"I heard about it after I got here. It seemed like a good place. So I went up there with my little shovel. No dice, Tal. I dug up most of the lake shore. I dug a hundred holes. See how nice I am to you? That's one more place where it isn't. Later on George let me use it for a while before he sold it. It's nice up there. You'd like it. But it's clean." "Thanks for the information." "I'm keeping an eye on you, Tal. I'm interested in your progress. I'll keep in touch." "You do that." "Blackman runs east off Delaware. It starts three blocks north of here. Butternut must be about fourteen blocks over. It's not hard to find." "Thanks." I turned on my heel and left him. It was dusk when I headed out Blackman. I found Butternut without difficulty. I found the blue house and parked in front. As I went up the walk toward the front door the first light went on inside the house. I pushed the bell and she opened the door and looked out at me, the light behind her, child in her arms. "Mrs. Rorick?" "I'm Mrs. Rorick," she said. Her voice was soft and warm and pleasant. "You were Cindy Kirschner then. I was a friend of Timmy Warden in prison camp." She hesitated for a moment and then said, "Won't you come in a minute." When I was inside and she had turned toward the light I could see her better. The teeth had been fixed. Her face was fuller. She was still a colorless woman with heavy glasses, but now there was a pride about her, a confidence that had been lacking in the picture I had seen. Another child sat on a small tricycle and gave me a wide-eyed stare. Both children looked very much like her. Mrs. Rorick did not ask me to sit down. "How well did you know Timmy, Mrs. Rorick?" "I don't think he ever knew I was alive." "In camp, before he died, he mentioned a Cindy. Could you have been the one?" "I certainly doubt that." It confused me. I said, "When I mentioned him you asked me to come in. I thought--" She smiled. "I guess I'll have to tell you. I had the most fantastic and awful crush on him. For years and years. It was pathetic. Whenever we were in the same class I used to stare at him all the time. I wrote letters to him and tore them up. I sent him unsigned cards at Easter and Valentine Day and Christmas and on his birthday. I knew when his birthday was because once a girl I knew went to a party at his house. It was really awful. It gave me a lot of miserable years. Now it seems funny. But it wasn't funny then. It started in the sixth or seventh grade. He was two grades ahead. It lasted until he graduated from high school. He had a red knit cap he wore in winter. I stole it from the cloakroom. I slept with it under my pillow for months and months. Isn't that ridiculous?" She was very pleasant. I smiled back at her. "You got over it."