the map as Union Township. It was full dark by then, the headlights carving out a path in the night. The rain picked up, and Diana turned the wipers higher, their rhythmic beating the only sound in the car.
A few miles down the road, she saw the Pine Grove Trailer Park, a dingy looking complex surrounded by a barbed wire fence and a stand of puny trees. The road through Pine Grove was gravel, and the little stones popped and pinged against the underside of her Honda until she eased to a stop in front of number forty-four, a sagging singlewide resting on cinder blocks.
A lone bulb illuminated the porch, its jaundiced glow still attracting the last hearty gnats and moths of the summer. The steps to the front door had been painted white at one time, but as Diana climbed them, she saw that the wood was exposed and warped by rain and sun, the nails rusted and discolored. A battered screen door with a huge dent at its base allowed the sounds of a sitcom's canned laughter to blast out at her. There was no bell so Diana knocked. She couldn't imagine anyone hearing anything over the sound of that TV, so Diana used her best authoritarian police knock, then just called the woman's name.
"Mrs. Todd? Kay Todd?"
Diana waited a moment, her shoulders hunched against the falling rain. She raised her fist again, and the TV volume dropped. She heard a long, hacking cough, then a faint voice.
"Coming."
Diana waited. The closest trailer was lighted up. Diana heard a baby crying, then a harsh shushing from an adult voice. She turned and saw the faint outline of the old woman appearing behind the screen, her form backlit by the trailer's shabby lighting.
"Oh, hello," Kay said, her voice cautious. She looked to either side of Diana, as if she expected her to have brought reinforcements.
"Can I come in?"
Kay hesitated. She looked Diana up and down.
"It's raining, Kay. Come on."
"I didn't know it was raining..."
She undid the eyehook on the door and pushed it open, letting Diana step into a small entryway. The heavy odor of cigarettes hung in the trailer, and when they moved into the cluttered living room, Diana saw a hazy nimbus of smoke around the lamps on either side of the sagging couch.
"Would you like coffee or something?"
"Sure."