Second floor, BURKE. First floor her breath caught MARSH. But I won't ring. I don't want to see him. I won't ring the bell. This was a firm decision, at last! The decision that opened the gate to a full and useful lifetime of firm decisions! She walked down the path! Back to downtown! Up to the Derry Town House! Packed! Cabbed! Flew! Told Tom to bug out! Lived successfully! Died happily! Rang the bell. She heard the familiar chimes from the living room chimes that had always sounded to her like a Chinese name: Ching-Chong! Silence. No answer. She shifted on the porch from one foot to the other, suddenly needing to pee. No one home, she thought, relieved. I can go now.

Instead she rang again: Ching-Chong! No answer. She thought of Ben's lovely little poem and tried to remember exactly when and how he had confessed its authorship, and why, for a brief second, it called up an association with having her first menstrual period. Had she begun menstruating at eleven? Surely not, although her breasts had begun their first achy growth around mid-winter. Why . . . ? Then, intervening, a mental picture of thousands of grackles on phone lines and rooftops, all babbling at a white spring sky. I'll leave now. I've rung twice; that's enough. But she rang again. Ching-Chong! Now she heard someone approaching, and the sound was just as she had imagined: the tired whisper of old slippers. She looked around wildly and came very, very close to just taking to her heels. Could she make it down the cement walk and around the corner, leaving her father to think it had been nothing but kids playing pranks? Hey mister, you got Prince Albert in a can . . . ? She let out a su

It wasn't her father at all. Standing in the doorway and looking out at her was a tall woman in her late seventies. Her hair was long and gorgeous, mostly white but shot through with lodes of purest gold. Behind her rimless spectacles were eyes as blue as the water in the fjords her ancestors had perhaps hailed from. She wore a purple dress of watered silk. It was shabby but still dignified. Her wrinkled face was kind. 'Yes, miss?' 'I'm sorry,' Beverly said. The urge to laugh had passed as swiftly as it had come. She noticed that the old woman wore a cameo at her throat. It was almost certainly real ivory, surrounded by a band of gold so thin it was nearly invisible. 'I must have rung the wrong bell.' Or rang the wrong bell on purpose, her mind whispered. 'I meant to ring for Marsh.' 'Marsh?' Her forehead wrinkled delicately. 'Yes, you see ' 'There's no Marsh here,' the old woman sai

'But ' 'Unless . . . you don't mean Alvin Marsh, do you?' 'Yes!' Beverly said. 'My father!' The old woman's hand rose to the cameo and touched it. She peered more closely at Beverly, making her feel ridiculously young, as if she should perhaps have a box of Girl Scout cookies in her hands, or maybe some tags support the Derry High School Tigers. Then the old woman smiled . . . a kind smile that was nonetheless sad. 'Why you have fallen out of touch, miss. I don't want to be the one who tells you this, a stranger, but your father has been dead these last five years.' 'But . . . on the bell . . . ' She looked again and uttered a small, bewildered sound that was not quite a laugh. In her agitation, in her subconscious but rock-solid certainty that her old man would still be here, she had read KERSH as MARSH. 'You're Mrs Kersh?' she asked. She was staggered by but she also felt stupid about than illiterate. 'Mrs Kersh,' she agreed. 'You . . . did you know my dad?' 'Very little did I k