It should've been funny. She wished she could see it as funny. But all she could think about as she headed downstairs was that Carly was going to manipulate the other two adults in the house until they ended up with some shoe-chewing, puddle-making, middle-of-the-nightwhimpering canine.

She liked dogs, damn it. But she just wasn't ready to take on another responsibility.

She knew Ava planned to take her son on a trip out West this summer. She deserved it, absolutely. And it meant ten days where there was no one around to run to the store, the bank, the dry cleaner's, to haul Carly, to do all the endless errands.

She already had an active seven-year-old and an agoraphobic to tend to. Phoebe didn't think it made her a heartless monster not to want to add a puppy to the mix.

But, of course, she felt like one, so when she opened the front door to go out, her scowl was already full-blown.

Duncan came up the last step to the portico. "That's timing."

"What are you doing here? You didn't get my message? I'm sorry, but-"

"No, I got it. I'm going with you."

"To the funeral home?" Shaking her head, she closed the door firmly behind her. "No, you're not. Why should you? You didn't know him."

"I know you, and you shouldn't go alone. Why should you?"

"I'm perfectly capable."

"A reason you could, but not why you should. If it irritates you so much to have me along, you'll just have to pretend I'm not there. You don't go into something like this by yourself. That's stupid, and you're not."

Phoebe yanked out her sunglasses, shoved them on. "Simple competence and responsibility aren't stupidity, thank you very much."

"Okay." Hair trigger, he thought again. Why did he like that about her? "Do you want to stand out here debating the issue, or do you want to go do this thing?"

"I'm not going to drive up to this poor boy's viewing in a Porsche and walk in with some rich guy in Armani."

"First." He stepped aside, gestured. There was a black sedan of some sort at the curb. "Second, this is Hugo Boss, or maybe Calvin Klein. I can't keep that sort of thing straight-so now that I think about it, it may be Armani. And I may be rich but I grew up not two spits from where that kid spent his short sixteen years. Not in a mansion on Jones. So don't call the pot, honey."

She stared a moment, then shook her head. "A few minutes ago something that should've made me laugh just couldn't. Now this just strikes me as funny. Or maybe it's just ridiculous."

She reached forward, flipped back the side of his jacket to find the label. "I was right about the designer. Never test the mother of a minifashionista."

"Points for you."

"No, for you." Irritable and let down, she thought. Yes, she knew the signs. "Thanks for coming to go with me. I was keeping the mad on the front burner so I wouldn't feel too much of the sad. And I neglected to remember one thing."

"Which one thing?"

"This isn't about me." She stepped down. "So, you've got a shiny black sedan. Sort of dignified."

"I thought about bringing the pickup, but that seemed wrong. And the SUV's just too big." He shrugged as he opened the car door. "I'm a guy. I have cars. It's what we do."

"As I have a car that is well on its way to becoming a heap, I appreciate being able to go in one of your manly fleet." She put a hand on his over the door handle. "I'm used to going alone, and I suppose that leads me to think I should. But I don't always want to, and I also appreciate you figuring that out before I did."

Because she looked as if she needed it, Duncan leaned down to touch his lips to hers. "I'm making a study of figuring you out."

The funeral home was small, the parking lot already crowded with cars and people. Phoebe saw reporters on the edge of the property. Some were doing interviews, others trying to hunt them up.

"Probably another way in," Duncan commented.

Avoiding the press was priority one, so she'd already prepared for it. "There's a side door, I checked. I thought I'd slip in and out that way. Five minutes. There'll be representatives from the department here.

That's SOP on a homicide-and in this case, it's image, too. I'm not officially here."

"Got it." He found a place on the street, then glanced down at her heels. "Can you hike a block in those?"

"I'm a girl. It's what we do."

When they were on the sidewalk and he took her hand, she looked up at him. And for the second time since she'd met him, Phoebe thought, Oh, well. Damn.

"What?"

"Nothing. Nothing." She looked away again.

Hell of a time for her heart to start thumping, she decided, hell of a time for it to trip and fall. They were on their way to pay their respects to the mother of a dead boy. And she stumbled face-first into love.

It made no sense at all. "Sure you want to do this?"

She knew she didn't. If she couldn't face the idea of training a puppy, how the hell was she supposed to deal with falling in love? But, of course, since he couldn't read her mind, he wasn't speaking of the big, long drop she'd just taken.

"I want to do it, for Charlie and his mother. And I guess part is about me. I need the ritual of it. I don't do well when I'm mad and sad, and I'm having a hard time putting either, or both, of those feelings away for very long."

Slipping into the side door was simple enough. But before Phoebe could congratulate herself on avoiding the gauntlet out front, she found herself faced with another inside.

A group of people clustered in and around a small parlor to the side of the main viewing room. The squeak of the door had heads turning. Conversations stopped instantly.

They weren't the only white faces, Phoebe noted. A few were scattered in. But her face had been on television. She saw recognition in some of the stares aimed her way, and resentment in others.

The crowd parted for a tall man, or maybe it parted for the anger pumping off him. "You got no place here. You get the hell out before-"

"You don't speak for me." Opal pushed forward. She looked a decade older than she had in the diner, with her eyes sunken dark in her face as if they'd never find light again. "You don't speak for my boy or for me."

"This here's for family. It's for neighborhood."

"You going to speak to me of family now, my brother? Where was my family when I needed them? You were up in Charlotte. You weren't here in the neighborhood. You don't speak for me." She drew herself up. "Lieutenant MacNamara."

"Mrs. Johnson, I'm sorry to intrude. I wanted to pay my respects to you and Charlie. I won't stay."

"Lieutenant MacNamara." Opal stepped forward and embraced Phoebe. "Thank you for coming here," she said quietly. "Thank you for not forgetting."

Emotion flooded Phoebe's throat, stung her eyes, ached in her heart. "I won't ever forget."

"Would you come with me, please?" Clutching Phoebe's hand, Opal turned. The man who'd spoken stood barring the way. "Don't you shame me. Don't you shame me so that this is the last time I look at your face."

"Your sons are dead, Opal."

"My sons are dead. And I have something to say." She walked through the crowd of mourners to the front door.

Her fingers twined in Phoebe's trembling ones. "Opal-"

"I've been afraid of so many things," Opal said. "Most all my life.

Maybe, I'd been braver things'd be different. I don't know, and it's hard not to question God's will. But I'm going to do this one thing, this one thing. And maybe, maybe, I won't be so afraid."

When she stepped out the front door with Phoebe, reporters shouted out, cameras whirled. Priority one, she thought, had been thoroughly breached. But there was a woman who'd lost her sons, who was clinging to her, who didn't give a damn about protocol.

"I got something to say." Opal's voice cracked, and her hand tightened like a vise on Phoebe's.