When my father realized Chuck and I had no interest in exchanging intelligence, he turned to Pete’s girlfriend, Ellen, whose father happened to be a state trooper who lived next door to the Kilbys. Slowly, the trooper tried to ingratiate Gene into the Kilby household, occasionally bringing his name up the same way vaccines introduce low doses of a virus. But nothing could persuade Kilby to turn away from the idea that Gene had come to swallow Vernon whole.
