A woman and a little girl, holding hands. The September breeze, cooling into autumn, whispering through cracks in freestanding walls, sighing eerily around jutting black chimneys and the ashen stumps of trees long hauled away. What little remained of Bethany’s Sin had been cordoned off for weeks by the police and fire departments as they sifted through the sea of ashes looking for clues that might explain the sudden and terrible holocaust. Kay had been questioned repeatedly, first by the police and then by reporters. To all of them she said the same thing: I don’t know. In the last week or so, the reporters had started calling the small, one-bedroom apartment Kay was renting in Johnstown—God only knew how they’d managed to get the telephone number—badgering her day and night, treating her like some sort of macabre celebrity. Recently they’d even begun hanging around the private school Laurie was attending, hoping to ask questions of her; but Mrs. Abercrombie, bless her soul, was a smart lady, and she could spot those reporters a mile away.
