"I don't need a single thing." Cassie thought her aunt had gone right around the bend talking about shopping while Mitch was in the hospital.

"You always say that. Now, come on, consider your own needs for a change. He isn't getting out of that bed any quicker if you let yourself go."

This was the second time in an hour that someone had made that comment. What made them think she wanted him out of bed? The light turned green. Cassie accelerated, and the Americana swept by them. "Do you think I let myself go?" She couldn't help asking. It was the last thing she'd meant to do. She hadn't meant to let herself go.

"Let's not get too introspective. Let's just say, you have some problems in this area."

"Edith, did you ever suspect that Mitch was fooling around?" Cassie broached the subject quickly before she had a chance to change her mind. Naturally, she regretted it immediately.

"Oh, honey. I didn't suspect. I knew he was. Didn't you?"

"You knew?" Cassie coughed on her surprise. Was she the only one who didn't know?

"Well, sure, honey. Why do you ask?"

"A terrible thing happened on Friday. Uhuh-uhuh." Cassie tried to clear her throat. "After my eye stitches were removed, Marsha brought me this package all wrapped up in pink tissue paper. I thought it was from her to me, so I opened it. Silk pajamas," she said grimly.

"Nice," Edith said approvingly.

"They weren't just nice, they were gorgeous and very expensive. The price tag was still on them. They cost over a thousand dollars."

"My, my. That Marsha is a nice girl."

"I put them on, and that's when Mitch came home. You know his temper. When he saw those pajamas on me, he had his stroke."

"Honey, are you telling me those pj's caused Mitch's stroke?"

Cassie took a deep breath. "Not the pj's, Aunt Edith, me wearing them. They weren't for me, see?" There, the words were out. Those pajamas had not been for her. She'd known it from the minute she'd seen that price tag.

"How do you know?"

"He had a stroke, didn't he? The whole thing was going to come out. There was no way he could explain it. The man had a stroke to avoid me. Just like him." Another block east and Cassie made her right turn into the forty-year-old development, where she and Mitch had lived their whole married life. In front of her neat colonial the mangled post and mailbox were still on the ground. They seemed to symbolize her ruined life.

"That's speculation, not evidence," Edith dismissed her.

"What are you, a lawyer all of a sudden? You said the man was a womanizer. What's your evidence?"

"Oh, you get an instinct about people," Edith said, suddenly as vague as the garden under fog. "You should get someone over to fix that post. It's too close to the street. I've told you that a thousand times."

"It's the regulation distance," Cassie told her reflexively. They had this conversation regularly.

"No, it's way too close. No one can park there without knocking it right over. It's the post's fault. Are you hungry, Cassie? You need to eat something."

"I moved the post back once, don't you remember? The mailman refused to deliver." Cassie shook her head. It was way past the time for Edith to give up driving. "Aunt Edith, you don't have a license, you can't see that well. You should get someone to drive you." She'd said it a thousand times.

Edith ignored her as usual. "Cassie, I'll just fix you a little lunch and we'll talk about that girl. Do you know who she is?"

"What girl?" Cassie asked. Like a bird in a tree, Edith jumped from topic to topic, never sticking with anything long enough to make sense.

"Mitch's girl, of course. You need to make sure she keeps away from him."

"Oh, yes," Cassie agreed grimly.

"You never know with these things. These sick old goats give the farm away to whoever changes their diapers. You'd better be the one to change his diapers. Cassie, are you listening to me?"

"I heard every word." Cassie parked in front of the house because the garage was full. She got out, looked around for signs of IRS snooping, saw no strange vehicles on the street. Satisfied for the moment, she went around to the passenger side to pull Edith out.

Getting Edith into a car was easy. She just turned around and backed in, letting herself drop to the seat with a thud that sometimes resulted in a loud fart. Getting her out, however, took more stages. A hand, an arm, a foot extended tentatively out the car door that was open as far as it would go. A heavy leg. Then Edith shifted that butt and inched out by degrees, with a few experimental heaves of her upper body that expelled those internal gases with the authority of a motorcycle thundering down a country road. At the same time, Cassie hauled on her aunt's flabby arms as hard as she could. She had no idea how her aunt accomplished this hydraulic maneuver when she was alone. Edith kept talking as she worked her way out.

"You haven't heard from her yourself, have you?"

"No." Cassie waited for the first sneaker to appear. This new idea startled her; Mitch's girlfriend in actual contact with her.

"You want me to find out about her? I'm pretty good at this kind of thing. There are things we can do, you know."

"No, that's okay." Cassie didn't want to think about what kind of things her aunt meant.

"We could get something on her," Edith mused.

Cassie snorted. The sneaker appeared, the leg, the thigh, the shift. The haul. Miraculously, Edith came out without a gastric fanfare. Proud of this, she waddled regally up the walk to the front door. Cassie didn't want to say she already had something on the girlfriend. Credit card fraud was a felony.

"Listen, Aunt Edith. Why don't I settle you in front of the TV for a few minutes while I make a call. Then I'll drive you home."

"Oh no, I can take my car. You're not grounding me, Cassie. That post was right in the middle of the street. You damaged my car. You'll have to have it fixed for me."

"We'll talk about it later."

"I have to take my own car, Cassie," Edith wailed. "I have to have my independence."

"We'll see," Cassie told her.

But no, they wouldn't. The little stunt this morning had been Edith's last chance at independence. Cassie would not have on her conscience some fatal car crash like the ones she'd seen in the hospital. She got the front door open and led her aunt into the kitchen.

"I'll just make you a little lunch," Edith promised. But right away she found the clicker to the TV and turned on The Young and the Restless. She sat down at the kitchen table and forgot about cooking lunch for anybody.

Cassie moved quickly down the hall to Mitch's office. As she turned the corner, she moved like the cops in the TV shows, jumping to stay out of doorways just in case that IRS man was in there looking for the wine Mitch had in his cellar and other stuff he must have stashed away.

The IRS man, however, was not at Mitch's desk going through his papers, so Cassie sat down there. She picked up the phone and called Parker Higgins, the family lawyer. As she waited for the receptionist to get through to Parky's secretary, she hit the AOL button on Mitch's computer, then the automatic Sign On. Clearly, he hadn't been afraid of her gaining access. Ah, Mitch had mail. A lot of it. Cassie scanned down the ridiculous names people gave themselves: Abscul. MAD. Hopup. Winebuff. Kringeetc. She didn't know any of these people. Kringeetc. Who the hell could that be? Hopup? Didn't that sound like a prostitute? Maybe Mitch didn't have just one girl. What if there was a whole army of them and they all used a card with her name on it? Cassie was nauseated by the thought of having to change Mitch's diapers to stop his girlfriends from getting the farm. She wished it wouldn't ruin her face to heave up her guts.

"Yes, this is Diana, can I help you?" queried a woman with a thick Long Island accent.