Holly Grace stepped forward. "Come on, baby," she said lightly. "I got about a thousand things I've been saving up to tell you." She began stroking Dallie's arm in the easy, proprietary manner of a woman who knows she has the right to touch a particular man in any way she wants. "I saw you on television at the Kaiser. Your long irons were looking real good for a change. If you ever learn how to putt, you might even be able to play half-decent golf someday."

Gradually, Dallie's grip on Francesca eased, and Skeet cautiously reached out to draw her away. But at the instant Skeet touched her, Francesca sank her teeth into the hard flesh of Dallie's chest, clamping down on his pectoral muscle.

Dallie yelled just long enough for Skeet to whip Francesca into his own arms.

"Crazy bitch!" Dallie shouted, drawing back his arm and taking a lunge toward her. Holly Grace jumped in front of him, using her own body as a shield, because she couldn't stand the thought of Dallie getting kicked off the tour. He stopped, put a hand on her shoulder, and rubbed his chest with a knotted fist. A vein throbbed in his temple. "Get her out of my sight! I mean it, Skeet! Buy her a plane ticket home, and don't you ever let me see her again!"

Just before Skeet dragged her away, Francesca heard the echo of Dallie's voice coming from behind her, much softer now, and gentler. "I'm sorry," he said.

Sorry… The word was repeated in her head like a bitter refrain. Only those two small words of apology for destroying what was left of her life. And then she heard the rest of what he was saying.

"I'm sorry, Holly Grace."

Francesca let Skeet put her into the front seat of his Ford and sat without moving as he turned out onto the highway.

They drove in silence for several minutes before he finally said, "Look, Francie, I'm gonna pull into the gas station down the road and call one of my friends who works over at the county clerk's office to see

if she'll put you up for the night. She's a real nice lady. Tomorrow morning I'll come on over with your things and take you to the airport in San Antonio. You'll be back in London before you know it."

She made no response and he looked over at her uneasily. For the first time since he'd met her, he felt sorry for her. She was a pretty little thing when she wasn't talking, and he could see that she was hurt real bad. "Listen, Francie, there wasn't any reason for you to get so riled up about Holly Grace. Dallie and Holly Grace are just one of those facts of life, like beer and football. But they stopped making judgments about each other's bedroom lives a long time ago, and if you hadn't gotten Dallie so mad with all that carrying on, he probably would have kept you around a while longer."

Francesca winced. Dallie would have kept her around- like one of his mongrel dogs. She swallowed tears and bile as she thought how much she had shamed herself.

Skeet stepped down harder on the accelerator, and a few minutes later they pulled into the gas station. "You just sit here and I'll be right back."

Francesca waited until Skeet had gone inside before she slipped from the car and began to run. She ran down the highway, dodging the headlights of the cars, running through the night as if she could run away from herself. A cramp in her side finally made her slow her pace, but she still didn't stop.

She wandered for hours through the deserted streets of Wynette, not seeing where she was going, not caring. As she walked past vacant stores and night-quiet homes, she felt as if the last part of her old self had died… the best part, the eternal light of her own optimism. No matter how bleak things had been since Chloe's death, she had always felt her difficulties were only temporary. Now she finally understood they weren't temporary at all.

Her sandal slipped in the dirty orange pulp of a jack-o'-lantern that had been smashed on the street, and she fell, bruising her hip on the pavement. She lay there for a moment, her leg twisted awkwardly beneath her, pumpkin ooze mixing with the dried blood from the scratches on her forearm. She wasn't the kind of woman men abandoned- she was the one who did the abandoning. Fresh tears began to fall. What had she done to deserve this? Was she so terrible? Had she hurt people so badly that this was to be her punishment? A dog barked in the distance, and far down the street an upstairs light flicked on in a bathroom window.

She couldn't think what to do, so she lay in the dirt and the pumpkin pulp and cried. All her dreams, all her plans, everything… gone. Dallie didn't love her. He wasn't going to marry her. They weren't going to live together happily ever after forever and ever.

She didn't remember making the decision to start walking again, but after a while she realized her feet were moving and she was heading down a new street. And then in the darkness she stumbled over the curb and looked up to see that she was standing in front of Dallie's Easter egg house.

Holly Grace pulled the Riviera into the driveway and shut off the ignition. It was nearly three in the morning. Dallie was slumped down in the passenger seat, but although his eyes were closed, she didn't think he was asleep. She got out of the car and walked around to the passenger door. Half afraid he would slump out onto the ground, she braced the door with her hip as she pulled it slowly open. He

didn't move.

"Come on, baby," she said, reaching down and tugging on his arm. "Let's get you tucked in."

Dallie muttered something indecipherable and let one leg slide to the ground.

"That's right," she encouraged him. "Come on, now."

He stood and draped his arm around her shoulders as he'd done so many times before. Part of Holly Grace wanted to pull away and hope that he would fold up on the ground like an old accordion, but the other part of her wouldn't let him go for anything in the world-not a shot at being southwestern regional sales manager, not a chance to replace her Firebird with a Porsche, not even a bedroom encounter with all four of the Statler Brothers at the same time-because Dallie Beaudine was the person she almost loved best of anybody in the world. Almost, but not quite, since the person she'd learned to love best was herself. Dallie had taught her that a long time ago. Dallie had taught her a lot of good lessons he'd never been able to learn himself.

He suddenly pulled away from her and began walking around the side of the house toward the front. His steps were slightly unsteady, but considering how much he'd had to drink, he was doing pretty well.

Holly Grace watched him for a moment. Six years had passed, but he still wouldn't let Danny go.

She rounded the front of the house in time to see him slump down on the top porch step. "You go on

to your mama's now," he said quietly.

"I'm staying, Dallie." She climbed the steps, then pulled off her hat and tossed it over onto the porch swing.

"Go on, now. I'll come over and see you tomorrow."

He was speaking more distinctly than he usually did, a sure indication of just how drunk he really was. She sat down next to him and gazed out into the darkness, deciding to force the issue. "You know what I was thinkin' about today?" she asked. "I was thinkin' about how you used to walk around with Danny up on your shoulders, and he'd hold on to your hair and squeal. And every once in a while, his diaper'd leak so that when you put him down you'd have a wet spot on the back of your shirt. I used to think that was so funny-my pretty-boy husband goin' around with baby pee on the back of his T-shirt." Dallie didn't respond. She waited a moment and then tried again. "Remember that awful fight we had when you took him to the barbershop and got all his baby curls cut off? I threw your Western Civ book at you, and we made love on the kitchen floor… only neither of us had swept it in a week and all Danny's Cheerio rejects got ground into my back, not to mention a few other places."

He spread his legs and put his elbows on his knees, bending his head. She touched his arm, her voice soft. "Think about the good times, Dallie. It's been six years. You got to let go of the bad and think about the good."

"We were crummy parents, Holly Grace."

She tightened her grip on his arm. "No, we weren't. We loved Danny. There's never been a little boy

who was loved as much as he was. Remember how we used to tuck him in bed with us at night, even though everybody said he'd grow up queer?"

Dallie lifted his head and his voice was bitter. "What I remember is how we'd go out at night and leave him alone with all those twelve-year-old baby-sitters. Or drag him along when we couldn't find anybody to stay with him- prop that little plastic seat of his up in the corner of some booth in a bar and feed him potato chips, or put Seven-Up in his bottle if he started to cry. Christ…"

Holly Grace shrugged and let go of his arm. "We weren't even nineteen when Danny was born. Not

much more than kids ourselves. We did the best we knew how."

"Yeah? Well, it wasn't fucking good enough!"

She ignored his outburst. She had done a better job of coming to terms with Danny's death than Dallie had, although she still had to look away when she caught a glimpse of a mother picking up a little towheaded boy. Halloween was the hardest for Dallie because that was the day Danny had died, but Danny's birthday was hardest for her. She gazed at the dark, leafy shapes of the pecan trees and remembered how it had been that day.

Although it had been exam week at A &M and Dallie had a paper to write, he was out hustling some cotton farmers on the golf course so they could buy a crib. When her water had broken, she had been afraid to go to the hospital by herself so she'd driven to the course in an old Ford Fairlane she'd borrowed from the engineering student who lived next door to them. Although she had folded a bath towel to sit on, she'd still soaked through onto the seat.

The greenskeeper had gone after Dallie and returned with him in less than ten minutes. When Dallie had seen her leaning against the side of the Fairlane, wet patches staining her old denim jumper, he had vaulted out of the electric cart and run over to her. "Shoot, Holly Grace," he'd said, "I just drove the green on number eight-landed not three inches from the cup. Couldn't you have waited a while longer?" Then he'd laughed and picked her up, wet jumper and all, and held her against his chest until a contraction made her cry out. "

Thinking about it now, she felt a lump growing in her throat. "Danny was such a beautiful baby," she whispered to Dallie. "Remember how scared we were when we brought him home from the hospital?"

His reply was low and tight. "People need a license to keep a dog, but they let you take a baby out of a hospital without asking a single question."

She jumped up from the step. "Dammit, Dallie! I want to mourn our baby boy. I want to mourn him with you tonight, not listen to you turn everything bitter."

He slumped forward for a moment, his head dropping. "You shouldn't have come. You know how I get this time of year."

She let the palm of her hand come to rest on the top of his head like a baptism. "Let Danny go this year."

"Could you let him go if you were the one who'd killed him?"

"I knew about the cistern cover, too."

"And you told me to fix it." He stood up slowly, wandering over to the porch railing. "You told me twice that the hinge was broken and that the neighborhood boys kept pulling it off so they could throw stones down inside. You weren't the one who stayed home with Danny that afternoon. You weren't the one who was supposed to be watching him."

"Dallie, you were studying. It's not like you were passed out drunk on the floor when he slipped outside."

She shut her eyes. She didn't want to think about this part-about her little two-year-old baby boy toddling across the yard to that cistern, looking down into it with his boundless curiosity. Losing his balance. Falling forward. She didn't want to imagine that little body struggling for life in that dank water, crying out. What had her baby thought about at the end, when all he could see was a circle of light far above him? Had he thought about her, his mother, who wasn't there to pull him safely into her arms, or had he thought about his daddy, who kissed him and roughhoused with him and held him so tight that he wouid squeal? What had he thought about at that last moment when his small lungs had filled with water?

Blinking against the sting of tears, she went over to Dallie and circled his waist from behind. Then she rested her forehead against the back of his shoulder. "God gives us life as a gift," she said. "We don't