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“Must have hit that by accident.”

“I’m sure. Now turn it off.”

He did so with no argument. “Now it really is just the two of us. So satisfy my curiosity.”

“All right.” I took a dramatic pause—the kind that usually worked with clients before you unveiled the ad campaign they’d come to see—and then led with two lies followed by the stone truth.

“I don’t know why someone keeps bringing her stroller back. That’s number one. I don’t know why she left that crazy will. That’s number two. And here’s number three, Deputy Pelley: I didn’t kill her. The inquest goes a long way toward proving she died of natural causes. The toxicology report will go the rest of the way.”

I hoped it would. Hoped that the ghost twins hadn’t somehow gotten into her head and compelled her to swallow a bunch of her heart meds so they could jump to a marginally more healthy host. You’d think a tox report showing she’d ingested too many pills would run counter to their best interests, and you would be right… but they were children.

“Now I think you should go.” I stopped rolling the stroller. “And take this thing with you.”

“I don’t want it,” he said, and seemed surprised at the vehemence in his own voice. He knew something was wrong with it, oh yes. He started out of the garage, then looked back. “I’m not done with you.”

“Oh for God’s sake, Andy, just do something else. Go fishing. Enjoy your retirement.”

He went back to his truck, got in, revved the engine, and peeled out hard enough to leave a rubber tattoo on the courtyard pavers. I thought I might as well go back to the gazebo… at least until the earworms started up again.

Not really earworms. Snakes. Snakes in my head, two of them, and if I didn’t do what they wanted, they’d inject their poison from sacs that never emptied.

In a way I didn’t blame Pelley for his suspicions. Allie’s lawyer, Rutherford, probably had some of his own. The whole thing was wrong. The most wrong thing of all was my current wretched position. What was unpleasant today would be terrible tonight. They were stronger at night. What had Jim the bridge keeper said? Dusk, you know. Real things seem thinner then.

It was true. And once night comes, the wall between real things and a whole other plane of existence can disappear completely. One thing seemed sure—any chance of contacting my dead son was gone. The old cop had broken the spell. Best to just sit for awhile, looking out at the Gulf. Try to get Pelley—I’m not done with you—out of my mind. Think about what to do while I still could think.

When I got to the gazebo I just stood there, looking in. Pelley wasn’t the only one not done with me, it seemed. Tad—or someone—had made contact after all. The snake pole was no longer leaning against the railing. It was lying on the gazebo’s floor. The litter of old lifejackets had been pushed aside. Scratched into one of the planks—by the sharp point of the snake pole’s hook, I had no doubt—were two letters. A third had been started but left incomplete.

I looked at those letters and knew what I had to do. It had been staring me in the face all along. Jacob and Joseph—Heckle and Jekyll, Bad and Badder—weren’t as all-powerful as they seemed. In the end they only had one link to the world of the living now that their mother was gone.

The two letters scrawled on the plank were PR. The one that had been started and then abandoned was the slanted bar of an A.

Pram.

If it could be all finished and done with when it’s done, then it may as well be done quickly.

That was Macbeth’s idea about such matters as this, and he was a thinking cat. I believed I might—might—be able to deal with my two hybrid harpies if I acted fast. If I didn’t, and the thought-snakes burrowed deeper into my mind, I might end with only two choices: suicide or a life as their surrogate father. As their slave.

I went back to the house and into the garage, just ambling along: look at me, not a care in the world.

The thoughts started up at once. I no longer need to tell you what they were. I took hold of the stroller’s handles and rolled it back and forth, listening to the hellish squeaking. If I couldn’t get rid of them I’d oil that bad wheel. Of course I would. More! I’d drape different shirts over the backs of the chairs! Put different shorts on the seats! When I took up residence in the Bell house (which would become the Trenton house), I would talk to them. I would turn down their beds at night and read to them from In the Night Kitchen, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, Corduroy. I would show them the pictures!

“How are you, boys?”

Good, good.

“Do you want to go for a ride?”

Yes, yes.

“All right, why don’t we do that? I just need to take care of a couple of things. I’ll be right back.”

I went in the house and grabbed my phone off the kitchen table. I checked the county tide chart and liked what I saw. It was going out, and would be at dead low shortly after 11 AM. Soon.

I was still wearing my workout shorts and a tee-shirt with the arms cut off. I dropped the shirt on the floor, kicked off my sandals, and hurried upstairs. I put on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. I jammed on a Red Sox hat. I had no boots, but in the downstairs closet I found a pair of galoshes. They were Greg’s, and too big for me, so I went back upstairs and put on three more pairs of socks to bulk up my feet. By the time I was back downstairs, I was sweating in spite of the air conditioning. Outside, in the August heat, I would be sweating even more.

Andy Pelley said they’d driven the snakes to the northern end of the Key, where those that didn’t burn had drowned, but he had also said the line of beaters probably hadn’t gotten all of them. I had no idea if the Js could call those that might be left. Maybe they couldn’t, or maybe there weren’t any at all after forty years, but I had dressed for snakes just in case. One thing I did know is that Florida is a reptile-friendly environment.

I looked under the sink and found a pair of rubber kitchen gloves. I yanked them on and went back out to the garage, pasting a big smile on my face. I’m sure if anyone had heard me talking to that empty stroller, they would have thought me as crazy as Allie Bell. But it was just me. And them, of course.