There were the rose petals, of course, the ones which had come by way of Carol . . . but had they meant anything? Once it had seemed so—to the lonely, almost lost boy he had been, it had seemed so—but the rose petals were long gone. He had lost them right around the time he’d seen the photograph of that burned-out house in Los Angeles and realized that Carol Gerber was dead. Her death cancelled not only the idea of magic but, it seemed to Bobby, the very purpose of childhood. What good was it if it brought you to such things?
