The next, she steps outside herself and sees what the rest of the world must see—a woman who has suffered great loss and has already had one breakdown in the last few months, a woman acting on “information” she dreamed. Write it out, an advisor told her once, when she came to him with an idea for a master’s thesis. If it makes sense when you write it out, it’s probably a good idea. Well, when she writes this one out, it doesn’t seem too persuasive. My cousin drowned. Unsavory people somehow managed to get the deed to her house and land. Her valuable wedding ring is missing. I found an old shoe in the weeds beside the pond that matched the one on her foot. My dead father came to me in a dream and told me to look for the answer in a secret hiding place that probably was forgotten or sealed long ago. And, of course, the secret hiding place is in the middle of a house owned and occupied by Pooh Blackwell. The evidence is, indeed, tenuous. The risk seems great, the task beyond any skills a liberal arts major might have acquired from three decades of learning and teaching English literature.
