The two grapes were squashed beneath his thumbs, but slowly in the delicious destruction of the orbs, the breaking of the skin, flattening of membranous flesh therein, the feel of the cold destroyed tissue. Each was a green eye to him. And now he drew his thumbs back from the cutting board. Staring at them, mashed, split, she was blind to him.

‘She wouldn’t press charges,’ said Betty Hyde, setting her coffee mug on the counter top in the Rosens’ kitchen. ‘I don’t suppose you have any more proof on the beating of his mother? I’ve got a very vague column for the morning edition. My editor won’t let me use any names till we exhume the body – and that’s in the works. I also have a young reporter waiting to ambush the judge outside the building tomorrow. You know the sort of thing… “Is there any truth to the rumor that you beat your elderly mother to death?” ’

‘Did Pansy give you anything?’

‘No. Poor Pansy. I’ve never seen that kind of pain close up. She’s gone back to him.’

‘She’s up there now? She’s crazy.’

‘She says he’s always very contrite after he beats her. She’s not afraid of him right now. She thinks she can work this out.’

‘You know he’s going to kill her the next time.’

‘Does she have to file the complaint? Couldn’t you do it? In addition to the humane aspects, I’m thinking of libel laws. An editor won’t touch it without a police report, and there isn’t one.’

‘I didn’t witness the beating. If she says she fell down, the law agrees with her.’

Mallory’s face was devoid of all expression as she folded her arms and looked down at Betty Hyde. Hyde fought off the startling illusion that Mallory had grown taller in the passage of seconds. Now Mallory leaned down, and Hyde stepped back until she was pressed against the kitchen counter.

‘You’re holding out on me. What have you got on Eric Franz?’

It was late to be calling on the neighbors. But then, she had taken Eric in on the night Annie died. It was late then too. Tit for tut, my dear.

When Eric answered the door, he was pulling his robe closed about his waist, and staring into the air over her left shoulder.

‘Eric, it’s Betty. Can we talk?’

He stepped back from the door and waved her into the room. It was black until he said, ‘Oh, sorry,’ and pressed the light switch. She shouldn’t have been surprised to see the room unchanged. It had been little over a month since Annie died. Although gone was the bad joke of their framed wedding portrait with crayon cuckold’s horns drawn on the head of his likeness.

They were hours and bottles into the wine rack when Eric lost control.

‘Are you crazy? Annie would never have stayed with me those last three years if not for the blindness. No, actually it was the insurance money that changed her mind about divorcing me. And then I had the success of the books and the prizes. But if I had been sighted, she would have left me in a minute and taken a large settlement. But she couldn’t leave a blind man, could she, not a socialite like Annie. What would the neighbors think?’

The latch lowered, and the door opened with a gentle push. He prowled through the dark rooms until he found her. Her long slender body was stretched out on the bed. Her hair had a glow to it, as though she had found a way to trap sunlight, to bring it indoors with her and keep it alive in the night.

He lay down beside her with animal stealth and rolled on to his back and into sleep, four feet paddling the air, chasing mice across his dreams.

It was the cold metal of the gun against his nose that woke him to the bright light of a lamp. He looked at the tip of the gun, and it was necessary to cross his eyes to do this. Weary and unsteady on the bedding, he rose to his hind legs and began the dance. But she was already gone, having slipped from the bed and into the dark of the next room, preceded by the gun in her hand.

He thudded down to the floor and padded after her as she searched behind each door. She stopped awhile by the bathroom door. He rubbed his head against one of her bare feet, which did not love him back but pushed him away. Her hand depressed the latch on the door. She pressed on it again and again.

She looked down at him and whispered, ‘Are you that smart?’ which he, more or less correctly, interpreted as ‘Good boy,’ and he began to purr.

Now he was being picked up in her arms, luxuriating in the warmth of her skin. And then, he was falling toward the tiles of the bathroom floor. The light went out, the door slammed, and he sat alone in the dark, wondering what he had done wrong this time.

Mallory, the consummate liar, had barred herself from the poker game for the damage of a lie. How perverse and convoluted was her code of what passed for honor.

Charles had learned to lie and betray in one night. Oh wouldn’t Mallory be proud of how far he’d come, how low he’d sunk.

No, no she wouldn’t. One did not do such damage to people in Mallory’s orbit. But she would never know what he had done. Even if he was in the confession mode, he was bound by Slope to keep silent. A lie of omission.

As Riker had once explained to him, her history belonged to her alone. She would hate this intrusion, this conspiracy of knowledge. Slope would never discuss this evening with Riker. The lies and betrayal would go unnoticed. And so there were more lies by omission.

He didn’t have the luxury of barring himself from the poker game. Questions would be asked, she would ferret out the answers, more damage would be done. Once a week, he would be reminded of his crimes, sitting across a card table from Edward Slope.

And he could not confess to Riker either, not without the web spreading. He only wished he were a practicing Catholic so he could confess to someone.

The pattern of his web had become too intricate. Sleep was lost in the tangle of the weave. But finally, sleep did come for him, all in visions of a little girl running in the dark, pursued by things which were darker still and might be spiders. And when she slipped in the blood of his dreams, he snapped awake.

His mind flooded with music to kill the images and thoughts created by a night of lies, and now his penance was in the room with him. He shut his eyes and tried to end the music. But he could hear the light steps of Amanda’s feet all around his bed.

‘Interesting, isn’t it,’ said Amanda. ‘She was able to pretend sleep while another child was being murdered.’

No, please, I don’t want to think about that.

‘Oh, Charles, you’ll never stop thinking about that. It wasn’t the reaction you’d expect from a small child, was it?’

Since when was Mallory predictable?

He kept his eyes closed, in hopes of minimizing the damage to his mind. He didn’t know how to send her away. Perhaps the delusion would pale without the reinforcement of sight.

But no. She continued to pace, footsteps growing heavier, waiting on her answer as a solid woman would do.

Addressing his words to the ceiling, he said, ‘It wasn’t Mallory’s mother who was killed in the film. You were wrong about that angle.’

‘Was I?’ Amanda’s pacing stopped for a moment. ‘She never moved the entire time a child was being tortured. She played dead.’

‘She might only have been paralyzed with fear. There are no facts to support – ’

‘Logic and facts have failed you, Charles. You had a qualified medical examiner as a witness to the film. She was playing dead. Where did she learn that? Maybe she’d had some practice witnessing another bloody murder. Maybe that’s what happened to her mother, and to Justin’s mother.’

He rolled over to face her, this woman who was not there, yet he kept his eyes closed. ‘Amanda, this is ludicrous. Justin’s mother died of a heart attack. That’s a fact. Now the aspect of child abuse makes more sense. That’s what Mallory would see in the boy. She would recognize the signs of an abused child. Even Mallory could not divine a murder through the boy’s eyes.’