An old man she’d never seen had sent her a map. Late in her research the professor had come across the man’s name, and she found where he lived. He was an old man in a home who claimed to know more than he’d ever tell – over the phone he’d rasped that out to her. Then he’d laughed and started to choke. The way he spoke, this is the way she pictured him: white native, longtime shut-in, deathly, dead-on white.

So she had the man’s map, and she was beginning to think she was lost. The man must be mistaken or the place in his mind she needed to get to was gone. Or he was enamored of a lie. Or the man was having, at her expense, a last laugh.

For from where she now found herself she saw nothing, neither house nor grave, that in any way brought her closer to the figure Amy Spain.