In my father's room there were white take-out bags on the bedtray, fries and soft drinks and burgers, though it hardly mattered to him. The moral vision, similarly bisected, becomes strangely severe. Gold will suffer, my father said, but it will serve him right. When it's no longer your job to carve the empire, rule the kingdom, balance the scales of justice, often the best position left open is that of prophet. He'll turn to salt if the earthworms don't get him first, my father added.
X marks the spot.
I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about, Edwin, my mother replied. The houses haunted and the pond perfectly smooth, except near the dance pavilion where someone has just stood, wobbled for a moment, dizzy, to wade through the sickeningly hot water at the pond's edge, leaving a fan of black creases. A strand of bright green algae wrapping around one ankle. A barking dog. The ruined chimneys of Moss Cottage looking down like sentinels, all that remain of the shake-shingled hideaway where Edwina Moss delivered herself of the single endless sentence that was to be her last word on household management, after she lost her husband, her daughter, her mind.