But Sarah, what you were afraid of wasn't quite the same thing, was it?

“Just a little more, big boy,” Walt was saying, as if from a thousand miles away. Sarah looked up at them, sitting together in a bar of mote-dusted sunlight, her apron flapping between Walt's knees, and she was suddenly afraid again. She saw the ring sinking to the bottom of the toilet bowl, turning over and over. She heard the small clink as it struck the porcelain. She thought of Halloween masks, of the kid saying, l love to see this guy take a beatin. She thought of promises made and never kept, and her eyes went to his thin newsprint face, looking out at her with such haggard, wretched surprise.

“… gimmick, anyway,” Walt said, hanging up her apron. He had gotten Denny to eat the egg, every bit of it, and now their son and heir was sucking contentedly away at a juice-bottle.

“Huh?” Sarah looked up as he came over to her.

“I said that for a man who must have almost half a million dollars” worth of hospital bills outstanding, it's a helluva good gimmick.”

“What are you talking about? What do you mean, gimmick?”

“Sure,” he said, apparently missing her anger. “He could make seven, maybe ten thousand dollars doing a book about the accident and the coma. But if he came out of the coma psychic-the sky's the limit.”

“That's one hell of an allegation!” Sarah said, and her voice was thin with fury.

He turned to her, his expression first one of surprise and then of understanding. The understanding look made her angrier than ever. If she had a nickel for every time Walt Hazlett had thought he understood her, they could fly first-class to Jamaica.

“Look, I'm sorry I brought it up,” he said.

“Johnny would no more lie than the Pope would… would… you know.”

He bellowed laughter, and in that moment she nearly picked up his own coffee cup and threw it at him. Instead, she locked her hands together tightly under the table and squeezed them. Denny goggled at his father and then burst into his own peal of laughter.

“Honey,” Walt said. “I have nothing against him, I have nothing against what he's doing. In fact, I respect him for it. If that fat old mossback Fisher can go from a broke lawyer to a millionaire during fifteen years in the House of Representatives, then this guy should have a perfect right to pick up as much as he can playing psychic…”

“Johnny doesn't lie,” she repeated tonelessly.

“It's a gimmick for the blue-rinse brigade who read the weekly tabloids and belong to the Universe Book Club,” he said cheerily. “Although I will admit that a little second sight would come in handy during jury selection in this damn Timmons trial.”

“Johnny Smith doesn't lie,” she repeated, and heard him saying: It slipped off your finger. You were putting his shaving stuff into one of those side pockets and it just slipped off… you go up in the attic and look, Sarah. You'll see. But she couldn't tell Walt that. Walt didn't know she had been to see Johnny.

Nothing wrong in going to see him, her mind offered uneasily.

No, but how would he react to the news that she had thrown her original wedding ring into the toilet and flushed it away? He might not understand the sudden twitch of fear that had made her do it-the same fear she saw mirrored on those other newsprint faces, and, to some degree, on Johnny's own. No, Walt might not under-stand that at all. After all, throwing your wedding ring into the toilet and then pushing the flush did suggest a certain vulgar symbolism.

“All right,” Walt was saying, “he doesn't lie. But I just don't believe

Sarah said softly, “Look at the people behind him, Walt. Look at their faces. They believe.”

Walt gave them a cursory glance. “Sure, the way a kid believes in a magician as long as the trick is ongoing.”

“You think this fellow Dussault was a, what-do-you-call-it, a shill? According to the article, he and Johnny had

never met before.”

“That's the only way the illusion will work, Sarah,” Walt said patiently. “It doesn't do a magician any good to pull a bunny out of a rabbit hutch, only out of a hat. Either Johnny Smith knew something or he made a terribly good guess based on this guy Dussault's behavior at the time. But I repeat, I respect him for it. He got a lot of mileage out of it. If it turns him a buck, more power to him.”

In that moment she hated him, loathed him, this good man she had married. There was really nothing so terrible on the reverse side of his goodness, his steadiness, his mild good humor-just the belief, apparently grounded in the bedrock of his soul, that everybody was looking out for number one, each with his or her own little racket. This morning he could call Harrison Fisher a fat old mossback; last night he had been bellowing with laughter at Fisher's stories about Greg Stillson, the funny mayor of some-town-or-other and who might just be crazy enough to run as an independent in the House race next year.

No, in the world of Walt Hazlett, no one had psychic powers and there were no heroes and the doctrine of we-have-to-change-the-system from-within was all-powerful. He was a good man, a steady man, he loved her and Denny, but suddenly her soul cried out for Johnny and the five years together of which they had been robbed. Or the lifetime together. A child with darker hair.

“You better get going, babe,” she said quietly. “They'll have your guy Timmons in stocks and bonds, or whatever they are.”

“Sure. “He smiled at her, the summation done, session adjourned. “Still friends?”

“Still friends. “But he knew where the ring was. He knew.

Walt kissed her, his right hand resting lightly on the back of her neck. He always had the same thing for breakfast, he always kissed her the same way, some day they were going to Washington, and no one was psychic.

Five minutes later he was gone, backing their little red Pinto out onto Pond Street, giving his usual brief toot on the horn, and putting away. She was left alone with Denny, who was in the process of strangling himself while he tried to wriggle under his highchair tray.

“You're going at that all wrong, Sluggo,” Sarah said, crossing the kitchen and unlatching the tray.

“Blue!” Denny said, disgusted with the whole thing.

Speedy Tomato, their tomcat, sauntered into the kitchen at his usual slow, hipshot juvenile delinquent's stride, and Denny grabbed him, making little chuckling noises. Speedy laid his ears back and looked resigned.

Sarah smiled a little and cleared the table. Inertia. A body at rest tends to remain at rest, and she was at rest. Never mind Walt's darker side; she had her own. She had no intention of doing more than sending Johnny a card at Christmas. It was better, safer, that way-because a body in motion tends to keep moving. Her life here was good. She had survived Dan, she had survived Johnny, who had been so unfairly taken from her (but so much in this world was unfair), she had come through her own personal rapids to this smooth water, and here she would stay. This sunshiny kitchen was not a bad place. Best to forget county fairs, Wheels of Fortune, and Johnny Smith's face.

As she ran water into the sink to do the dishes she turned on the radio and caught the beginning of the news. The first item made her freeze with a just-washed plate in one hand, her eyes looking out over their small backyard in startled contemplation. Johnny's mother had had a stroke while watching a TV report on her son's press conference. She had died this morning, not an hour ago.

Sarah dried her hands, snapped off the radio, and pried Speedy Tomato out of Denny's hands. She carried her boy into the living room and popped him into his play-pen. Denny protested this indignity with loud, lusty howls of which she took no notice. She went to the telephone and called the EMMC. A switchboard operator who sounded tired of repeating the same piece of intelligence over and over again told her that John Smith had discharged himself the night before, slightly before mid-night.