I could see Bill Anderson had overheard this and was about to take issue, an incredulous look on his face. (I was beginning not to like Bill, and unless I was mistaken, Martin didn't like him either. I wondered if this was something we would have to do often, dine with people with whom we had nothing in common.) "Are you enjoying not having to go to work every morning?" I asked Lizanne instantly, to spare her discomfort. (Lizanne probably wouldn't care one bit what Bill Anderson or anyone else thought about her opinions, but her husband would.) "Oh... it's all right," Lizanne said thoughtfully. "There's a lot to do on the house, yet. I'm on some good-works committees... that was Bubba's idea." She seemed slightly amused at Bubba's efforts to get her into his own up-and-coming pattern.

We were called to the dining room at that moment, and since I had my own agenda, I was pleased to see I was seated between Martin and Bubba at the round table. After the flurry of passing and serving and complimenting an anxious Bettina on the chicken and rice and broccoli and salad, I quietly asked our state representative if he had been the lawyer in charge of the Julius estate since their disappearance. It was heartless of me, since the conversation had turned to regional football.

"Yes," he said, dabbing his mustache carefully with his napkin. "I handled the house purchase, when Mrs. Zinsner sold the house to T. C. Julius. So after they vanished, Mrs. Totino asked me to continue as the lawyer in the case." "What's the law about disappearances, Bubba?"

"According to Georgia law, missing people can be declared dead after seven years," Bubba told me. "But Mrs. Totino was able to show she was the sole remaining relative of the family, and since she had very little without their support—she'd been living with a sister in New Orleans, scraping by with Social Security—we went to court and got her appointed conservator of the estate, so I could arrange for her to have enough money to live on. After a year, we got a letter of administration, so she could sell the property whenever she could find a buyer. Of course, this is all a matter of public record," he concluded cautiously.

"So in a few months, the Juliuses will be declared dead."

"Yes, then the remainder of their estate will be Mrs. Totino's."

"The house sale money."

"Oh, no. Not just the house sale money. He'd been saving for a while, to start his own business when he retired from the Army." And Bubba indicated by the set of his mouth that this was the end of the conversation about the Julius family's financial resources.

"Did you like him?" I asked, after we'd eaten quietly for a minute. "He was a tough man," Bubba said thoughtfully. "Very much... ‘everything goes as I say in my family.' But he wasn't mean."

"Did you meet the others?"

"Oh, yes. I met Mrs. Julius when they bought the house. Very sick, very glad to be within driving distance of all the hospitals in Atlanta. A quiet woman. The daughter was just a teenager; not giggly. That's all I remember about her." Then our host asked Bubba what was coming up in the legislature that we needed to know about, and my conversation with him about the Julius family was over. On the way home, I related all this to Martin, who listened abstractedly. That wasn't like Martin, who was willing to be interested in the Julius disappearance if I was.

"I have to fly to Guatemala next week," he told me. "Oh, Martin! I thought you weren't going to have to travel as much now that you're not based in Chicago."

"I thought so, too, Roe."

He was so curt that I glanced over with some surprise. Martin was visibly worried.

"How long will you be gone?"

"Oh, I don't know. As long as it takes... maybe three days."

"Could ... maybe I could go, too?"

"Wait till we get home; I can't pay attention to this conversation while I'm driving."

I bit my lip in mortification. When we got home, I stalked straight into the house.

He was just getting out of the car to open my door, and I caught him off guard. He didn't catch up to me until I was halfway down the sidewalk to the kitchen side door.

Then he put his hand on my shoulder and began, "Roe, what I meant..." I shook his hand off. "Don't you talk to me," I said, keeping my voice low because of the Youngbloods. Here we lived a mile out of town, and I still couldn't scream at my husband in my own yard. "Don't you say one word." I stomped up the stairs, shut the door to our bedroom, and sat on the bed. What was the matter with me? I'd never had open quarrels with anyone in my life, and here I was brawling with my husband, and I'd been within an ace of hitting him, something I'd also never done. This was so trashy. I had to do some thinking, and now. Our relationship had always been more emotional than any I'd ever had, more volatile. But these bright, hot feelings had always served to leap the chasms between us, I realized, sitting on the end of our new bedspread in our new house with my new wedding ring on my finger. I took off my shoes and sat on the floor. Somehow I could think better. "He's still not telling me the truth," I said out loud, and knew that was it. I could hear him faintly, stomping about downstairs. Fixing himself a drink, I decided. I felt only stunned wonder—how had I ended up sitting on the floor in my bedroom, angry and grieved, in love with a man who lived a life in secret? I remembered Cindy Bartell saying, "He won't cheat on you. But he won't ever tell you everything, either."

I had a moment of sheer rage and self-pity, during which I asked myself all those senseless questions. What had I done to deserve this? Now that I'd finally, finally gotten married, why wasn't it all roses? If he loved me, why didn't he treat me perfectly?

I lay back on the floor, looking up at the ceiling. More important, what was I going to do during the next hour?

A creaking announced Martin's progress up the stairs and across the landing.

"I won't knock at my own bedroom door," he said, from outside.

I stared at the ceiling even harder.

The door opened slowly. Perhaps he was afraid I'd throw something at him? An intriguing mental image. Maybe Cindy had thrown things. He appeared at my feet, two icy glasses of what appeared to be 7- and-7 in his hands. I saw the wet stain on his off-white shirt, where he'd tucked the extra glass between arm and chest while he'd used his other hand to open the door. "What are you doing, Roe?"

"Thinking."

"Are you going to talk to me?"

"Are you going to talk to me?"

He sat on the stool in front of my vanity table. He leaned over to hand me a drink. I held it centered under my breasts with both hands gripping the heavy glass.

"I still..." he began. He stopped, looked around as if a reprieve would come, took a drink. I looked up at him from the floor, waiting. "I still sell guns."

I felt as if the ceiling had fallen on my head.

"Do you want to know any more about it than that?"

"No," I said. "Not now."

"I don't think Bill Anderson is who he says he is," Martin said.

I cut my gaze over to him without turning my head.

"I think he's government."

I looked back at my glass. "I thought you were government."

His mouth went down at one corner.

"I thought I was, too. I suspect something's changed that I don't know about.

That's why I need to go to Guatemala. Something's come unglued." I struggled with so many questions I couldn't decide what to ask first. Did I really want to know the answers to any of them? "Are you really a man with a regular job with a real company?" I asked, hating the way my voice faltered.

He looked sad. "I'm everything I ever told you I was. Just—other things, too."

"Then why couldn't you be satisfied?" I said bitterly and futilely. I sat up, tears coursing down my cheeks without my knowing they had started, not sobbing, just—watering my dress. I took a drink from my glass; yes, it was 7-and-7.