The Murder of Nora Winters

By Robert Trainor

On Christmas morning, Nora Winters is found shot to death in her bedroom. The previous evening, she had been talking about how she might take her own life, and since she was shot at very close range, her family initially assumes that she committed suicide. However, the police quickly discover that the gun that killed her is fifteen feet away from where her body was found. With most suicide victims, the gun is found either in their hand or very close to their body, and certainly, if the victim places the gun to the right side of their head, the gun should not end up fifteen feet to the left of their body.

The police are completely baffled by the case because it has all the elements of a classic locked-room murder mystery. The only door to the room has a deadbolt and two sliding steel bolts that are fully engaged; the two windows are securely locked from the inside of the room; and after an extensive and thorough investigation, no hidden panels in the floor, walls, or ceiling can be found. Sure, Nora Winters might have let her killer into her bedroom, but how did he leave? And the gun…the very puzzling position of the gun. Why had it been left behind two books at the far end of the room? What was the point? Since even a cursory examination of Nora Winters' body showed that she had been shot at close range, why hadn't the murderer left the gun near her body? If this person had taken the time to think about it, he could have placed the gun in a position where the medical examiner would have ruled her death a suicide. Or maybe the official ruling would have been that it was either a suicide or a murder, but given the fact that the room could not have been left without unbolting the door or unlocking one of the windows, everyone would have signed off on the death as a suicide.

Why would a murderer go to the trouble of mysteriously exiting a room and yet leave a very telltale sign that he had been there? The two things—the placement of the gun and the locked room—don't go together. If one is going to perform a Houdini-like stunt, then one might as well take advantage of what that stunt offers and leave the gun close to the victim's body. Why bring attention to oneself when it isn't necessary? Why even leave the gun behind unless you were going to place it next to the victim's body?

Detective Nick Slater is an experienced investigator who will leave no stone unturned in his search for the killer. He has five suspects—the four children of Nora Winters and Chad Winters, her husband. Gradually, Nick begins to zero in on Chad since he had a strong motive to kill his wife, and of all the suspects, he has the weakest alibi.

Eventually, after the discovery of a key piece of evidence by Nick, Chad is arrested and brought to trial. But what happens after that will prove far more shocking than anything that has gone before...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Trainor
• Release date: Feb 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224395187

Robert Trainor

Over the past twelve years (since I retired at the age of 59), I've written nineteen novels, four novellas, four non-fiction books, and seven anthologies, all of which you can find in the Kindle Store. Instead of writing a biography of myself, which seems rather irrelevant, I would prefer to write a biography of my books. Here, in the order in which they were written, is a brief sketch of the plots, themes, and subject matter of these books.1/ The Voice of the Victim describes a series of murders in a small city. I've always felt a great deal of empathy for the victims of violent crimes, especially those who are murdered by guns. What, I wondered, would these people say to us if they could speak? When reading this book, it is important to remember that my intention, from first page to last page, was to present the voice of the victim. And, to me, this voice is not a straight-line accusation of weapons and murderers but tends to veer to a pervasive mockery and total indictment of modern culture. This novel is much different than anything else I have written, and there will be many who will object to what the "voice" is saying.2/ Some Things Are Sweeter than God is somewhat along the lines of a classic murder mystery but is certainly not one of those books where the conclusion is some wild revelation that no sensible reader could ever discern beforehand. The protagonist is a forty-year-old woman lawyer who, in her role as a public defender, is required to represent a man who is accused of brutally murdering his ex-girlfriend.3/ The Road Map to the Universe is a well-constructed novel--at one time, I was a tournament chess player, and this book required a great deal of planning and analysis. Essentially, it's a highly unusual murder mystery, but the perceptive reader may be able to identify a standard plot theme lurking in the background. The Road Map also examines an interesting philosophical question: In a universe of four billion galaxies, what relevance, if any, does the human being have?4/ The Great Barrington Train Wreck, a truly offbeat social commentary, includes a unique type of murder mystery and is one of my favorite novels. Although I almost never include anything from my own life experience in my books, I was, just like the protagonist in the Train Wreck, homeless for many years. So I'm familiar with the lingo and attitude that some of the homeless have. This is a catchy, captivating book where the plot seems to materialize out of thin air until it becomes the elephant in the room. Also, to my mind, this tale could describe what happens to Holden Caulfield, the anti-hero of the Catcher in the Rye, as he approaches forty. It's not all peaches and cream! Especially when he falls in love with the daughter of a millionaire, and even more especially when he ends up on death row.5/ Your Kiss Is Like the Sweetest Fire describes a teenage romance between Jaime and Renee, who were adopted at a young age into the same family. It seems illogical to me, but in almost all states, the law views a sexual relationship between adopted siblings who live in the same family as a crime of incest--exactly as if they were related by blood. So Jaime and Renee have this difficulty to contend with, and also, their mother and father are both rather repulsive characters who are totally incapable of helping them. Wait until you meet Renee--I love her.6/ Requiem for the West is partially based on an apocalyptic poem that I wrote during the 1990's. Ten thousand hours is a lot of time to spend on a seven-hundred-word poem! Requiem is also an examination of some apparently abstract themes that seem highly relevant to me: 1/ The pervasive role of explicit sexuality in our culture and the very different ways that people react to it; 2/ The often farcical, Dilbert-like nature of the modern workplace, in this case a college; and 3/ Is doomsday just around the corner? The 1960-2000 version of myself considered a nuclear apocalypse to be inevitable, but nowadays, I'm ambivalent.7/ Frontier Justice was easy to write because once Adriana Jones arrived on page 10, she took over the book, and all I had to do was keep up with her as she overpowered every obstacle that crossed her path. I hadn't intended for that to happen, but that's the way life goes sometimes. Do I agree with, support, condone, or advocate Adriana's way of doing things? Difficult questions. Adriana is my creation, so I have to take some responsibility for her, I suppose, but I look at it this way: To be true to a character, one has to let the person speak and act in a way that is appropriate to his or her personality. I just can't legislate them into political correctness! Adriana didn't just overpower the other characters in Frontier Justice--she also overpowered me. I really like this book--I wish, as a writer, I could think of more characters who are as dynamic as Adriana.8/ A Tale from the Blackwater River is a novella that is meant to be a satire on a certain kind of story that is showing up far too frequently nowadays, but on another level, it's just kind of a humorous tale that was a lot of fun to write. This book is written in the first person by a forty-two-year-old woman named Alanda Streets. I almost published it under the pen name Alanda Streets because I thought some people might say that no woman would ever write a story like A Tale from the Blackwater River, but for those who feel that way, I hope you will ask yourself this question: If the name Alanda Streets had been on the cover of the book, instead of mine, would you have felt that a woman couldn't have written it?9/ The Blackwater Journal is another Alanda Streets novel--this time, she is only sixteen. I couldn't seem to get away from Alanda--she does have a spunky survivor's attitude towards life that appeals to me. In this book, she has to call on all her resources when her evil father imprisons her in a room and tells her that she has only a week left to live. As the days pass by, the terror mounts on her own personal death row. Does Alanda escape? Maybe so, maybe no.10/ Love Letters (Soaked in Blood) is another murder mystery that has a humorous undertone, which many will probably miss. The problem with writing a murder mystery is that anything that can be thought of has already been done about a thousand times. The only original idea left would be to have the most obvious suspect turn out to be the murderer. Think of it--that's probably never been done! And so...maybe you can guess the rest.11/ The Book of the Dead is about a man who goes to his 25th reunion and meets his high school sweetheart. The two of them embark on an impulsive twenty-four hour car ride that will take them through three southern states and bring them face-to-face with death. This is a tale where the boundaries of ordinary reality are stretched out a little bit! I'll leave it to you to decide whether The Book of the Dead is a fantasy or a reality.12/ Destroyed by Malice sees the return of a character who played a minor role in The Voice of the Victim. He's the world famous novelist Barker Drule, but unfortunately, he (and his wife) exit the book on page 1 when they are gunned down in their driveway. It isn't long before detective Jeff Willard is convinced that the murderer is a member of the Drule family. Perhaps it's Lenore, the older daughter, who was, years ago, secretly raped by her father; perhaps it's the beautiful Raylene, who wrote a novel about a rape victim that her father managed to have the publishing industry blackball; perhaps it's Ricky, the cocaine-addicted son who is desperate to get his hands on his father's money; and perhaps it's Dalton Drule, Barker's irascible eighty-two-year-old father who just happens to own the gun that was used to murder his son. In the end, when the truth finally comes out, there will be very few left to tell the tale.13/ How to Write an Imaginative Novel takes you through the whole process of writing a novel and then uploading it to Kindle. Among the many things covered are: Where will you find a plot? What is the best way to find names for your characters? How important is it to punctuate your book correctly? Is there a quick way to learn punctuation and sentence structure? What is the best way to write dialogue? What kind of things should one avoid in a novel? What is the significance of the first draft and why is it so important? How does one begin a book so that it immediately commands the reader's attention? How does one revise and edit a novel? Is it possible to create the cover for your book without spending any money? How does one convert a book to the correct format so that it can be uploaded to Kindle? And finally, how does one upload a book to Kindle?14/ I Ching 2015 contains a complete translation (minus the Confucian commentaries) of this ancient Chinese classic. Also included are detailed instructions on how to consult the I Ching using either yarrow stalks, coins, or dice. (For those who have been using coins, one should be aware that a significant error has crept into the method that many people use to cast an omen. This error, which involves using either three or four similar coins will seriously affect the accuracy of the omens you receive.) Additionally, there is extensive advice on how to interpret an omen. By using the correct method of interpretation, you will be surprised at how much clearer omens become. As part of this advice, I have posed a number of questions to the I Ching and have then interpreted the omen I received. Finally, for each hexagram, as well as many of the lines in each hexagram, I have included my own observations as to the essential meaning of these hexagrams and lines.15/ Blood and Blackmail is an elegant murder mystery with an unusual plot twist that took me some time to piece together. For those readers who enjoy the challenge of solving a crime before the final chapter arrives, this novel should provide you with a truly interesting puzzle. I doubt many people, if any, are going to see the underlying deception that runs throughout this tale because...if I say anything else, I might help the reader unravel this mystery, and I certainly wouldn't want to do that!16/ Fairy Tales by Martians takes a humorous look at the theory of evolution. Science, of course, claims that the human being originated from an amoeba that eventually became a tadpole that eventually became a frog and so on and so forth. However, I just can't conceive of the fact that ten million years ago, two frogs mated in a swamp and because of that event, I eventually arrived on the scene. What kind of a genealogy chart is that? Neither does the seven-day religious version of events appeal to me, so what I'm left with is a very cynical view of both the religious and scientific theories concerning the origins of our existence.17/ The Book of Dreams repeats a very old idea that has been used in many a novel. But here, in this murder mystery, the idea is taken to another level entirely and contains a twist that not many will see coming. The clues are there, starting with the poem in the Preface.18/ The Dark Side of the Moon is a tale about an attractive high school teacher who falls in love with one of her students. However, Carolyn Black is nervous that her sexual liaison with the student will ruin her career. Eventually, she tries to break off their relationship, but when he threatens to commit suicide, Carolyn is faced with an excruciating dilemma.19/ The Murder of Nora Winters was inspired by John Dickson Carr who wrote a number of locked-room mysteries. In this type of mystery, the murder victim is found in a room that does not allow the killer any means of exit. The doors and windows are all bolted from the inside, and it's considered very poor form for the author to create a room where there are sliding walls or secret panels. The solution to the murder of Nora Winters is, I think, relatively simple, but I've woven in enough deceit and misdirection to confuse all but the most astute readers.20/ The Vanishing Victim is a tale of a psychiatrist and a troubled woman who comes to him for counseling. What she reveals to him proves to be a confession to a brutal crime, but he is unable, because of the doctor/patient privilege, from revealing this crime to anyone, including the police. But even more troubling is that the woman's confession, although it contains a number of factual inaccuracies, turns out to have a terrifying reality of its own.21/ The Fatality Game follows a series of innocuous crimes in a rich neighborhood that seem to be more pranks than anything else. But when a woman is murdered in her bed, Detective Cody Barnes realizes that there is something evil lurking under the placid veneer of swanky mansions that are inhabited by millionaires. And when Cody becomes romantically involved with one of the earlier victims, the beautiful Lucinda Kane, the case begins to take on a life of its own that will eventually lead to the deaths of three more people.22/ How to Write an Intelligent Murder Mystery describes some of the adventures I encountered while I was writing murder mysteries (of my twenty-one novels, thirteen are murder mysteries.) This is a somewhat unusual instructional book that attempts to relate the problems encountered in the writing of a murder mystery to the more general problem of writing fiction in today's market where any new novel is almost instantaneously buried under an avalanche of new novels.23/ The Real Meaning of Life is definitely one of my favorite books. It's written in the first person by Patrick Devlan, a twenty-seven-year-old guy who writes murder mysteries. But his father, who is dying of pancreatic cancer, wants Patrick to write something that will take his readers to a "better place." Patrick decides to follow his father's advice, but a few days later, his roommate's pregnant girlfriend is murdered, and Patrick becomes entangled in a real-life murder mystery. Eventually, after his roommate is convicted of the crime and sent to death row, Patrick is faced with a dilemma that will lead him to the discovery of the real meaning of life.24/ Flight 9525 is a non-fiction book that attempts to answer the question as to why there is so much suffering in the world. For the most part, this book bypasses the usual political, psychological, and social reasons for suffering and examines the following: If God is real, then why do human beings suffer? Why would an all-merciful, all-loving, and all-powerful Being permit its creations to suffer? The usual explanations, such as the hypothesis that God granted man free will, don't answer the question at all. In fact, this is a question that's never been answered satisfactorily.25/ The Scriptwriter is the tale of a man who becomes entangled with three different women. There's the incredibly beautiful woman, the incredibly rich woman, and the incredibly homeless woman. Which one will he choose? Events, mishaps, and character flaws lead him to an interesting decision.26/ The Murder of Marabeth Waters contains a considerable amount of subtle black humor and describes the investigation that ensues after a prostitute is found strangled to death. Detective Devin Driver is quickly able to focus on a suspect; not only did this man send a threatening note to Marabeth, but also, her blood is found in his car. As it turns out, the real murderer lurks elsewhere, and unfortunately, Devin isn't a particularly perceptive detective, so it isn't surprising when the wrong person is convicted of the crime. However, even if Devin had been Sherlock Holmes on steroids, he undoubtedly wouldn't have solved this murder.27/ The Trial of Shada King--a district attorney in Hartford, Connecticut, is charged with manslaughter in the shooting death of the man who had raped her ten days before the shooting. Shada claims that she acted in self-defense, and since she was wearing a recording device at the time of the shooting, her claim of self-defense seems to be valid. But why was she wearing the recording device? The prosecuting attorney is convinced the crime scene was an elaborate stage production that was intended to deceive those who would be listening to the tape and that the victim was murdered in retaliation for the rape.28-34/ Finally, I have seven anthologies on Kindle that combine complete versions of many of the books listed above: Four Novels, 5 Novels, Four Murder Mysteries, The Blackwater Novels, Dark Tales, Six Novels, and Five Murder Mysteries. The purpose of the anthologies is that it gives the reader a chance to buy, for instance, five novels of mine at the rock-bottom price of $2.99.I spend a great deal of time revising my books. After finishing the first draft, I go through the book at least eight more times--first page to last page. Each journey through the book is slow and painstaking--no less than three hours and no more than thirty-five pages a day. From my experience, the kind of errors that pop up on some of the later readings can be rather surprising, if not downright alarming! I particularly look for inaccurate punctuation, lackluster sentence structure, and inaccurate or repetitive vocabulary. I also do not permit confusing sentences to stand--I can't imagine that any reader will want to read a sentence twice because I couldn't find a way to explain myself clearly.Finally, I would ask you all to keep an open mind about novels by an author who has no brand name. I am quite unusual because I do not advertise myself in any way, shape, or form (outside, I guess, of this little biography). My books are well-written, entertaining, and thought provoking, but they are often truly original, and I worry about the page-six syndrome. That's the point where some readers abandon a book by an unknown author because of a single sentence, idea, or attitude that seems amateurish to them. Have faith that there are some genuine diamonds in the Kindle arena and have faith that your instinct to buy one of my books was a good instinct. If you read any of my books to the finish, I think you'll feel that your time was not wasted because these novels are not cheap imitations--they are real creations.

Book preview

PREFACE

There could be no doubt that Nora Winters was insane. The question was what to do with her.

CHAPTER ONE: CHRISTMAS EVE AT THE WINTERS’ HOUSE

Christmas Eve and everyone was home for the holidays. Amazing! It hadn’t happened in five years—not since the two oldest had graduated from college. Chad Winters looked around the dining room—across from him was Nora whom he had been married to for twenty-eight years. She was definitely beginning to show signs of age—a couple of decades ago, she had been one of the most beautiful women in town. But now...she’d gained a lot of weight; she hardly ever smiled; she complained of one ailment after another; and sometimes, when she was really depressed, she would threaten to commit suicide. It was true that things had taken a turn for the better about four years ago when she met a psychiatrist who seemed to have a good effect on her, or maybe the good effect came from the antidepressant prescriptions that he wrote out for her. For a while, the pills she had been taking seemed to work wonders—back then, he’d practically felt like writing the pharmaceutical company and telling them that they’d saved Nora’s life. But these days, the pills didn’t seem to work so well anymore, and Nora would spend weeks on end grumbling about the weather or his messy habits or how the kids were just wasting their lives on frills and fads.

She was probably right about the kids, but what difference did it make? As far as Chad was concerned, most everybody wasted their lives on frills and fads. If your fad happened to bring in a lot of money, nobody would give you a lecture about what an irresponsible loser you were, even if your job was making some horrible thing like a nuclear bomb. But if you were in your room surfing the internet, then that was an entirely different story.

Looking back on it now, he could see that his affair with Josie about six years ago had been a fad—the fad of short skirts, booze, heavy sex, and secret trips to New York City. He’d been forty-two then—fifteen years older than Josie—and he had been swept away by the younger and much more attractive woman whose intense sexuality was so much greater than anything his wife could offer him. In the end, however, Josie turned out to be not much more than a character in a cheap and trashy novel—he’d had to give her five grand not to bother him anymore when he finally figured out that the fad was turning into a crass and insufferable jerk.

It was just before he broke up with Josie that Nora had discovered what she called his little indiscretion.  She hadn’t seemed too bothered by it, and in fact, it was only a couple of weeks after the affair ended that she said anything about it. By that time, Chad had assumed he had gotten away with it and wouldn’t have to sit through a tedious lecture about what a horrible person he was. I guess when you marry a man, said Nora, you should be thankful if he doesn’t have his thing hanging out of his pants when the guests are over for cocktails. It always amazed me that you never figured out a way to do the honors to Janine Terry. The way you would look at her! You don’t know how closely I watched you two—it was like going to an X-rated movie that didn’t show much skin. However, you’d have to agree that Josie Parish was a little bit much! And the color wasn’t quite right, Chad. I know we live in a day and age where anything and everything goes, but...well...you’ll just call me prejudiced and a closet fascist and I don’t know what else. But really, for a man of your age and disposition, you and Josie were quite a sight. Anyways, I’m willing to let bygones be bygones, but if you’d like some advice, the next time you decide to bolt the reservation and turn a trick or two, try to pick out someone who won’t have everyone laughing at you. That night I saw the two of you coming out of the bar in Riverside—you know, the time when she had her hand inside your pants and was slurping in your ear—it wasn’t so much that I was angry as I was embarrassed. My husband left me for that?

At the dining room table, Chad moved away from these unpleasant memories and shifted his gaze to his youngest kid, Jimmy. He had just turned fifteen and was a sophomore at Framingham High. It was hard to figure him out because he didn’t talk much and kept to himself. As is common with a lot of kids his age, the parent figures seemed to annoy him, although he never came out with anything that was especially disrespectful. Mostly, he was always skipping off to his room where he would play video games that had people running around with guns and shooting at each other. Rather alarmingly, Jimmy was really into guns, and when Chad had asked him what he wanted for Christmas, Jimmy had said the same thing that he had said the year before, which was that he wanted a Smith and Wesson handgun. Of course, Jim was way too young for something like that, but when Chad had told him that the legal age for purchasing a handgun in Connecticut was twenty-one, Jim had said, I understand that, Dad, but in Connecticut, a parent can purchase a gun for one of their kids no matter what age they are. Chad doubted that was true, but even if it was, Jimmy was going to have to hope Santa Claus brought him the gun because there was no way that Chad was about to give his son a gun. What are you so worried about, Dad? I’m not going to shoot anyone with it—all I want it for is target practice. It’ll help me if I decide to go into the Marines after high school.

Sitting next to Jimmy was Alyssa. She was two years older than Jimmy and a senior at Framingham High. She was very beautiful with long straight dark blond hair and a very curvy figure that was accentuated by her stylish form-fitting clothes. Chad couldn’t remember anyone that beautiful in his high school class, but maybe that was because when he was seventeen, mothers were still able to keep their daughters on a leash that only allowed them to flaunt their bodies in subterranean ways. But nowadays, the leash had been trashed as a tyrannical controlling device, and young women like Alyssa were advertising themselves as if they were auditioning for a hot and steamy role in some gross sexual flick like How I Lost My Virginity.

Both Chad and Nora had talked to Alyssa about the problems she might encounter from boys her own age who didn’t understand restraint and couldn’t care less about things like pregnancy. Chad knew how most of these guys thought because he had been there—when he was seventeen, he had seduced the class valedictorian in the back seat of his car, and it had never, not once, occurred to him that she might become pregnant. It had certainly occurred to him just afterwards, but before? He had a lot of other things on his mind.

But Alyssa was quite confident in her ability to fend off boys. Dad, I’m not some airhead who doesn’t understand what’s going on—I realize what boys are after. I’m really looking forward to college, and I know that if I rush into a relationship, it could ruin everything. Unlike Jimmy, who got mostly C’s, Alyssa was a straight A student, but Jimmy was of the opinion that when Alyssa talked about her schoolwork, it was just a smokescreen that was designed to deceive her parents. She’s such a little con artist, Dad. I could tell you a lot of things about Alyssa that would stop you dead in your tracks, but I’d never squeal on her.

Like what? said Chad.

I just told you—you won’t find out anything from me, but one of these days, she’s going to slip up, and when she does, you and Mom are going to go crazy. Don’t say that I didn’t warn you.

Jimmy, if she’s doing something that—

I’m not the parent around here, Dad. I was just born into this place, so you’re the one who’s got to do the dirty work and start snooping around.

Chad turned his gaze to his two older children who were sitting to his right. Ken, now twenty-seven, was what you might call a city slicker. He lived about fifty miles from New York City and ran some kind of local travel agency for rich people who wanted to go on excursions into the less traveled areas of upper New York State. He didn’t have that many clients, but the ones he did have were filthy rich, and if Chad knew his eldest son as well as he thought that he did, he probably overcharged them as much as he dared.

Even so, Ken had run into money problems during the last couple of years, and over the phone, Chad had participated in some serious begging sessions with Ken. First it was two thousand, then five, and last summer, Chad had whittled the ten-thousand-dollar request down to eight grand. Chad didn’t really care about the money because he was a marketing VP at a computer company and pulled down about three hundred and fifty grand a year. Plus, at least until recently when he’d run into a patch of atrocious luck, he really knew how to play the stock market. He wasn’t Warren Big Boy Buffet, but neither was he anybody’s fool. So money wasn’t really a problem, but still, it made him uncomfortable to be loaning out money to his son all the time. And also, when Nora found out about his loans to Ken, she threw a fit.

He’s nothing but a moocher in a sport coat, said Nora. Why don’t you just give him a hundred grand next time? You’re such a wimp.

Ken had been planning on coming to Connecticut for Thanksgiving but cancelled the trip for a reason that was never quite clear. Chad guessed that it might have something to do with his finances, perhaps even something as small change as the gas money. When Nora found out that he wasn’t coming, she had phoned him, and if Nora’s description of the conversation was at all accurate, it was surprising that Ken had come home for Christmas. The things that Nora could say when she was provoked!

Ken had called Chad at work the day after the phone call and wanted to know if his mother was alright. She seemed kind of off her rocker, said Ken.

What did she say?

She actually asked me if I had a girlfriend or whether I was going to be a sexual cripple for the rest of my life. And then she made fun of Susie Harmon—you remember her? She was that girl I went out with during my senior year of high school. She kept calling her that flat-breasted thing from the other side of the tracks. And then she started going into this peculiar rant about orgasms and wanted to know if I had ever had one or whether I was a virgin. I think you should get her checked out, Dad. There’s something wrong with her. Forgive me for saying it, but she’s had something wrong with her for a long time, and it’s gotten a whole lot worse over the last couple of years.

No kidding! As if Chad didn’t know. Ken, she didn’t talk to you about...about any of the money issues or anything? According to Nora, that was the only thing she had talked to Ken about. No...well, right at the beginning of the conversation, she said that I was a sponger, but I told you I was going to pay you back—all I need is a little time.

Sitting next to Ken was Eileen who would be twenty-five in about a month. Four years ago, during the summer after she graduated from college, she’d gone on a hiking trip along the Appalachian Trail with her college roommate, Eva Stoll, and the next thing Chad and Nora knew, they received a phone call from Eileen who was at Eva’s parents’ house in Oregon. Eileen told her parents that she really liked it in Oregon and planned to stay for a while. Hopefully, she could find a job and maybe settle down out there.

Chad and Nora were dumbfounded—Eileen had an excellent job as a grade school teacher lined up in a neighboring town and had even made a deposit on an apartment. Don’t worry about it, Dad. I’ll be able to get the deposit back, and Eva knows a place that’s looking for graphic designers. I realize I don’t have any experience in graphic design, and I certainly didn’t take any courses in it at college, but Eva says that doesn’t matter because I can be hired as an apprentice, and she knows the person who does the hiring.

It wasn’t long before Nora became suspicious. She pulled out a scrapbook that had photos of Eileen in college, and she began to notice that Eva was in a lot of them. Nora, to put it charitably, was not a master of political correctness, and the previous Christmas, there had been a conversation at the dinner table that constantly skirted the edges of disaster before it plunged into the abyss. It began when Eileen mentioned that she and Eva had just found a new apartment that they were excited about.

And so, said Nora, this is what? The third time that you and Eva have moved together?

Actually, said Eileen, I think it’s the fourth.

That is certainly most peculiar, said Nora.

It’s just that we haven’t found a place that we’ve really liked yet, but I think this one is perfect—it has a lovely view of—

That’s not what I’m talking about, said Nora. I just think it’s very peculiar that every time you move, Eva also moves.

What’s so strange about that? said Eileen, with a puzzled air.

"Who ever heard of such a thing? I’ve had roommates, Eileen, and when one of