"Don't mind if I do," Joe said, sighing histrionically. "A chair that isn't bouncing up and down will be a comfort."

"Cut it out, Joe!"

Jackie came clattering down the stairs, holding something behind her. "Ready?"

"Let's see it."

A few minutes later, Helen looked up. "Joe, take a look at this."

Joe put down the lemonade Mrs. Secord had handed him, rose from the couch and joined Helen in staring at the object.

It resembled nothing so much as a large blackish shoehorn- Helen estimated it at around fifteen centimeters long and ranging from three to six centimeters wide, with a concave side and a little hook on the narrow end.

"Some kind of brachiopod relative?"

"Not one I'm familiar with. Look at these marks here."

Joe frowned, then took the object and studied it more closely. "Well, it's definitely a fossil, and… those sure look like muscle attachment scars. But what're they doing on both sides of this thing, if it's a shell? Should run down only one side, shouldn't they?"

"That'd be my expectation, too. But if this is a bone, why is it so thin and concave? I've never even heard of anything like that."

Joe was good at visualizing anatomy-much better than Helen, in fact, who always had to sit down and sketch it out a piece at a time. His face now screwed up in concentration. "If you had a… no, no, that wouldn't make sense. Oh, but maybe… no, not that either. I suppose if…"

He turned the fossil over, examining the backside carefully. "Darn. No sign of it being a piece of something else, either, which might have explained it." He turned it over and over a couple more times, shifting his point of view as though it might suddenly become an obvious and familiar fossil from some different angle, then handed it back to Helen.

"Okay, you win, Jackie. I'm beat. Do you know what it is?"

Jackie shook her head, looking excited and trying not to-after all, she wasn't a high school girl any longer, and hadn't been for a number of years. "No, not really. I knew it didn't look like anything I'd seen before, but I was sure you people would know right away. Are you guys putting me on? You really, truly don't know what it is?"