Mrs.

Gable looked toward the main house, and her eyes filled with something that was part pity and part a long-suppressed anger.

“You’d better see for yourself, Alvin,” she said.

And that answer, her refusal to simply tell him, told him more than any explanation could have, because it meant that whatever was happening was a thing that had to be witnessed to be believed, a thing so far outside the ordinary that even a neighbor of thirty years could not quite put it into words on a sidewalk.

Alvin thanked her, his throat tight, and he did the thing she had told him to do, though every step toward that window filled him with dread.