Susan, with an almost smug expression, sat down on the far end of the long sofa. Despite the hour, she was immaculately groomed. Her satin robe was unwrinkled. “He died at home. One of his neighbors discovered the body late in the morning, when Morey didn’t show up for a brunch date they had.”

Morey lived alone; he and his wife had been divorced for years before Rana met him. He’d never gotten over the breakup of his marriage, but he could never give up gambling, either, which had been the crux of his marital problems.

“Was it a heart attack? A stroke?” Morey had been overweight, had high blood pressure, and smoked too much.

“Not exactly,” Susan said coolly, scornfully. “Drugs were involved.”

“Drugs!” Rana exclaimed, aghast. “I don’t believe it.”

“ Not Street drugs. Pills. Liquor. There was evidence in his apartment that he’d been drinking.”

Rana’s body seemed slowly to collapse, to fold in on itself like a house of cards. It couldn’t be. She would never believe it. Suicide? No! “Was it an accident?” she asked hoarsely.

Susan ground out her cigarette in a crystal ashtray on the marble coffee table. “I think the police are ruling it an accidental death.”

“But you think it was a suicide, don’t you?”

“All I know is that when I last spoke with him, he was extremely upset over your turning down that marvelous contract. He was as shocked as I am that you would rather live like this,” she said scathingly, waving her hand toward Rana as though she were filthy, “than like a princess. Morey was in financial trouble thanks to you.”

Rana covered her face with her hands, but Susan persisted. “He had to move from those plush offices he had leased. When you so selfishly deserted both him and me, he went back to representing second-rate models and has-beens.”

“Why didn’t he tell me?” Rana groaned, asking the question of herself as much as of her mother.

Susan was all too happy to answer. “What good would it have done? If you had cared for anyone as much as you did yourself, you wouldn’t have left in the first place. Why should you care what happened to some penny-ante agent- whom I wanted to discard years ago-if you don’t care about your own mother?”

She lit another cigarette. Rana knew Susan wasn’t finished yet, so she remained silent. It would serve no purpose to argue.

“I sacrificed everything to put you where you were, but you gave it all up without so much as a thank-you. You threw away a chance to marry one of the richest men in America. Does it matter to you that I can barely pay the bills on this place? No.”

Susan could have found a more modest apartment that would still have been considered luxurious. She could have found herself a job. As Rana knew firsthand, her mother was certainly a capable manager. She was extremely attractive. Why didn’t she find herself a well-to-do husband to henpeck? But Rana was too tired and upset to engage in a verbal battle with her mother by making any of those suggestions.

She pulled herself to her feet, weariness evident in every move. “I’m going to bed, Mother. When is the funeral?”

“Tomorrow at two. I’ve hired a limousine to pick us up. You’ll find your retainer on the bedside table. Put it in. Your teeth are deplorable.”

“You go in the limousine. I’ll take a cab. Since I don’t intend to wear that damned retainer another night of my life, and my teeth are deplorable, I’m sure you’ll prefer riding in the limousine alone, rather than being seen with me.”

At the funeral, Rana stood apart from the other mourners, hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses and a black hat, which she had purchased at Macy’s that morning. No one recognized her. No one looked at her. No one spoke to her as she stood weeping at the edge of the small crowd that dispersed as soon as the final prayer was said. Each one of its number seemed thankful that he had done his social duty and was now free to escape the heavy, muggy heat of the New Jersey cemetery and find relief in an air- conditioned car.

Rana lingered, even after Susan swept past her without a nod. Why, Morey, why? she asked the carnation-blanketed casket. Why hadn’t he told her he was in financial trouble? Had he taken his own life?

It was too horrible a thought to contemplate, but she couldn’t help remembering the excitement she had heard in his voice when he ‘d told her of the substantial contract, the despondency he had conveyed when he’d asked her to reconsider the offer.

And now, driving from the Houston airport back to Galveston, those questions were still haunting Rana. To add to her misery, rain was pelting the highway. It was a dark, ponderous, dismal rain that matched her mood perfectly.

Her future stretched out in front of her like the fiat coastal highway. Unrelieved. Monotonous. Dreary. She could see no light in that future. How could she ever be happy and carefree with the indelible stain of Morey’s suicide on her conscience?

The house was dark. She noticed that Trent ’s car was gone. He and Ruby must have gone out together. Picking up her suitcase, she ran through the driving rain to the back door.

Leaving her suitcase on the sleeping porch, she took off her hat and shook the rain from it. She slipped out of her jacket and spread it over a chair to dry. Her shoes came off next, and with them her stockings.

Barefoot, she padded into the kitchen. It was uncharacteristically gloomy. Even the crisply starched ruff1ed curtains at the windows looked sad and limp against the bleak landscape beyond them. She got a drink of tepid water from the tap in the sink, but after taking two swallows, she left the glass on the drainboard. She was disconsolate that every movement was a chore. Her limbs felt leaden, and it took a supreme effort to move them blackest depression weighed her down.

She had been a baby when her father had died, so she didn’t remember. Now, for the first time in her life, she had suffered the death of someone she really cared about. How did anyone survive the loss of a beloved spouse, a child? The finality of death was dreadful.

Without turning on any lights, she went through the shadowed dining room into the central hall. Raintrickled down the tall, narrow windows on either side of the front door. It looked mournful, silvery, cold. It looked like tears. Rana stared up the dark staircase and wondered where she would get the energy to climb those steps to he room.

Listlessly, she dropped onto the deacon’s bench beneath the stairs. Propping her elbows on her knees, she laid her head in her hands and began to cry. She had pt quietly, politely, at the funeral, but she hadn’t lifted the floodgate of her grief.

Now tears, scalding and bitter, fell from her eyes with the same incessant pattern as the rain falling outside. They ran down her cheeks and into her mouth. They dripped from her chin. Her shoulders shook with racking sobs.

She sensed he was there only a second before she felt his hand on her shoulder. She raised her head. He was standing in front of her, looming as tall as a pillar. The gray light was dim in the hallway, particularly beneath the stairs. She could barely distinguish his features, but she could tell that his dark brows were drawn together with worry.

Her mother had offered her no words of consolation. Rana had been a stranger to the others attending the funeral. She needed comfort, craved some token of reassurance. She reached toward the only available source. Mindlessly, she clutched his arms.

Instantly responsive, Trent sat down on the hard deacon’s bench beside her and wrapped his arms around her. He said nothing, only pressed his face against her damp hair. He cupped the back of her head and forced her face down into the hollow between his shoulder and neck. She burrowed there, letting the soft cloth of his shirt absorb the torrent of relentless, salty tears.