I've been sitting here ever since. It's near dawn now. I can see it coming through the window. Twice Diefenbaker has trotted over to come and see me. Checking, I suppose, to see if I am all right. To see if it is yet time for him to kick Detective--to kick Ray out of the bed. But I'm not sure I'm going to sleep again.

And if I do decide to go back to sleep, I won't take the bed away from Ray. I know from experience that it's hard to sleep well when someone you care about is far away, in an unfamiliar place on an uncomfortable bed, surrounded by strangers. Ray deserves a good night's rest. It's probably been a long time since he's had one.


I managed to find the correct version of that Nora Ephron quotation I put at the beginning of this. I keep a little notebook to write things in when they strike me, she was on page 43.

What she said was this; I think you often have the sense when you write that if you can spot something in yourself and set it down on paper, you're free of it. And you're not, of course; you just managed to set it down on paper, that's all.

So I, Maggie Davis, acknowledge that I am not free of what has happened over the past few days between Indianapolis and Chicago, any more than I can be free of the scar that will grow at the base of my skull--a small, white line with no hair that will always be visible for those who look to see.

But for those who look to see, and for those who ask about how such a mark came about, here is the story, as I understood it, set down on paper.

The End