Death in Her Hands

The morning after her dog’s disappearance, Vesta wakes up alone in her cabin. Charlie is still missing. She speculates that Ghod abducted him. Vesta considers calling Shirley or the local police, but she dismisses both ideas due to her resentment of the police. She imagines the critical voice of her late husband, Walter, and thinks about how she acquired Charlie in their old town of Monlith to combat loneliness after his death. She recalls dumping Walter’s ashes into the lake near her cabin, on land that was formerly a Girl Scout camp.

Vesta initially resolves to stay home, believing she can solve the mysteries from her cabin. She turns on the radio and listens to a program hosted by Pastor Jimmy. She then notices that her papers related to the case are neatly stacked, though she remembers leaving them scattered, and blames her faulty memory on the wine she drank. Examining a poem by the poet Blake, she realizes the blue ballpoint pen used to mark a passage matches the pen from the original note about the imagined victim, Magda. Vesta imagines finding Magda’s body and considers how she would dismember or bury it.