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this to the fund; and received a duplicate of the previous letter, thanking her for her generosity. But nothing from Johnston. She realized she hadn’t heard from Johnston in some time. Was he too busy for her, now? Had something in her last, rather brief letter offended him?
    She thought, relieved That’s that.
     
    I N M AY, in the sudden warmth of a glowing mid-morning sun, she happened to glance out a front window of her house to see a car being driven slowly past. Out-of-state license plates. Was the driver looking toward her house? She watched as the car continued along the road, gathering speed, took a right turn and disappeared.
    She lived, in Olean, in what was called a “development” at the edge of town, a suburban neighborhood now at least twenty years old, of medium-priced, attractive homes, split-level contemporaries, mock-colonials, with identical acre-lots and disfiguringly wide two-car garages and asphalt driveways. Her house was stucco and brick, somewhat shabbily overgrown with wisteria and English ivy. Forsythia bloomed in the front yard. Along the road were newly budded spruce trees planted at measured intervals. In the air was a heady fragrance of wet grass and sunshine.
    She’d opened the front door, to look out. She closed it, and retreatedto the living room, indecisively, watching through the plate-glass “picture window” (as the realtor had called it) without knowing what she was watching for. She saw herself, a figure in a split-level American house on a suburban street she could not have identified. She saw herself, a woman both girlish and middle-aged, straggling shoulder-length blond hair faded to a smudged-looking gray-brown, her face plain, shiny, with puckers beside her mouth and lashless eyes, her quite fit, healthy body grown thick-waisted, and her upper thighs disconcertingly heavy. She wore a soiled white Orlon pullover sweater, her usual jeans, and badly water-stained running shoes. She backed away from the window to observe, from a short distance, the out-of-state car, an economy Toyota, returning, this time parking at the curb. She saw a man climb out of the car, in a canvas jacket, a baseball cap, jeans, a lean dark-skinned man with glasses; his knees appeared to be stiff, he walked with a limp, self-consciously up the flagstone walk to the front door. His movements were deliberate and slow. He held his arms oddly, bent at the elbows, fingers slightly out-spread. In the harsh sunshine, the lenses of his glasses shone. See how I am being open about this? I am not dangerous. My hands are in full view. Unarmed.
    Quickly she retreated to the rear of the house, to her study. She shut the door. She was breathing with difficulty, a roaring in her ears. Morning light flooded the study, somehow she’d expected darkness, a refuge. On her computer, on her desk, a screen saver dreamily whirled pastel planets.
    She heard Rick answer the door. Rick! She’d forgotten he was home, this was a Saturday. She heard no voices, only a murmur. Then came Rick loping along the hall. “Mother? Mom?” Without hesitation he pushed the study door open. She was standing very still. Not by her desk, nor by one of the crammed floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, but in an alcove of the L-shaped room, on the far side of the closet, where cartons and excess books had long been gathering dust. Rick stared at her. She saw the shock in his smooth boy-face. “Mom? Why are you hiding?”

I’m Not Your Son,
I Am No One You Know
    D ON’T MAKE EYE contact my brother warned.
    They’ll be waiting just inside. Don’t look at them.
    Deftly my brother punched in the code. Knew the code by heart. I had to be impressed, this was my younger brother and seemed possessed of a grim knowledge of which I was ignorant.
    A hefty double door with inset wire-lattice windows. Overhead, a video monitor. As soon as my brother punched in the code, the doors slid open and we stepped inside and at once the doors slid shut behind us. Two,