The Lesson of Her Death

say, Mrs. Corde, that I think we can be of real help to your daughter. Sarah has the sort of deficit that responds very well to our method of education.”
    Well, now, miss, hearing that makes me feel just jim-dandy
.
    “Shall I start Sarah’s application? There’s no fee to apply.”
    Oh, a freebie!
    “Why not?” she had asked, wholly discouraged.
    Pulling now into the driveway of her house Diane waved to Tom, standing scrubbed and ruddy beside his Harrison County Sheriff’s Department cruiser. After the two threatening Polaroids and the second murder, he had taken to marching a regular line around the backyard at various times throughout the day. He was also armed with his wife’s opera glasses, which, he explained, she bought for when they went to Plymouth Playhouse Dinner Theater. With these he’d often scan the forest for hostile eyes. He looked silly, a beefy red-cheeked young man holding the delicate plastic mother-of-pearl glasses, but Diane was grateful for the effort. There had been no more threats and the sense of violation had almost vanished.
    “Coffee, Tom?”
    He declined, gosh-thanks, and turned back to the woods.
    Jamie walked outside, slipping a T-shirt on over his thin muscular body. He was the epitome of grace and she enjoyed watching him climb on his bike and balance while he pulled on his fingerless riding gloves.
    “Where’re you off to?”
    “Practice.”
    “When’s the match?”
    “Saturday.”
    “How’s your arm?”
    “It’s like fine. No problem.”
    “Garage looks nice.”
    “Thanks. I did the windows. They were totally gross.”
    “You did the
windows?”
she asked in mock astonishment.
    “Very funny. And I found the old Frisbee.”
    “We’ll play tonight, you and me.”
    “Yeah okay. We oughta get a glow-in-the-dark one. Gotta go.” He pushed the bike forward without using his hands and coasted down the driveway as he closed the Velcro fasteners on his gloves. She watched him lean forward and his muscular legs start to pedal.
He’s going to be a heartbreaker
.
    Inside the house Sarah was playing with a stuffed animal. After Diane had delivered the news that school was over for the year, the girl glowed with Christmas-morning happiness. This bothered Diane, who saw in the girl’s face the look of a spoiled child who finally got her way.
    “The Sunshine Man … He came back.”
    “Did he now?” Diane asked absently.
    “He saved me from Mrs. Beiderbug.”
    “Sarah. I’ve told you about that.”
    “Mrs. Beiderson.” She sprang up and ran into the kitchen.
    Diane hung up her jacket. “Who’s the Sunshine Man again? Which one’s he?”
    “Mommy.” She was exasperated. “He’s a wizard who lives in the woods. I saw him again today. I thought he’d gone away but he came back. He cast a spell on Mrs. Beider—” She grinned with coy nastiness. “—Beiderson. And I don’t have to go back to school.”
    “Just for the term. Not forever.”
    Although the girl’s insistence that magical characters were real frequently irritated Diane, at the moment she wished that she herself had a Sunshine Man to watch over her shoulder. Or at least to cast a spell and cough up some big bucks for special ed tuition. As she looked through the mail she asked, “Your father call?”
    “Naw.”
    Diane went into the kitchen and took four large pork chops from the refrigerator. She chopped mushrooms and sauteed them with oregano and bread crumbs then let the filling cool while she cut pockets in the pork.
    “You sure your father didn’t call? Maybe Jamie took a message.”
    “Mom. Like
there’s
the board. Do you see any messages?”
    “You can answer me decently,” Diane snapped.
    “Well, he didn’t call.”
    Diane carefully cut a slit in the last pork chop.
    “I’m not going back to school ever again,” Sarah announced.
    “Sarah, I
told
you, it’s just for—”
    The girl walked upstairs, singing cheerfully to herself, “Never ever again … The Sunshine Man, the Sunshine Man …”
    Children. Sometimes
…
    The young woman said, “I believe it was Leon Gilchrist.”
    Cynthia Abrams was a thin sophomore, smart and reasonable and unpretentious. Corde liked her. She had long shimmering dark hair, confident eyes, earrings in the shape of African idols. She was a class officer and the campus director of ACT-UP. She was sitting forward, elbows on the low desk in the Student Union, holding a cigarette courteously away from him while she answered his