When I heard a knock at my door, I resolved not to let things get too far, to keep some therapeutic distance between the two of us. I opened the door. Julia stood there in her black dress, her hair damp from the rain. She had been crying, but her eyes still glowed. I offered her my hand. She took it and walked into my arms. I pushed the door closed and let her cry as I held her. The feel of her delicate shoulder blade against my palm, the rising and falling of her chest against mine, a tear that ran off her cheek and down my neck were all intoxicating to me. No less so was the music playing in the background of our lives: her cruel husband, my cruel father, her need to escape a bad marriage, my boyhood fantasies of rescuing my mother.

Julia raised her head off my chest, turning her face up toward mine, with her eyes closed. And I did what might be forgiven, but not excused. I moved my hand to her cheek and kissed her, gently at first, then more passionately, sensing not the crossing of boundaries but the melting of them, their obliteration. Our mouths became one. And it seemed to me-and I believe to her-that our futures had also, mystically and immeasurably, been joined. My unconscious seemed to be saying that if these were the worst of circumstances in which to have found one another, they were, unavoidably and irretrievably, our circumstances. The rules of decorum that governed the great mass of relationships would have to yield. We were inevitable.

I have kissed many women in my life, but none of them made me feel the way Julia did. She ran her fingers up the back of my neck, then pulled me toward her, inside her, receiving all my passion, then pulling back, barely brushing her soft, full lips over mine, catching my lip between her teeth, gently pulling, making me feel she was hungry for me. Then her lips traveled up my cheek, and I heard her excited breathing louder than my own, felt her warm tongue slip inside my ear, move deeper, speaking about all the warm ways our bodies and souls could join into one.

Only after we had kissed a long time did I gather a fragile resolve to ease her away from me. "You wanted… to talk," I said.

She took a deep breath, let it out. She slowly opened her eyes and nodded. I took her by the hand and guided her to a couch that looked onto the harbor. The aluminum masts and gilded stems of a hundred or more sailboats caught the moonlight and swayed like a glittering crop of silver and gold on a field of blue. "Tell me," I said quietly, still holding her hand. "What was it like for you at St. Mary's tonight?"

She looked at our hands laced together, then placed her other hand on top of them. She looked back at me. "Like burying a piece of myself," she said. "I kept wishing it could have been me who died. Since the day she was born, I've had a feeling about Brooke-that she was someone extraordinary." Tears began streaming down her face. "It's horrible to say, but I felt much closer to her than I do to the boys. Even closer than I do to Tess."

Julia's recollection of her earliest reaction to Brooke was light-years from the estrangement Claire Buckley had described. Part of me wanted to resolve the discrepancy with a few questions, but it didn't seem like the time to ask them, partly because I didn't want to hear answers that would replace any part of my affection for Julia with new doubts about her. I wiped the tears off her cheek. "What other feelings did you have today?" I asked simply.

"Anger. Wanting someone to pay." She cleared her throat. "Most of all, guilt," she said.

"How so?"

She hesitated.

"You don't have to tell me anything, you know," I told her. "It's up to you."

She squeezed my hand. "I should never have exposed the girls to Billy. They didn't sign up for that risk."

Julia's suspicions clearly hadn't shifted substantially from Billy to her husband. "I understand," I said. "What do you think you should have done?"

"I should never have allowed the adoption. We weren't prepared to handle a boy with Billy's problems. And Darwin wasn't interested in being a father to him, anyhow."

" Darwin insisted," I said.

"Then I should have left," she said. "For that reason, and the others."

I felt like I had another chance to press my case for Tess's safety. "Aren't those other reasons still valid?" I asked gently. "Billy isn't at home, but the rest of the stresses still affect Tess-and Garret."

"You mean Darwin 's temper," she said. "The control issue. His violence."

"Yes."

"I've talked with my mother," she said. "I may go back to the Vineyard with her and the children."

"Good," I said.

"There's just no telling how Darwin will respond."

"I think Captain Anderson would provide police protection," I said. "At least for a while."

"Right." She didn't seem satisfied with that safety net.

"And I would be around," I said, "if you needed me."

She squeezed my hand more tightly. Then she raised my hand to her lips, kissed it. "How can I feel this close to you this fast?" she asked.

"I've asked myself the same question about you," I said.

"Any answers?"

"Blind luck," I said.

She closed her eyes and slowly moved my hand inside the "V" of her dress, so that my fingers slid naturally under the lace of her camisole and onto her breast. When they reached her nipple, it rose up for me and she made a sound of exquisite pleasure, like she had just awakened and was stretching in a warm feather bed.

Every man dreams of finding a woman who will not only yield to him, but one who will embrace and confirm him, matching every iota of his masculinity with an equal or greater measure of femininity. Julia was this rare woman.

Touching her made me want to touch her everywhere. I moved one hand to her knee, just above her hem, and the other to the back of her neck. I drew her toward me, so that I could unzip her dress. She rested her head on my shoulder, waiting and willing. But I couldn't allow myself to undress her. I ran my fingers down the edges of her spine, over the cloth. Then I kissed her cheek and sat back on the couch. "This isn't the right time," I said. "With you coming here from the church, feeling everything you're feeling, we couldn't be sure what it meant."

She nodded, almost shyly. "It's late, anyhow. I should be getting home."

We stood up. There was an awkward moment, readjusted to the fact that we wouldn't be making love.

"You're here for the night, or longer?" Julia asked.

"I'm leaving in the morning, but only for a day. Then I'll be back."

"We could meet somewhere Friday night," she said.

That felt like throwing caution to the wind. "The fact that I'm being followed won't scare you away?" I said.

"It didn't tonight," she said. "I'm more frightened by the thought of not seeing you."

"Paranoia," I said. "A fear with no basis in reality." I smiled. "I treat it all the time."

Thursday, June 27, 2002

I woke just after 5:00 a.m. with my heart racing. I flicked on the bedside light and searched for something amiss, but nothing had disturbed the elegant furnishings of my room or the peaceful harbor outside. I got up and walked to a set of sliding glass doors that gave onto a small deck. The sailboats still swayed in an easy breeze. I walked out and breathed deeply of the ocean air. The day was already warm. It was calm enough to make me nervous, and I wondered whether the quiet was the thing weighing on me. Maybe I was missing the throaty drone of tugs and barges working Chelsea 's Mystic River, the smell of overheated petroleum, the firefly headlights of the occasional early morning commuter crossing the Tobin Bridge. But something made me reject that easy answer. I walked back inside and, still thinking of Chelsea, instinctively dialed my home phone for messages. One had been left just forty-one minutes earlier. It was from Billy. My heart raced faster.