When Anderson finally woke up, it was almost ten A.M. and most of the lights in the place were on – Central Maine Power had gotten its shit together again, it seemed. She walked around the place in her socks, turning off lights, and then looked out the front window. Peter was on the porch. Anderson let him in and looked closely at his eye. She could remember her terror of the night before, but in this morning's bright summer daylight, terror had been supplanted by fascination. Anyone would have been scared, she thought, seeing something like that in the dark, with the power out, and a thunderstorm stomping the earth and the sky outside.

Why in hell didn't Etheridge see this?

But that was easy. The dials of radium watches glow in the day as well as in the dark; you just can't see the glow in bright light. She was a little surprised she had missed the green glow in Peter's eye on the previous nights, but hardly flabbergasted … after all, it had taken her a couple of days to even realize the cataract was shrinking. And yet . . . Etheridge had been close, hadn't he? Etheridge had been right in there with the old ophthalmoscope, looking into Peter's eye.

He had agreed with Anderson that the cataract was shrinking … but hadn't mentioned any glow, green or otherwise.

Maybe he saw it and decided to unsee it. The way he saw Peter was looking younger and decided he didn't see that. Because he didn't want to see that.

There was a part of her that didn't like the new vet a whole hell of a lot; she supposed it was because she had liked old Doc Daggett so much and had made that foolish (but apparently unavoidable) assumption that Daggett would be around as long as she and Peter were. But it was a silly reason to feel hostility toward the old man's replacement, and even if Etheridge had failed (or refused) to see Peter's apparent age regression, that didn't change the fact that he seemed a perfectly competent vet.