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Since her father believed Jared was guilty, she assumed he blamed her for everything. But he never said that, never told her she was deluded, never tried to persuade her to change her testimony. He only smiled and offered strange compliments.
    When, finally, they heard the jury was coming in, more than eleven hours had passed. She sat still, rigid, her hands sweating, her pulse racing, waiting for the words which would stigmatize her for life. "Innocent on all counts." Even Schrader looked stunned, and there were sighs, some moans, then an undercurrent of angry whispers while the jurors were polled. She couldn't believe it, nor, she could see, could anyone else. Her father's expression never changed.
    Afterwards there was a strange sort of dance enacted on the courthouse lawn. A pile of leaves was smoldering in one corner; the aroma wafted back and forth as the principals strolled from interview to interview, trying to avoid each other, pausing longer where the network camera crews were set. Robinson announced that the system had broken down, that if the judge had allowed him to show Jared's films there'd have been a different verdict and right would have prevailed. The chief of the Bar Harbor police scoffed when asked if he'd reopen the case. "This verdict doesn't change anything," he said. "It doesn't create an intruder who was never there."
    Schrader held forth from the steps, forcing the cameras to come to him. Since he was short, he stood a step higher than Jared, laying one hand upon his client's shoulder, resting the other on his hip. "A dicey case," he said, "but I took it anyway. Don't like to see guys go to the slammer for stuff they didn't do." Jared said he wasn't bitter. Did he have any plans? "Yes. Grow a beard," he said. Everybody laughed.
    Her father was grave. No, he wasn't disappointed. Yes, he believed his surviving daughter. Yes, he found the verdict fair. If it was true that the police were no longer interested in looking for the intruder, he'd hire private detectives and pursue the investigation on his own.
    Then, it seemed, they all turned suddenly to her, began asking their questions all at once. "What are you going to do now, Penny?"
    "Where are you going to go?"
    "Back to college?"
    "Back to Wellesley?"
    "Have you spoken to Jared?"
    "Will you pose with him on the steps?" She shook her head, was about to turn, when a woman with crazed blue eyes and wild gray hair ran up, and planted herself a foot away. Penny, surprised, started to ask her what she wanted. "Liar! Slut!" the woman hissed, then spat ferociously in her face.
    It was six months after that, after she'd left Wellesley and secluded herself in Greenwich for a while, then moved to New York, changed her name, found a job, and began taking college courses at night—it was then, that spring, that she first began to run.
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    W eekend in Greenwich. Child comes down from Wellesley, tight-lipped as usual, tight- pussied no doubt, too. I want to grab her by her ears and shake her till she pees. "Let it flow, Child," I want to tell her, "let Thy Juices Flow." Dear Mother (or should I say Mother Dear?) looks me over like I'm a tainted fish. Her nostrils quiver. She smells naughtiness, decay. Not my bod , I know—my epidermis is immaculate. I use feminine hygiene spray, keep my underarms pristine, rinse out my mouth with pucker-power. No—what she smells is deep inside—my unhappy putrefying soul. But when I check myself out in the mirror, I can't imagine how she knows. I'm gorgeous, stunning My face alone could raise ten thousand cocks.
    Daddy-O, on the other hand, reveals nothing. He, on the other hand, pretends we're all just happy WASPs. I'm sure he has a mistress, some dusky lady stashed away in town someplace, in a little tax deduction of a penthouse he rents for her on the sly, a pied-a - terre near Sutton Place filled with shiny plants, sexy jungle plants with oily leaves, and there, on a tiger-skin rug, they fuck away in time