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frequently put in long hours for which he didn’t receive extra pay. Quite often he attracted patients who didn’t have medical insurance, and as a consequence he charged them only what they could afford, a circumstance that continually irritated Victoria. Lately he’d been talking about a sojourn in Mexico—he and other medical personnel would volunteer their services to peasants who couldn’t afford doctors. He’d done this before in other countries, but this time he would be gone longer, several months perhaps.
    This was one point of agreement between Emily and her stepmother. Emily wished her father didn’t have to go on such trips. But Emily understood her father’s need to perform humanitarian services, and she didn’t think Victoria did. Victoria spoke in private to the children about how horrid it must be in such places, and insisted she’d never go to any of them because of the dirt and “all those diseased, animal-type people.”
    “They live in such ugly circumstances,” Victoria said once. “What kind of a vacation would that be for me?”
    Emily thought her father, a rugged, strong-chinned man with an oval face, the most handsome male she had ever seen. She paid little attention to the hole in one sleeve of his tan cashmere sweater or his mismatched socks, one blue and the other brown. But it concerned her that Victoria would nag him if she noticed.
    Dr. Harvey knelt by the bed and kissed Emily on the cheek. “Victoria said you were disrespectful to her today.”
    “I wasn’t!”
    “She said you slammed your bedroom door.”
    “I didn’t! At least I don’t think I did. I was mad, but tried not to show it. The woman called me a name, so I went in my room to get away from her, to avoid an argument.”
    “She didn’t mention that part.”
    “Little Miss Crazy Brat, that’s what she called me. I didn’t deserve it.”
    “I wish you could get along with her the way Thomas does. If only things could go smoother between you.”
    “I don’t like her. Never will.”
    “Well, I know Victoria is difficult at times, but you’ve got to try, Em. You’ve both got to try.” He shrugged his shoulders, said good night and left.
    Exasperated with her father, Emily wondered why he couldn’t see what she saw in Victoria—a fraud of a woman whose every pore oozed black bile. He was blinded by Victoria’s charms, caught in the web of a finishing-school spider.
    Emily curled into her blankets and closed her eyes. She drifted into a half sleep.
    Just at the threshold of sleep, a familiar visitor appeared. As always he came without announcement, a creature Emily never spoke of to anyone except Thomas.
    The Chalk Man’s arrival always followed the same pattern. The shadows in Emily’s room would grow deeper and blacker and more threatening, and the creature would emerge from wherever it lived and begin to sketch itself.
    She watched as the white-gloved hand appeared in midair. Clenched in long, slender fingers, it held a large piece of white chalk which it moved soundlessly across the darkness, drawing a face, ears, eyes, nose and mouth. The mouth bothered Emily most. An oval of black edged in white, the mouth writhed and opened and closed with a chilling, high wail, like fingernails scraping slate. The words were unidentifiable.
    Now the Chalk Man drew its torso, arms, legs and feet. More detail followed, with expert, artistic shadings. A rumpled white suit appeared with white shoes, and on the other hand, a white glove. Thus outfitted, the Chalk Man walked the blackboard of night, around and around the walls of Emily’s room. Occasionally the thing smiled, and Emily wasn’t sure she liked that either, though she guessed it was trying to be friendly. It didn’t smile insincerely in the manner of the caterer-salesman, but she found something troubling there, something she could almost recognize, but not quite.
    In a vague way the Chalk Man bore a crude resemblance to Emily’s father—a similar oval