Tamsin looked really horrified. "You don't believe that we're only given the burdens we can handle?"

"Obviously not."

She tried again. "Do you believe in the eventual punishment of evildoers?"

I shrugged.

"Then how do you go on living?" Tamsin was tearful, but not as personally tearful, as she had been before.

"How do I go on living? A day at a time, like everyone else. A few years ago, it was an hour at a time. For a while, it was minute by minute."

"What for?"

Cliff looked like he wished he was anywhere but here. But Jack, I saw, was leaning forward to hear what I was saying.

"At first, I just wanted to beat the ... ones that attacked me." I picked my words carefully. I was being as honest as I knew how. "Then, I couldn't add to my parents' miseries any more by dying. Though I did think about suicide, often. No more fear, no more scars, no more remembering.

"But after a while, I began to get more involved in trying to make living work. Trying to find a way to make my days, if not my nights, productive and make a pattern to stick to." I took a drink from my glass of water.

"Is that what you think I should do?"

"I don't know what you should do," I said, amazed anyone would ask advice of me. "That's for you to figure out. You're a professional at helping people figure out what they should do. I guess that doesn't really help you right now."

"No," she said, her voice soft and weary. "It's not helping, right now."

I gave her the only piece of advice, the only philosophy, that I cherished. "You have to live well to defeat whoever's doing this to you," I said. "You can't let them win."

"Is that the point of living, to not let him win? What about me? When I do I get to live for myself?"

"That is entirely up to you," I told her. I stood up, so she'd go.

"I thought you, of all people, would have the answers, would have more sympathy."

"The point is, that doesn't make any difference." I looked Tamsin straight in the eyes. "No matter how much sympathy I have for you, it won't heal you faster or slower. You're not a victim of cosmic proportions. There are millions of us. That doesn't make your personal struggle less. That just increases your knowledge of pain in this world."

"I think," said Tamsin, as she and Cliff went through the door, "that I should have stayed at home."

"That depends on what you wanted." I shut the door behind them. I could see Jack's face. "What?" I asked, sharp and quick.

"Lily, don't you think you could have been a little more ..."

"Touchy-feely? Warm?"

"Well, yeah."

"I told her exactly how it is, Jack. I've had years to think about this. I don't know why everyone feels like they're supposed to be safe all the time."

Jack raised an eyebrow in a questioning way.

"Think about it," I said. "No one expected to be safe until this century, if you read a little history. Think of the thousands of years before—years with no law, when the sword ruled. No widespread system of justice; no immunizations against disease. The local lord free to kill the husbands, husbands free to rape and kill their wives. Childbirth often fatal. No antibiotics. It's only here and now that women are raised believing they'll be safe. And it serves us false. It's not true. It dulls our sense of fear, which is what saves our lives."

Jack looked stunned. "Why have you never told me you feel this way?"

"We've just never gotten around to talking about it."

"How can you even share a bed with me, if you hate men that much?"

"I don't hate men, Jack." Just some of them. I despise the rest. "I just don't believe—no, let me turn that around. I do believe that women should be more self-sufficient and cautious." That was probably the mildest way I could put it.

Jack opened his mouth to say something else, and I held up my hand. "I know this isn't fair, but I've talked as much as I can for one evening. I feel like I pulled my guts out for inspection. Can we be quiet from now on? We can talk more tomorrow if you want to."

"Yes, that would be okay," Jack said. He looked a little dazed. "You sure you want me sharing the bed tonight?"

"I want you in the bed every night," I said, forcing myself to reveal one more bit of truth.

And for the first time since the miscarriage, that night I gave him proof of that truth. After a long, sweet time, we slept that night back to back, me feeling the comfort of his warm skin through the thin material of my nightgown. I never felt he was turning away from me when our backs touched; we were just attached in a different way.

I lay awake, thinking, longer than I liked. Since I was on a roll with the truth, I had to think of what I hadn't told Tamsin, what I couldn't tell anyone else in the world. My healing had accelerated when I began to love Jack. Love weakens, too, makes you vulnerable; but the strength, the power of it... it still amazed me when I considered it. I would die for him, be hurt for him, give anything I owned for his happiness; but there were parts of me that could not change for him. There were traits and attitudes I required for my hard-won survival. Knowing this left me with an uneasy feeling that some day I would have to face this fully and in more detail, an idea that I detested.

Jack gave a little gasp in his sleep, much like the one he often gave when I surprised him in lovemaking. It was a sound I found infinitely comforting, and hearing it, I fell asleep.

Chapter Twelve

I woke the next morning feeling very clearheaded and relaxed. After Jack had left for a meeting with a client in Benton, I decided stretching and mild calisthenics would do me a world of good. When that was done, and I felt much better overall, I changed the sheets, taking pleasure in the order of clean smooth percale.

The phone rang just when I was wondering what to do next.

"This is Dani Weingarten," announced the caller. There was a silence.

"Yes?" I said finally.

"Dani Weingarten, the mystery writer," said the voice, less firmly.

"Yes?" I read very little fiction, so her identity was not an exciting fact, which the caller soon seemed to realize.

"I'm the fiancée of Gerry McClanahan," she said, by way of redefinition.

"Okay." Sooner or later, she'd get to the point.

"I'm flying in from Florida tomorrow to take charge of the arrangements for having Gerry's body flown back to Corinth, Ohio ... his hometown." So far, Dani Weingarten had not given me one bit of information that interested me. There was a long pause. "Did you hear me?" she asked, in a testy way.

"I didn't realize that required a response."

Another long pause. "Okay," she said, "Let's try this. I have talked to the police department there in Shakespeare, and the chief of police there recommended you as the best house-cleaner in town. Whatever that means. So, if you have time, I'd like you go to over to Gerry's little rental house and start packing up his things. I'll ship them to my house to go through them."

I almost turned her down. I'd spent enough time sorting through the detritus of the dead. But I thought of the hospital bills coming soon, and of my improved health, and I said I would do it. "Key?" I asked.

"You can pick one up at the police station," Dani Weingarten told me. Her voice sounded softer now, as if she'd used up all her forcefulness. "I told them it was okay. Did you know Gerry?"

"Yes," I said. "I knew him a little."

"He told me Shakespeare was a fascinating little town." She sounded on the verge of tears.

"He talk about his work much?" I asked cautiously.

"Never," Dani Weingarten told me. "He only discussed it when his first draft was ready."