After a long moment-it seemed very long to Louis-she put Church down. The cat padded away toward the dining room without looking back. Executioner of small mice, Louis thought randomly. Christ, what did we do that night?

He tried honestly to remember, but it already seemed far away, dim and distant, like the messy death of Victor Pascow on the floor of the infirmary’s reception room. He could remember carriages of wind passing in the sky and the white glimmer of snow in the back field which rose to the woods. That was all.

“Daddy?” Ellie said in a low, subdued voice.

‘What, Ellie?”

“Church smells funny.”

“Does he?” Louis asked, his voice carefully neutral.

“Yes!” Ellie said, distressed. “Yes, he does! He never smelled funny before! He smells like… he smells like ka-ka!”

“Well, maybe he rolled in something bad, honey,” Louis said. “Whatever that bad smell is, he’ll lose it.”

“I certainly hope so,” Ellie said in a comical dowager’s voice. She walked off.

Louis found the last fork, washed it, and pulled the plug. He stood at the sink, looking out into the night while the soapy water ran down the drain with a thick chuckling sound.

When the sound from the drain was gone he could hear the wind outside, thin and wild, coming from the north, bringing down winter, and he realized he was afraid, simply, stupidly afraid, the way you are afraid when a cloud suddenly sails across the sun and somewhere you hear a ticking sound you can’t account for.

“A hundred and three?” Rachel asked. “Jesus, Lou! Are you sure?”

“It’s a virus,” Louis said. He tried not to let Rachel’s voice, which seemed almost accusatory, grate on him. She was tired. It had been a long day for her; she had crossed half the country with her kids today. Here it was eleven o’clock, and the day wasn’t over yet. Ellie was deeply asleep in her room. Gage was on their bed in a state that could best be described as semiconscious.

Louis had started him on Liquiprin an hour ago. “The aspirin will bring his fever down by morning, hon.”

“Aren’t you going to give him ampicfflin or anything?”

Patiently, Louis said, “If he had the flu or a strep infection, I would. He doesn’t. He’s got a virus, and that stuff doesn’t do doodly-squat for viruses.

It would just give him the runs and dehydrate him more.”

“Are you sure it’s a virus?”

“Well, if you want a second opinion,” Louis snapped, “be my guest.”

“You don’t have to shout at me!” Rachel shouted.

“I wasn’t shouting!” Louis shouted back.

“You were,” Rachel began, “you were shuh-shuh-shouting-” And then her mouth began to quiver and she put a hand up to her face. Louis saw there were deep gray-brown pockets under her eyes and felt badly ashamed of himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and sat down beside her. “Christ, I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I apologize, Rachel.”

“Never complain, never explain,” she said, smiling wanly. “Isn’t that what you told me once? The trip was a bitch. And I’ve been afraid you’d hit the roof when you looked in Gage’s dresser drawers. I guess maybe I ought to tell you now, while you’re feeling sorry for me.”

“What’s to hit the roof about?”

She smiled wanly. “My mother and father bought him ten new outfits. He was wearing one of them today.”

“I noticed he had on something new,” he said shortly.

“I noticed you noticing,” she replied and pulled a comic scowl that made him laugh, although he didn’t feel much like laughing. “And six new dresses for Ellie.”

“Six dresses!” he said, strangling the urge to yell. He was suddenly furious-sickly furious and hurt in a way he couldn’t explain. “Rachel, why? Why did you let him do that? We don’t need… we can buy… “ He ceased. His rage had made him inarticulate, and for a moment he saw himself carrying Ellie’s dead cat through the woods, shifting the plastic bag from one hand to the other… and all the while Irwin Goldman, that dirty old fuck from Lake Forest, had been busy trying to buy his daughter’s affection by unlimbering the world-famous checkbook and the world-famous fountain pen.

For one moment he felt himself on the verge of shouting He bought her six dresses and I brought her goddam cat back from the dead, so who loves her more?

He clamped down on the words. He would never say anything like that. Never.

She touched his neck gently. “Louis,” she said. “It was both of them together.

Please try to see. Please. They love the children, and they don’t see them much.

And they’re getting old. Louis, you’d hardly recognize my father. Really.”

“I’d recognize him,” Louis muttered.

“Please, honey. Try to see. Try to be kind. It doesn’t hurt you.” He looked at her for a long time. “It does though,” he said finally. “Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does.”

She opened her mouth to reply, and then Ellie called out from her room: “Daddy!

Mommy! Somebody!”

Rachel started to get up, and Louis pulled her back down. “Stay with Gage. I’ll go.” He thought he knew what the trouble was. But he had put the cat out, damn it; after Ellie had gone to bed, he had caught it in the kitchen sniffing around its dish and had put it out. He didn’t want the cat sleeping with her. Not anymore. Odd thoughts of disease, mingled with memories of Uncle Carl’s funeral parlor, had come to him when he thought of Church sleeping on Ellie’s bed.

She’s going to know that something’s wrong and Church was better before.

He had put the cat out, but when be went in, Ellie was sitting up in bed, more asleep than awake, and Church was spread out on the counterpane, a batlike shadow. The cat’s eyes were open and stupidly gleaming in the light from the hail.

“Daddy, put him out,” Ellie almost groaned. “He stinks so bad.”

“Shhh, Ellie, go to sleep,” Louis said, astounded by the calmness of his own voice. It made him think of the morning after his sleepwalking incident, the day after Pascow had died. Getting to the infirmary and ducking into the bathroom to look at himself in the mirror, convinced that he must look like hell. But he had looked pretty much all right. It was enough to make you wonder how many people were going around with dreadful secrets bottled up inside.

It’s not a secret, goddammit! It’s just the cat!

But Ellie was right. It stank to high heaven.

He took the cat out of her room and carried it downstairs, trying to breathe through his mouth. There were worse smells; shit was worse, if you wanted to be perfectly blunt. A month ago they’d had a go-round with the septic tank, and as Jud had said when he came over to watch Puffer and Sons pump the tank, “That ain’t Chanel Number Five, is it, Louis?” The smell of a gangrenous wound-what old Doctor Bracermunn at med school had called “hot flesh”-was worse too. Even the smell which came from the Civic’s catalytic converter when it had been idling in the garage for a while was worse.

But this smell was pretty damn bad. And how had the cat gotten in, anyway? He had put it out earlier, sweeping it out with the broom while all three of them-his people-were upstairs. This was the first time he had actually held the cat since the day it had come back, almost a week ago. It lay hotly in his arms, like a quiescent disease, and Louis wondered, What bolthole did you find, you bastard?

He thought suddenly of his dream that other night-Pascow simply passing through the door between the kitchen and the garage.

Maybe there was no bolthole. Maybe it had just passed through the door, like a ghost.

“Bag that,” he whispered aloud, and his voice was slightly hoarse.

Louis became suddenly sure that the cat would begin to struggle in his arms, that it would scratch him. But Church lay totally still, radiating that stupid heat and that dirty stink, looking at Louis’s face as if it could read the thoughts going on behind Louis’s eyes.