The Lesson of Her Death

around the house—tangled woods, pine needle dunes, a couple deep wells and plenty of dirt soft enough for a shallow grave. Wynton Kresge, stitched and in agony, strode through the same fields. As much as Corde, he dreaded finding asmall overturn of earth. Bringing such news about a child to her father was unthinkable to him; still he searched frantically. Other deputies joined in, even Lance Miller, wheezing against the grip of the elastic tape around his ribs. Jim Slocum and two off-duty New Lebanon deputies, entitled to be home with beer, wives and the tube, also combed the scruffy landscape.
    Corde staggered through grass and whips of thin branches. He scrambled and shouldered his way through head-high brush. He fell over a cruelly hidden arc of barbed wire and bloodied his good palm to save his jaw. Every reclining blotch of pink seen through the weeds was a well of agony, every distant yip of a dog or owl’s hollow call. Once Corde cried hard as he leapt through tall grass to what turned out to be a beige IGA bag filled with empties.
    “Sarah, Sarah?” he called in a whisper and continued across a stand of trees into another field, which was a dozen acres of fresh-plowed dirt.
    By seven the sun is low, and narrow shadows of trees stretch out for yards and yards. Bill Corde sits on a hillock of chunky earth covered with dandelions and catnip and stalks of milkweed. His voice is gone, his strength too. He reaches out and affectionately strokes a yellow leaf in a wholly mad way. He thinks he should be searching the fields but he knows it is useless. He can do nothing, nothing but sit and mourn his daughter, and another loss too, for Sarah’s death will in an obscure, brutal way also poison the life he shares with Diane, and that with Jamie. The three of them will now be wedged forever apart.
    While he searched, hope had been his only instrument and now it too is gone.
    He sits for ten minutes in this paralysis then watches as a police cruiser rocks over the uneven ground toward him, Lance Miller cautiously piloting. It stops on an incline. The door opens. Diane gets out.
    Then Sarah behind her.
    Corde stands uneasily and steps forward. He hugs the girl hard, embracing then wholly encompassing her. “Honey, honey, honey!” he cries. His intensity begins to confuse her and he forces himself to grow nonchalant. Then a giddiness, which is not faked, sets in. He laughs hard and squeezes her hand.
    Diane explains that Sarah came running up the road to their house twenty minutes before. She whispers to Corde, “She’s shaken up bad. She saw Gilchrist attack Ben and she ran and hid at the school. Then she came home on foot.” Corde cocks an anxious eyebrow and Diane reads the signal. She mouths, “She’s fine. He didn’t touch her.”
    Diane then nods toward the ambulance parked at the entrance to Gilchrist’s driveway. “They gave her a pill that will keep her relaxed. Didn’t they, honey?”
    “I feel sleepy, Mommy.”
    Although there are a thousand questions he wants to ask, Corde knows not to pursue this conversation with his daughter now. He says, “Almost suppertime. How about we go home and fire up the barbecue?”
    “Okay, Daddy. You hurt your hand.”
    “It’s nothing.”
    They start toward the Dodge in this holiday atmosphere but the weight of the events is suddenly too much for Sarah. She is staring at Gilchrist’s house as if gazing at a friend who has betrayed her. Although it is at some distance Corde slowly steps between her and the house on the slim chance that she might see blood. “He hurt Dr. Breck, Daddy. The Sunshine Man hurt Dr. Breck. I thought he was my friend.”
    “It’s all right, honey. You’re going to be all right.”
    “I feel sleepy. I lost my backpack.”
    “We’ll get it later, honey.”
    “I left it in Dr. Breck’s car. It has my tape recorder in it. Dr. Breck made me run when the Sunshine Man …” Her tiny voice fades.
    Diane’s fingertips rise slowly to her lips but she isdetermined not to reveal any more horror in front of the girl. She forces a smile onto her face.
    Corde asks Diane, “How’s Breck?”
    She hesitates. Corde knows she’s considering if she should admit the existence of this knowledge. “I called the hospital,” she whispers. “He’ll live. Hundreds of stitches.”
    Sarah looks groggily away. “I don’t like it here, I’m afraid he’s going to come back to his house.”
    “Who?” Diane asks.
    “The Sunshine Man.”
    Corde