“You going to kill me to protect your daughter? That won’t help much. I mean, I’ll be dead, but then the police will come looking, and the whole ugly story will still come out.”

“You always were kind of a smart mouth. I remember that from our high school days. And how much I hated you the day you came to see me with the rest of the team when I was pregnant with little Gary.” Her voice had a conversational quality. “No. I can persuade the cops that I thought my home was being invaded. Someone coming to hurt Lily on top of all she’s already been through today. Mary Ann may figure it out, but she loves Lily too much to do anything to hurt her.”

“Clare Rutland’s out front with the car. She’s going for help before too long. Her story would be pretty hard to discount.”

“She’s going to find the gate locked when she gets there. And even Clare, endlessly clever, will find it hard to scale a ten-foot electrified fence. No, it will be seen as a terrible tragedy. People will give us their sympathy. Lily’s golden up here, after all.”

I felt a jolt under my rib cage. “You killed Gary.”

She burst out laughing. “Oh, my goodness, yes, Vic. Did you just figure that out, smart-ass that you are? I was sure you were coming up here to gun for me. Did you really think little Lily, who could hardly pee without her daddy, had some sudden awakening and strangled him?”

“Why, Monica? Because she may have hurt her shoulder? You couldn’t just get him to lay off? I noticed you didn’t even try at her practice session last week.”

“I always hated that about you,” she said, her tone still flat. “Your goddamned high-and-mightiness. You don’t-didn’t-ever stop Gary from doing some damned thing he was doing. How do you think I got pregnant with little Gary? Because his daddy said lie down and spread your legs for me, pretty please? Get out of your dream world. I got pregnant the old-fashioned way: he raped me. We married. We fought-each other and everything around us. But we made it out of that hellhole down there just like you did. Only not as easily.”

“It wasn’t easy for me,” I started to say, but I sensed a sudden movement from her and flung myself onto the floor. A tennis ball bounced off the wall behind me and ricocheted from my leg.

Monica laughed again. “I have the shotgun. But I kind of like working with a racket. I was pretty good once. Never as good as Lily, though. And when Lily was born-when we realized what her potential was-I saw I could move myself so far from South Chicago it would never be able to grab me again.”

Another thwock came in the dark and another ball crashed past me.

“Then Gary started pushing her so hard, I was afraid she’d be like Andrea Jaeger. Injured and burned out before she ever reached her potential. I begged him, pleaded with him. We’d lose that Artemis contract and everything else. But Gary ’s the kind of guy who’s always right.”

This time I was ready for the swish of her racket in the dark. Under cover of the ball’s noise, I rolled across the floor in her direction. I didn’t speak, hoping the momentum of her anger would keep her going without prompting.

“When Lily came off the court today favoring her shoulder, I told him I’d had it, that I wanted him out of her career. That Paco knew a thousand times more how to coach a girl with Lily’s talent than he did. But Mr. Ever-right just laughed and ranted. He finally said Lily could choose. Just like she’d chosen him over Nicole, she’d choose him over Paco.”

I kept inching my way forward until I felt the net. One of the balls had stopped there; I picked it up.

Monica hadn’t noticed my approach. “Lily came up just then and heard what he said. On top of the scene he’d made at her little press doohickey it was too much for her. She had a fit and left the room. I went down the hall to an alcove where Johnny Lombardy-the stringer-kept his spool. I just cut a length of racket string from his roll, went back to the lounge, and-God, it was easy.”

“And Nicole’s racket?” I asked hoarsely, hoping my voice would sound as though it was farther away.

“Just snipped a few pieces out while she was in the shower. She’s another one like you-snotty know-it-all. It won’t hurt her to spend some time in jail.”

She fired another ball at the wall and then, unexpectedly, flooded the room with light. Neither of us could see, but she at least was prepared for the shock. It gave her time to locate me as I scrambled to my feet. I found myself tangled in the net and struggled furiously while she steadied the gun on her shoulder.

I wasn’t going to get my leg free in time. Just before she fired, I hurled the ball I’d picked up at her. It hit her in the face. The bullet tore a hole in the floor inches from my left foot. I finally yanked my leg from the net and launched myself at her.

VI

“I’m sorry, Vic. That you almost got killed, I mean. Not that I called Monica-she needed me. Not just then, but in general. She never had your, oh, centeredness. She needed a mother.”

Mary Ann and I were eating in Greek Town. The Slims had limped out of Chicago a month ago, but I hadn’t felt like talking to my old coach since my night with Monica. But Clare Rutland had come to town to meet with one of the tour sponsors, and to hand me a check in person. And she insisted that the three of us get together. After explaining how she’d talked the sponsors and players into continuing, Clare wanted to know why Mary Ann had called Monica that night.

“Everyone needs a mother, Mary Ann. That’s the weakest damned excuse I ever heard for trying to help someone get away with murdering her husband.”

Mary Ann looked at me strangely. “Maybe Monica is right about you, Victoria: too high-and-mighty. But it was Lily I was trying to help. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known Monica was going to try to kill you. But you can take care of yourself. You survived the encounter. She didn’t.”

“What do you mean?” I demanded. “All I did was bruise her face getting her not to shoot me. And no one’s going to give her the death penalty. I’d be surprised if she served more than four years.”

“You don’t understand, Vic. She didn’t have anything besides the… the scrappiness that got her and Gary out of South Chicago. Oh, she learned how to dress, and put on makeup, and what kinds of things North Shore people eat for dinner. Now that the fight’s gone out of her she doesn’t have anything inside her to get her through the bad times. You do.”

Clare Rutland interrupted hastily. “The good news is that Lily will recover. We have her working with a splendid woman, psychotherapist, I mean. She’s playing tennis as much as she wants, which turns out to be a lot. And the other women on the circuit are rallying around in a wonderful way. Nicole is taking her to Maine to spend the summer at her place near Bar Harbor with her.”

“Artemis dropped their endorsement contract,” I said. “It was in the papers here.”

“Yes, but she’s already made herself enough to get through the next few years without winning another tournament. Let’s be honest. She could live the rest of her life on what she’s made in endorsements so far. Anyway, I hear Nike and Reebok are both sniffing around. No one’s going to do anything until after Monica’s trial-it wouldn’t look right. But Lily will be fine.”

We dropped it there. Except for the testimony I had to give at Monica’s trial I didn’t think about her or Lily too much as time went by. Sobered by my old coach’s comments, I kept my time on the stand brief. Mary Ann, who came to the trial every day, seemed to be fighting tears when I left the courtroom, but I didn’t stop to talk to her.

The following February, though, Mary Ann surprised me by phoning me.

“I’m not working on the lines this year,” she said abruptly. “I’ve seen too much tennis close up. But Lily’s making her first public appearance at the Slims, and she sent me tickets for all the matches. Would you like to go?”