To Lyle's disappointment though, this situation, rather than providing him added relief, increased the social demands upon him. This is because the good wife, now bubbling over more than ever in the afterglow of her successful entertaining, was feeling rather warm and fuzzy towards humanity in general, a disposition she was eager to share with her unnoticeably taciturn husband.

"C'mon relax with us, Hon," Rachel invited Lyle, patting a spot on the sofa beside her own substantial posterior. "It's always a blessing to visit with fambly," she added warmly, shifting her gaze to her little brother. Big Tim, sitting in Lyle's favorite chair, was currently too engrossed in a cat food commercial to spare his big sister any attention.

The idea of attempting meaningful interaction at this moment with this particular combination of individuals held little appeal for Lyle. In thirty-two years of marriage, he never really had established a notable rapport with the Troutmans as a group. And Big Tim, whom Lyle had been called upon numerous times over the years to wrest from financial difficulties, had always struck Lyle as being even more inept at conversational arts than he was at routine job duties. (At least five times Lyle had let this brother-in-law go, careful each time to cushion Big Tim emotionally against the blow by telling him that it was for "cyclical reasons," i.e., a "normal downturn in the business.")

"I gotta go out," Lyle matter-of-factly informed his wife as he swung open the foyer closet door to grab his mud-stained blaze hunting jacket from the inside hook.

Rachel didn't immediately respond, but her expression and body language suggested a puppy whose eagerness had just been doused by a pitcher of water fresh from the refrigerator. "Where to?" she finally managed to weakly inquire.

"The office," Lyle said. "I just need to take care of some nagging little details that have been tripping us up there awhile, and the off-season's the only time to get them tied down right. I know it's New Year's and all and I'm really sorry about that, but I really do need to get ahead of the game before things pick up."

"Oh. Okay." Rachel resolved to affect her mature, understanding look. She certainly doesn't want Lyle to catch her pouting about this. "There'll be ham and cheese sandwiches tonight. And pickles, too. It'll be in the refrigerator in case I go to bed before you get back." She smiled at him. Lyle mechanically shot her back a benign, plastered-on grin over his shoulder as he opened the outer glass door.

He welcomed the frigid January air which immediately engulfed him on the open porch, finally snapping him to alertness after the day's self-enforced stagnancy.

For the sake of her remaining guest and her determination not to end on a bad note what had, until now, been a perfect New Year's Day, Rachel set her mind upon her self-composure. She made this effort even as she gluttonously punished herself by watching through the living room's big double-paned picture window as her husband deserted her to spend the rest of this special day with who-knew-who, who-knew-where, doing who-knew-what.

But the effort ultimately failed. Big Tim, who had gone into the kitchen to dish himself out a third helping of Rachel's award-winning Casket in Tomb, returned to the living room to find his big sister blubbering on the sofa. The TV set was tuned to some odd cable channel's special on motion picture stuntmen and women, the program's audio blaring nearly loudly enough to drown out Rachel's sobs.

Big Tim, bug-eyed with indecision, forced himself to focus his attention on the show, hoping that at any moment his sister would sufficiently calm herself so that he wouldn't have to assume the uncomfortably unfamiliar role of soother.

The sister's sobs gave way to less voluble whimpers, but her girthsome chest continued to spasmodically heave. Tim, swiping nervously and ineffectively at the cream filling he knew was smeared on the lower half of his face, hastily gulped down with some difficulty the final too-large bite of dessert. "You okay, Sis?" he managed to hoarsely croak before breaking into a fit of coughing.

He could hardly hear himself ask the question, the TV was so loud, but somehow Rachel's ears picked it up, so anxious was she to hear any human utterance minutely construable as an invitation to unleash her heart's heavy burden. "He's seein' another woman, Tim, I just know it!" she blurted in a blubbering wail.

Rachel sobbed into her hands.

Conscious that he was completely at a loss for a suitable reply, Tim offered a short nod of his head, a gesture he hoped appeared thoughtful. But after he did this his head was still empty, so he nodded again, and again... until he began to resemble one of those ceramic baseball player figurines with the spring-mounted head that bobs moronically at you from behind the rear windshield of a moving car.

You have caught back up with Lyle. Slipped right through the unlocked door of his rental yard office without his noticing, just as easily as you padded unseen from his home premises moments ago and drifted unnoticed along Catfield's deserted streets on this cold, slothful holiday.

Contrary to Rachel's fears, there's no woman here. You knew there wouldn't be. She should be told, you think. Let her put her mind at rest. But suddenly you change your mind, and decide that perhaps there is something about Lyle that would give Rachel or someone else -- you, maybe? -- ample reason to worry. Seeing him sitting there at that chair at that desk -- his head slumped forward so that his chin nearly touches his chest -- you find his demeanor somehow inscrutable, even unnerving.

He's not working, but he's alert. He's not daydreaming but staring, transfixed, at a colorful page lying atop his desk. To you his mind has always been an open book, immediately readable, but now, for the first time ever, Lyle's thoughts are closed to you by a mood you've never encountered.

You carefully sidle up close, the better to see, and peer over Lyle's shoulder at the object of his intense concentration. To your surprise you find there nothing other than a crayon drawing, one obviously rendered by a fairly young child, no older than seven, say. Although the work is childishly crude, you can make out fairly well what it depicts: beneath the typical child's sky of blue with a couple of fluffy white clouds and a yellow sun sending down straight yellow lines of shine , a panorama of fields backed by craggy brown hills.

The fields are presented as a patchwork of squares demarked by roads, and are all lush with different forms of uniformly arranged vegetation. Crops, of course: here is wheat, there is corn, and another patch appears to hold something squatter and wider -- sugar beets perhaps.

The artist's vantage point is from an elevation pretty well above ground, a fact made all the clearer by one's view of a couple of oddly shaped rooftops in the foreground. You think you might almost recognize those rooftops and a road starting just to their right and running toward the horizon. Could it be?... yes, of course. It's Catfield Flat. You can even find the cat-pointy ears of Catshead Mountain amidst the line of craggy brown hills. And of course the only place that would afford you this view -- especially of those two rooftops you now do recognize -- would be from a top-floor window of the old Institute's main hall. Pretty nifty.

Lyle startles you by suddenly flipping the sheet over on his desk, revealing the child artist's name on the back, carefully printed there in black crayon. It startles you anew to see above the words "Miss Liggins grade 2" the name of a young student in that class of yore, one Sadie Simmons -- the very same Sadie Simmons who at age 14 wandered off and disappeared about half a dozen years ago.

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