Yes, Doctor, she wanted to say. I’m worried because I don’t know who calls me when my husband is away. Is Rooney sicker than I realize? How about Maude? She resents the Kruegers, particularly resents me. Who else knows so much about when Erich is away?

“Are you worried about anything, Mrs. Krueger?” he repeated.

“Not really.”

She told Mark what the doctor had said. His arm was slung around the back of the seat. He’s so big, she thought, so overpoweringly, comfortably male. She could not imagine him exploding in fury. He had been reading. Now he tossed the book in the backseat, and started the car. “Jenny,” he suggested, “don’t you have a friend or a cousin or someone who could come out and spend a couple of months with you? You seem so alone here. I think that might help to take your mind off things.”

Fran, Jenny thought. With absolute longing she wanted Fran to come and visit. She thought of the amusing evenings they had spent together while Fran expounded on her latest boyfriend. But Erich disliked Fran intensely. He’d told her to make sure that Fran didn’t visit. Jenny thought of some of her other friends. None of them could spend nearly four hundred dollars to fly out for a weekend visit. They had jobs and families. “No,” she said, “I don’t have anyone who can come.”

The Garrett farm was on the north end of Granite Place. “We’re small potatoes next to Erich,” Mark said. “We have a section, six hundred and forty acres. I have my clinic right on the property.”

The farmhouse was like the one she’d pictured Erich would have. Large and white, black-shuttered, with a wide front porch.

The parlor was lined with bookshelves. Mark’s father was reading in an easy chair there. He looked up when they came in. Jenny watched as a startled expression came over his face.

He was a big man too, with rangy shoulders. The thick hair was pure white but the part broke at the same place as his son’s. His reading glasses enhanced his blue-gray eyes, and his lashes were gray-white. Mark’s were dark. But Luke’s eyes had that same quizzical expression.

“You have to be Jenny Krueger.”

“Yes, I am.” Jenny liked him at once.

“No wonder Erich…” He stopped. “I’ve been anxious to meet you. I’d hoped to get the chance when I was here in late February.”

“You were here in February?” Jenny turned to Mark. “Why didn’t you bring your father over?”

Mark shrugged. “Erich pretty well sent out signals you two were doing an at-home honeymoon. Jenny, I’ve got ten minutes before the clinic opens. What would you like? Tea? Coffee?”

Mark disappeared into the kitchen and she was alone with Luke Garrett. She felt as though she were being looked over by the school counselor, as though any minute he’d ask, “And how do you like your courses? Are you comfortable with your teachers?”

She told him that.

He smiled. “Maybe I am analyzing. How is it going?”

“How much have you heard?”

“The accident? The inquest?”

“You’ve heard.” She raised her hands as though pushing away a weight that was closing in on her. “I can’t blame people for thinking the worst. My coat was in the car. A woman did call the Guthrie Theater from our telephone that afternoon.

“I keep thinking there’s a reasonable explanation and once I find it out, everything will be all right again.”

She hesitated, then decided against discussing Rooney with him. If Rooney had made that call last night in one of her spells, she’d probably have forgotten it by now. And Jenny did not want to repeat what the caller had said to her.

Mark came in followed by a short, stocky woman carrying a tray. The warm, enticing scent of coffee cake reminded Jenny of Nana’s one great baking success, a Bisquick coffee cake. A wave of nostalgia made her blink back tears.

“You’re not very happy here, are you, Jenny?” Luke asked.

“I expected to be. I could be,” she replied honestly.

“That’s exactly what Caroline said,” Luke commented softly. “Remember, Mark, when I was putting her bags in the car that last afternoon?”

A few minutes later Mark left for the clinic and Luke drove her home. He seemed quiet and distracted and after a few efforts at conversation, Jenny became quiet too.

Luke steered the station wagon through the main gate. They circled around to the west entrance. She saw Luke’s eyes rest on the porch swing. “The problem,” he said suddenly, “is that this place doesn’t change. If you took a picture of this house and compared it to one that was thirty years old, it would be the same. Nothing is added, nothing is renovated, nothing is moved. Maybe that’s why everyone here has that same feeling of her presence, as though the door might fling open and she’d come running out, always glad to see you, always urging you to stay for dinner. After Mark’s mother and I were divorced she had Mark here so much. Caroline was a second mother to him.”

“And to you?” Jenny asked. “What was she to you?”

Luke looked at her through eyes that were suddenly anguished. “Everything I ever wanted in a woman.” He cleared his throat abruptly as though fearing he had revealed too much of himself. As she got out of the car Jenny said, “When Erich comes back, promise you’ll come for dinner with Mark.”

“I’d enjoy that, Jenny. Sure you have everything?”

“Yes.” She started to walk toward the house.

“Jenny,” he called.

She turned. Luke’s face was filled with pain. “Forgive me. It’s just that you resemble Caroline so strongly. It’s rather frightening. Jenny, be careful. Be careful of accidents.”

27

Erich was due home on June third. He called the night of the second. “Jen, I’ve been miserable. Darling, I’d give anything not to have you so upset.”

She felt the hard knot of tension ease. It was as Mark said, eventually the gossip would blow over. If only she could hang on to that thought. “It’s all right. We’re going to get through all this.”

“How do you feel, Jen?”

“Pretty good.”

“Eating better?”

“Trying to. How did the exhibit go?”

“Very, very well. The Gramercy Trust bought three oils. Stiff prices too. The reviews were fine.”

“I’m so glad. What time does your plane get in?”

“Around eleven. I should be home between two and three. I love you so much, Jen.”

That night the room seemed less threatening. Maybe it will be all right, she promised herself. For the first time in weeks she slept without dreaming.

She was sitting at the breakfast table with Tina and Beth when the screaming started, a hideous cacophony of wild neighing and frantic sounds of human pain.

“Mommy!” Beth jumped off her chair and ran for the door.

“Stay there,” Jenny ordered. She ran toward the sounds. They were coming from the stable. Clyde was rushing from the office, a rifle in his hand. “Stay back, Miz Krueger, stay back.”

She could not. Joe. It was Joe who was screaming.

He was in the stall, crouched against the back wall, trying frantically to dodge the flying hooves. Baron was rearing on his hind legs, his eyes rolling in his head, the sharp metal-shod hoofs flailing the air. Joe was bleeding from the head; one arm hung limply at his side. As she watched he slumped onto the floor and Baron’s front legs trampled his chest.

“Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God!” She heard her own voice weeping, praying, entreating. She was shoved aside. “Get out of his way, Joe. I’m gonna shoot.” Clyde took aim as the hooves reared up again. There was a sharp crack of the rifle, followed by a screeching, protesting neighing; Baron stood poised statuelike in midair, then crumbled into the straw in the stall.

Somehow Joe managed to press against the wall, to avoid the crushing weight of the falling animal. Joe lay still, his breath coming in sharp gasps, his eyes glazed with shock, his arm twisted grotesquely. Clyde threw down the rifle and ran over to him.