That was when Romy put down her fork and said, to her pie, in a small clear voice, "You're the Story Lady."
Hobie said, "Romy, what—"
"She is. She is, Daddy. I knew it on Thursday. I knew it when she said 'Oh, well.' She says 'Oh, well' when the pig falls in the creek. And she said 'Questions are cheaper than the answers.' That's the fox. That's the fox in the hen one." Romy turned and looked at Cass, finally, straight on, and her dark eyes were brimming. "You are. Aren't you. You're her."
There are moments, Cass would think later, when you can either tell the truth or protect yourself, and you don't get to do both, and you don't get long to choose. She thought of Mrs. Sunderman's retired schoolteacher, the boy following him home from the Kroger. She thought of a little girl calling a telephone number every night in the dark. Hi, it's R again.
"Yes," Cass said. "I'm her."
Romy did not shriek or bounce. Cass had braced herself for that, the way children shriek when they meet the man in the Santa suit. Instead the little girl let out a long breath, the way you let out a breath when you have been carrying something heavy up a flight of stairs, and leaned sideways until her head was resting against Cass's arm. Just resting there. As if she had been meaning to do it for months.
Across the table, Hobie Elkins had gone a strange color.
"The phone number," he said. "The library thing. That's you?"
"That's me. On Fridays."
"She calls that every night." He said it slowly, like a man adding up a bill and not liking the total. "Every single night. Sometimes twice. I thought—I just figured it was a tape. A machine. I didn't think there was a person."
"There's a person," Cass said. "There's a person who listens to the messages, too."
She watched him understand that. She watched it go all the way down.
"Romy," Hobie said, in a voice that was not quite steady, "go ask the man in the kitchen if he needs any help."
"He doesn't need any help."