The memory snapped into focus, and he flattened himself back against the tree trunk and let out a shaken breath. “Ah-your aunt, right?”

Surprised eyes reached upward toward his face as she turned fully toward him, her smile a hairsbreadth from where his lips had been. “My dad’s great-aunt, actually-she lived to be over a hundred. How did you know?”

His heart pounded; he fought to keep his voice even. “Your dad told me-back there in the hospital. Said something about getting hurt and as a result of that, being where he needed to be to save your mother’s life. And that your-his-aunt said it was Providence.”

“My dad told you that?” The watermark frown had appeared in the center of her forehead, and her eyes flickered as if they were trying to search his face in the darkness.

“Yeah, he did. Is it true?”

“Oh, yes.” She relaxed, sagging back against the tree. “The way it happened… Dad was a marine. He was stationed in Bosnia, and he’d stayed on there even after he left the corps, helping out with one of those humanitarian groups, driving a truck-” a startled look flashed across her face for an instant “-um, bringing in food and medical supplies. He was injured when his convoy was shelled. Broke both his legs. So they sent him home for rehab. Mom was his physical therapist, and it just so happened that at the time she was being stalked by her ex-husband. He’d have killed her if Dad hadn’t been there-or maybe she’d have killed him, I don’t know. Either way, Dad saved her life, and he was in a wheelchair at the time.”

“Amazing story,” C.J. murmured, and there was a swelling warmth inside his chest he recognized as envy. “Your dad’s a real hero.”

“Yes, he is.” She pushed restlessly away from the tree, then halted…trapped, it occurred to him, on her own private island. “Mom was one of the lucky ones.” There was anger now in her voice, and he didn’t know whether it was because of what they were talking about or her frustration at her own limitations. “That’s how I-”

He’d moved up beside her, to give her a point of reference, maybe, or walk with her if that was what she wanted. And she turned and reached out to him impulsively, the way she’d done that night in the abandoned gas station. That night her hands had landed on his folded-up arms with a touch light as leaves falling. Now since his arms weren’t folded, it was his chest she touched. He looked down into her eyes, and for the first time in a long time saw that breathtaking flash of silver.

“C.J.,” she said, earnest and intent, “do you know what I do? I mean…have you guessed, or figured it out?”

“I think I’ve ’bout got it figured out, yeah. But why don’t you explain it to me.” His voice was harsher than he’d intended. Whether it was that or she’d felt the way his heart was knocking against her fingers, but she took her hands away from his chest. Regret swept through him, intense as a shiver.

“Well, that’s what started it for me-my parents’ story.” She was looking away from him now…far, far away. “Mom and Dad were always open with me about what had happened to her. She’d been abused by her father when she was just a child, and finally the only way she could find to escape him was to get married, when she was barely sixteen. That was just as bad. Her husband was a violent, controlling man, and when she left him he tracked her down and, as I said, would have killed her if it hadn’t been for Dad. I used to think about that. What about the ones who aren’t lucky enough to have someone like my dad? Things are a lot better now than they used to be. At least there’s more awareness of the problem of domestic violence…laws are tougher. But there are still so many cases where-” She paused, shaking her head, and the look she threw at him was one of cold, bitter fury. Then, though he had nothing to say to her, she held up a hand as if to stop him-or was it herself?-and went quietly on.

“I went into social work, first, thinking that was the way to help. It didn’t take me long to realize that Social Services can only do so much. Social service agencies have to operate within the confines of law. And the law-okay, the law means well, but sometimes it seems like it protects the wrong people. Then there are some people who don’t know about the law and others who don’t care. And some-” her voice and her eyes hardened “-who believe they are a law unto themselves.”

“Like Vasily…” He said it on an exhaled breath and it sounded like a hiss. Even the name seems evil, he thought.

She gazed at him for a long moment without speaking, and the healing bruises around her eyes seemed to shimmer. Then she said softly, “I’m not going to tell you how I found the group I work-” her mouth twisted “-worked for. It’s too important that the work they do be allowed to go on.” Her lips relaxed and quivered into a half smile. “Dad says it’s like the Underground Railroad-you know, like during slavery?-but actually it’s probably more like a witness protection program, only not sanctioned by any government agency. We get people who are in imminent danger to safety, then help them…disappear.”

“Is that what happened to Emma Vasily? She just…disappeared?” His voice was gruff. He didn’t mean to be judgmental, but he was thinking about the little girl with the big black refugee eyes, the way she’d leaned against him, wanting so badly to trust somebody. He wondered if she was happier now, living among strangers.

“C.J…” It sounded like a sigh of regret.

“I guess I can’t blame you for not trusting me,” he said. And he couldn’t, but that didn’t keep him from feeling hurt in some strange, illogical way.

She looked sideways at him. They’d begun walking again, swishing their feet through the leaves on his mother’s lawn. “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” she said, still wearing that little half smile. “The funny thing is, you know, I do. I trust you to behave exactly as you have been, with honor and integrity…” C.J. snorted. Why didn’t he feel complimented? “The problem is, you and I are on opposite sides of the fence, C.J.”

“I don’t think that’s true-” The denial was automatic and held no conviction at all.

She shook her head. “You still plan on being a lawyer?”

“Yes, I sure do.”

“Well, then? As a lawyer, you are bound as an officer of the court to uphold the law. And there’s no getting around the fact that I-” her smile wavered “-for the best of all possible reasons, am often, shall we say, forced to circumvent it.” She shrugged as if to say, That’s the way it is-what can you do?

What could he do? What could he say? The answer to that was: not a damn thing.

“I think I’d like to go in now,” Caitlyn said softly, and she gave a shiver that was only perceptible because his arm happened to be touching hers.

“Getting cold?” he asked, and she shrugged.

It did seem cooler there in the shaded yard, or maybe it was just the chill he felt deep down in his insides…of loneliness, maybe? Of regret?

All he knew was that a few moments ago he’d felt so close to her it had seemed to him one good puff of wind could have brought her into his arms. Now she was a million miles away. On opposite sides of the fence, she’d said, and he couldn’t think of any way to tell her she was wrong. And if she wasn’t, he wondered how in the world he was supposed to help her, whether that meant make things right for her, be a hero to her, save her life or just be there if she needed comforting. How was he supposed to do any of those things with that fence between them?


“Hey, hon’, how’re you doin’ out here?” The screen door creaked, then banged shut. Jess’s footsteps scuffed on the planks of the front porch floor.

It was late afternoon, coming to the end of Caitlyn’s third day in the Starr household. She was becoming more comfortable there and less fearful, gaining confidence as she learned her way around. Her days were already developing a routine: in the mornings, breakfast; then, while Jess went off to her shift at the hospital in town and Betty to her shopping or volunteer work for the church day-care center, long, leisurely walks with C.J. and the dogs. During those walks, C.J. tried, rather touchingly, she thought, to describe everything for her in great detail, while she tried very hard to keep from him the fact that she was counting footsteps and memorizing the locations of trees and fences.

Later, after C.J. had gone home to study for his bar exams, she would help Betty with the housework or in the garden. She was learning how to water by hand with the garden hose during the autumn dry spell, and to tell the difference between crabgrass and vegetable plants by feel.

The hardest times were the quiet times, like now-what could she do if she was too restless to nap? Reading and watching TV were definitely out. She wasn’t accustomed to being idle, but so far, sitting on the front porch listening to the cassette tapes Betty had found for her was the only activity she’d been able to come up with to combat the loneliness of those empty hours.

“You got a minute?”

Caitlyn had nothing but minutes, but thought it would be self-pitying to say so. She stilled the rocking chair, felt for the Off button on the portable tape player in her lap and pulled off the headphones, then turned toward the voice with a welcoming smile. “I was just listening to these ‘Lake Woebegon’ tapes your mom gave me.”

“Garrison Keillor? Oh, I remember those.” The rocker next to hers gave a groan and Jess’s voice came from a new level. “It’s been a while since I’ve heard them, though.”

“My parents always put them on in the car during long trips.” She leaned over to put the tape player on the floor, and her foot nudged a large furry body that twitched and emitted a patient sigh. “Sorry, Bubba,” she murmured.

“He sure has adopted you,” Jess said.

“Yeah, I know.” Caitlyn settled back in the rocker with a short laugh. “It’s funny…it’s almost as if he knows.”

“Dogs have a sense about ’em. The intelligent ones do.” There was a pause and then a laugh-a dry, soft stirring, like the rustling of leaves. “The day I found out my husband had been shot down, ol’ Bubba, there, wouldn’t leave my side. Came right in the house and would not be put out…and Bubba is not a house dog. That night and for a long time after that he slept on the rug beside my bed.”

“Shot down?” Caitlyn sat forward, frowning. She had a vague memory of C.J. telling her something about that, but she rather thought she’d dreamed it. It had occurred to her to wonder why Jess and her daughter were living with Jess’s mother, and what had become of the husband and father, but she would never in a million years have been so rude as to ask. “You mean…”

“Yeah…as in killed.” It was a gentle exhalation. “Didn’t C.J. tell you? Tristan’s officially listed as KIA, although they never did find his remains-and how they could know anything, considering he went down in Iraq…”

“I’m so sorry.” Such a loss seemed beyond imagining.

Jess let out another of those careful breaths. “That’s okay. It was a long time ago-God, eight years. Sometimes I can’t even believe it. But I have accepted it.”

“But you haven’t remarried, or…”

“Or…?” The rocking chair’s creak seemed to accent the question mark. “No, but it’s not because I didn’t-that I wouldn’t have, if-” The chair creaked again, more like a protest this time.

“I’m sorry,” Caitlyn said quickly. “It’s none of my-”

“No, no, it’s okay-it’s just that I haven’t thought about it in a while, is all. It’s not that I wouldn’t have, if I’d found anybody I wanted.” She hesitated, then, “Problem is, Tris is a pretty darn hard act to follow.”

As she nodded her understanding, in her mind’s eye Caitlyn pictured a smile, poignant and sad. Jess’s, she wondered, or her own? She could imagine…had grown up in the shelter of such a love…could readily understand why someone who had known that kind of love would never settle for anything less. She couldn’t imagine, for instance, either of her parents remarrying, should anything-God forbid!-happen to the other. She could understand…but would she ever know? Looking ahead at her own prospects for finding love like that, she saw only a vast and hopeless emptiness.

“But,” Jess said briskly, to the accompaniment of a loud creak from her rocking chair, “that’s not what I came out here to talk to you about. I’ve been looking on the Internet at work-” there was a papery rustle “-and I found all sorts of stuff I think might be really helpful for you. You know-programs, services, gadgets. Technology is amazing, isn’t it? Like, they have this little thingy you put in your coffee cup, so when you pour, it beeps to tell you you’re close to the top. Cool, huh?”