Bag of Bones   ::   Кинг Стивен

When we started trying to have a baby and I suggested the name Kia, how that must have scared her! And I never saw.”

“Sara thought she could use you to kill Kyra if Devore played out before he could get the job done—he was old and in bad health, after all. Jo gambled that you’d save her instead. That’s what you think, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And she was right.”

“I couldn’t have done it alone. From the night I dreamed about Sara singing, Jo was with me every step of the way. Sara couldn’t make her quit.”

“No, she wasn’t a quitter,” Frank agreed, and wiped at one eye. “What do you know about your twice-great-aunt? The one that married Auster?”

“Bridget Noonan Auster,” I said. “Bridey, to her friends. I asked my mother and she swears up and down she knows nothing, that Jo never asked her about Bridey, but I think she might be lying. The young woman was definitely the black sheep of the family—I can tell just by the sound of Mom’s voice when the name comes up. I have no idea how she met Benton Auster. Let’s say he was down in the Prout’s Neck part of the world visiting friends and started flirting with her at a clambake.

That’s as likely as anything else. This was in 1884. She was eighteen, he was twenty-three. They got married, one of those hurry-up jobs.

Harry, the one who actually drowned Kito Tidwell, came along six months later.”

“So he was barely seventeen when it happened,” Frank said. “Great God.”

“And by then his mother had gotten religion. His terror over what she’d think if she ever found out was part of the reason he did what he did.

Any other questions, Frank? Because I’m really starting to fade.” For several moments he said nothing—I had begun to think he was done when he said, “Two others. Do you mind?”

“I guess it’s too late to back out now. What are they?”

“The Shape you spoke of. The Outsider. That troubles me.” I said nothing. It troubled me, too. “Do you think there’s a chance it might come back?”

“It always does,” I said. “At the risk of sounding pompous, the Outsider eventually comes back for all of us, doesn’t it? Because we’re all bags of bones. And the Outsider. · Frank, the Outsider wants what’s in the bag.” He mulled this over, then swallowed the rest of his Scotch at a gulp. “You had one other question?”

“Yes,” he said. “Have you started writing again?”

I went upstairs a few minutes later, checked Ki, brushed my teeth, checked Ki again, then climbed into bed.