Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
The tension wore on him all day. It stacked, like thunderclouds mounting along the horizon, bringing with them a building sense of pressure and darkness, a throb of
electrical potential. Only the pressure and throb built inside his head and the stabs of lightning were firing behind his
eyes. By midafternoon his headache was so intense he couldn’t study. The words on the page surged and eddied like a cloud
of sparrows.
He was bent over a book he couldn’t read in the kitchen, late into the day, darting nervous looks at the telephone. He expected
it to ring, felt, somehow, that if Jayne Nighswander was dead, someone would call. Maybe King Sorrow would call himself! If
such a thing occurred, Arthur thought dragon smoke would trickle through the listening holes in the receiver.
When it did finally ring, he almost screamed. But it was only the March of Dimes, asking if he could give five dollars to
change a life.