"I'll be there," I said.

I let myself into the main house and walked up to Julia's room. Her door was open, but the lights were out, and the room was almost pitch black.

"Don't turn on the light," she whispered from bed. "Just close the door."

I did as she asked. "You like it when I can't see," I said.

"I'll be your eyes," she said. "I'm on my stomach. I have two pillows under my hips and another one I can bite down on, if I need to. Is that clear?"

I felt my way toward the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress. I reached out. My hand glided over the velvety smooth skin of Julia's lower back. I sighed. "We have to talk about something," I said.

"After," she said.

I let my hand move to the even softer curves of her ass before I summoned the resolve to pull away. "No," I said. "We need to talk first." I felt her pulling the sheet over her and reaching for the bedside lamp.

"What's going on?" she asked, squinting at me in the lamplight. She was holding the edge of the sheet just below her breasts.

I looked away, in order to focus my thoughts. The walls of the room were covered with pretty oil paintings of the ocean and marshes and with black-and-white photographs of Julia as a little girl and young woman. "I got some medical records in the mail from New York today," I said.

"And?" she said.

I looked back at her. She had drawn the sheet to her chin. I didn't see any reason to be subtle. "I know about the vasectomy," I said. "I know that Darwin didn't father the twins."

Julia looked at me blankly, as if she hadn't decided whether to respond directly or to be evasive.

"Why didn't you tell me during the investigation-me, or North Anderson?"

She nodded to herself, then looked back at me. "This may not make a lot of sense to you, but I didn't say anything because I promised Darwin I never would. I promised him before the twins were born, when he was pressuring me to get an abortion. Keeping what had happened a secret seemed to be the only thing that mattered to him." A bitter smile played across her lips. "I swore on Brooke's and Tess's lives."

"You should have told us," I said. "And not just so we could interview the twins' biological father. A man like Darwin might feel you forced him into a situation he didn't want to live with. He might have decided to fix things his own way. It goes to his motive."

"When you bury the truth the way Darwin and I agreed to," Julia said, "it's almost as if it becomes untouchable. Like it doesn't exist, anymore. I didn't even think of it as relevant to what happened. We were all so focused on Billy as the guilty one."

"When we had lunch together in Boston, at Bomboa," I said, "you asked me whether I thought Darwin was capable of destroying his 'flesh and blood.' Why did you choose those words?"

" 'Why did I choose those words?' You sound like a detective," she said.

"I'm no detective. I just want to know. Why those words?"

"No reason. I didn't mean it literally. It's a cliché. I meant his children." She paused. "They are, legally. I mean, we're married."

"And you still say the letter that Claire found… was to your therapist, not the man you got pregnant by."

She looked at me askance. "Now I get it," she said. "You don't believe me anymore. About anything."

I didn't respond.

"Because I didn't tell you everything about my sex life?” she half-shouted.

"Quiet," I said. "The boys."

"Because I didn't tell you," she said, barely keeping her voice down, "that my husband was so soured on the world and so controlling that he wouldn't give me children? I didn't spill my guts and tell you how it feels being treated like a pretty thing that's fun to fuck, knowing you'll never be a mother?" She shook her head. "This may come as a news flash, Frank, but I've been lonely. And scared. It hasn't been easy living with Darwin. So when I met someone a couple years ago who seemed to care about me, I reached out to him. I thought there was a chance we could have a life together. I got pregnant, and he couldn't handle it. We stopped seeing each other."

"Who was he?" I asked.

"I can't say," Julia said. "He's an acquaintance of Darwin's. He's very well known." She paused. "He was at Brooke's funeral. We didn't even speak."

"I'm supposed to believe you had a sexual relationship with an acquaintance of your husband's, bore his children, and have no contact with him now?"

"You know what I can't believe?" she said. "Where do you get off thinking that everything that happened to me before you arrived on the scene is your business? Have I asked you for a list of every woman you've fucked?" She looked away. "Leave me alone," she said.

"Julia…"

"Get out," she said. "Just get out."

23

Garret was standing in his doorway when I stepped into the hall. "Rough night?" he said. He was dressed in blue jeans, no top. He had every bit of the muscular definition Billy did, including a chest like a welterweight fighter and a washboard abdomen. He seemed jumpy-maybe worried, maybe excited.

I wasn't happy that the heat I had generated with Julia had reached him. "Looks like that's how it's ending up," I said. "Sorry we woke you."

"I wasn't that tired," he said.

I nodded toward his room. "Want to talk?"

"You're probably all talked out," he said.

I wanted to reassure Garret that things weren't falling completely apart, even though I was worried they were- first with Billy, now with Julia. Both within about twenty-four hours. "Actually, I wouldn't mind a little company," I said. "I won't take much of your time."

"Cool," he said. He backed into his room.

I followed him. He hadn't gotten around to organizing his things; boxes overflowed with clothes, photo albums, a few long-lensed cameras, hundreds of film canisters. I took a seat at his desk.

"It's a total mess in here," he said. "Embarrassing." He started picking up, piling everything into his closet. "This is a hard time for my mother," he said, glancing at me.

"I would think so," I said.

"Not just recovering from the beating and all that," he said. He grabbed another overflowing box. "The changes. Darwin not being here, first and foremost. Even though it's a good thing, it's a big thing, you know?"

That was true. Bishop had occupied a lot of physical and emotional space in the household. His absence opened up a void. Even the loss of negative energy can be dizzying. "I guess it's a little like coming home from a war," I said. "The demons stay with you a while."

Garret jammed the box into the closet, forced the door closed, then turned and looked at me. "For instance," he said, "without getting shrinky with the shrink, she wanted you to hit her in there."

"What?" I said.

"She yelled," Garret said. "Darwin would have gone ballistic. She was testing you to see if you would hit her."

Garret's insight made some sense. I had asked Julia to trust me, to fully disclose her past. One way to interpret her extreme response was as a way of probing how far she could push me without me pushing back. "You know your mother pretty well," I said.

He shrugged. "I've noticed the same kind of thing about myself since you've been living with us," he said. "Like this room. I could never have left it this way with Darwin around. Not unless I wanted the strap. I think I've let it get this messy to see if you'd cut me slack."

"It's really not my place to tell you how to keep your room," I said.

"You're pretty much the man of the house," he said.

I wasn't feeling much like the man of the house. I nodded at his desk. "So what are you reading, anyhow?"

"Poetry," he said.

"Who?" I asked, looking at the title, The Land of Heart's Desire.