Sally looked around. "You did?"

"We did," Kerry said. "I used to close my eyes, right over by the wall there, and your Mommy and Uncle Michael would find a place to hide and I'd have to track them down. One day, I thought they were hiding in the kitchen, and I thought I would surprise them in there."

Sally giggled.

"So I got a basket, and I filled it with dirt from the garden, and I crept along the hallway really quiet." Kerry lowered her voice. "And I crept, and crept, and when I was at the door, I threw the door open and ran inside, and threw the basket up in the air."

"Oh! They got dirty!"

"Not exactly," Kerry smiled. "Your grandma was in there talking to a stranger and they got dirty."

"Ooooo." Sally giggled, her sadness forgotten. "Did you get in trouble?"

"I ran really fast outside and they couldn't catch me. And then I climbed up a tree and got stuck and everyone got so scared about that they forgot about the dirt." She chuckled as her niece giggled harder.

"That was funny," Sally said. "Can we play hide and seek?"

'Sure," Kerry said. "I'll get your Mommy and Uncle Michael to play too, and we'll see how much trouble we can get into. Doesn't that sound like fun?"

"Yes!"

Kerry gave her another hug. "It'll be fun for you here. When your brother's a little older, you can play with him too, like I did with Uncle Michael."

Sally got quiet. "Did your Daddy live somewhere else too?"

"Well, sort of." Kerry turned her head and regarded her niece. "Do you remember Grandpa?"

Sally nodded. "He's not here no more."

"No," her aunt agreed softly. "Did you know Grandpa was my Daddy?" she asked. "Mine, and your Mommy's, and Uncle Michael's?"

"Oh. He was?"

"Mm." Kerry nodded. "And Grandpa had to spend a lot of time in a different place because of his job. A lot of times we had to go there too, so sometimes we lived there, and sometimes we lived here, and a lot of times, he wasn't here because he had to do things."

Sally put her thumb in her mouth. "Mommy told me Grandpa went to Heaven."

Kerry just nodded. "I'm sure he didn't want to go, but I know he's happy there, and waiting for us to come too. Isn't that what your Mommy told you?"

Sally nodded emphatically. "I miss Grandpa." She was watching Kerry's expressive face intently and there was no way for her aunt to dissemble.

Kerry exhaled. "I think he misses us too, sweetheart," she said. "But we all have things we have to do, and he had something he had to do in Heaven, so he had to go there and wait for us."

The child threw her arms around Kerry's neck. "I miss you too, Aunt Kerry. I thought you went to Heaven too, but Mommy said you just went to Miami."

Kerry bit her lip to keep from laughing, despite the pang in her chest. "You'll have to come to Miami to visit me, honey. Then you can see if it's anything like Heaven."

Sally released her and sat up, looking back at the computer. "More pitchers?"

"Sure." Kerry was glad enough to leave that conversation alone. She opened up the folder and the pictures popped up, tiny little colorful chunks of her life spread out on the screen.

"Who's that?" Sally pointed at one of them.

Ah. Kerry found herself looking back into a familiar pair of very blue eyes. "That's my friend Dar," she said. "She lives in Florida too."

Sally studied the picture. "She's pretty."

The picture was Dar sitting behind her desk in the condo, chin propped up on one fist, and a look of bemused tolerance at what Kerry knew was a just showered, T-shirt covered camera wielder on the other side of the office snapping the shot.

Nothing really remarkable about it, save the smile, and the warmth in those eyes, which were looking right through the viewfinder into Kerry's.

"I think she is," Kerry said, with a smile. "Dar's my best friend. We have a lot of fun together."

"Do you play hide and see?" her niece asked.

"Sometimes." Kerry's eyes twinkled. "We do a lot of things together. " She pointed at another picture. "See that? It's a fish."

"Big fish!" Sally said.

"That's a shark," Kerry told her. "I took that picture, under the water."

Sally turned all the way around and looked at her. "No you didn't," she said. "You're not a fish!" She looked up as the door creaked open. "Mommy! Aunt Kerry isn't a fish, right?"

Angie entered, looking very stressed. She took a moment to relax, and then she shut the door behind her. "What's that, honey? What crazy story is Aunt Kerry telling you now?"

"I was showing her my diving pictures." Kerry turned the laptop so her sister could see them. "That one."

"That on--holy Christ, Kerry! That's a shark!" Angie came over and sat on the edge of the desk. "Tell me you didn't take that."

"I took that," her sister said. "Honestly they're not bad to swim with. You just have to remember not to stick any body parts near their mouths."

"Oh is that all." Angie peered at the pictures. "Well, you still have all your fingers anyway. That's a nice shot of Dar," she said. "So, what have you two been up to?"

"Mommy, Aunt Kerry says you'll get me a dog," Sally piped up. "Like that one!" She pointed at the picture of Chino. "Can I have one, huh? Please?"

Angie looked at the picture, and then she looked at Kerry, who smiled charmingly at her. "You're lucky you're my sister, and I love you."

"Can I Mom?"

DAR SPREAD HER arms out across the bed and let her body relax, wincing a little as the stiffness from sitting as long as she had eased.

It felt very, very good to just lie down and do nothing. The day had seemed to her to last at least a week, and to have it be quiet, and still with just the sound of a ticking wall clock around the corner was a wonderful thing.

Her neck ached. She debated if she should get up and go to her briefcase that held a supply of pain killers to address the problem along with her customary bottle of water.

Deciding that getting up and undressing while doing that instead of falling asleep was easy. Dar rolled over and pushed herself up to her feet, standing and trudging over to the mahogany sidebar where she'd tossed her case.

She unzipped it and took out the bottle of Advil and the water. She opened her suitcase and took out a long shirt to sleep in. She draped it over the nearby chair and turned, leaning against the wood as she opened the bottle and shook out a few pills.

The room was a relatively pleasant space to spend the night. It had a small bathroom with an old fashioned tub in it, a decent size bed long enough for her legs not to hang off, and a rich tapestry on the wall that featured dogs and horses in unlikely poses that made Dar smile.

She swallowed her pills and washed them down with a mouthful of water. Then she picked up the shirt and walked into the bathroom, glancing in the mirror as she unbuttoned her shirt. She pulled the fabric off and crossed her arms, studying her mostly naked upper half with a thoughtful expression.

A game she played with herself, lately.

Tattoo or no tattoo? That was the question. With a wry chuckle, Dar studied her tan skin, trying to imagine what it might look like with the sort of colorful decoration her partner now had spread across her upper chest.

It felt good to waste some brain cells on triviality after the long day. It was like a tiny slice of normality in what had become a morass of uncertain stress.

Would she do it? Dar rubbed her thumb over the skin on her chest where Kerry's mark was. She found the tattoo sexy, and not even because it incorporated her name. But if she had to choose her own, she knew it wouldn't be anything like what her partner had.

What would it be?

Dar studied her skin, and then shook her head and laughed. "I have no damn idea." She finished changing and brushed her teeth. She then went to her briefcase and pulled a diving magazine from it, settling down in the leather armchair near the window where the light from the lamp would allow her to comfortably read.

She was tired, but not sleepy yet. There was a small television set in the corner of the room, almost hidden, but she had no desire to turn it on and listen to yet another retelling and see again the terror and the destruction she'd lived with the entire day.

It was good just to sit, sipping her water, and looking at pictures of colorful fish and clear blue water, reading about live adventures and what the price of a good rum drink was in Roatan in the spring. She leaned back and turned the page, losing herself in the text as her mind remembered the rich tang of salt air and the deep, rumbling sound of underwater breathing.

A soft knock at the door made her jump. She put her water bottle down on the desk, and looked up at the door. "C'mon in."

The door pushed open, and Alastair's head poked around it. "Hey, Dar I--oh, my gosh. Sorry. Didn't realize you were--ah--"

"Wearing a T-shirt?" Dar gave her boss a wry look. "Relax. It's more than I wore to that damn Halloween party that time."

Alastair cautiously entered. "Just thought you'd like a nightcap." He held up a bottle. "Our host had this delivered. It's good stuff."

"Sure." Dar closed her magazine. "Last time I shared whisky with you I was resigning. We should find happier occasions."

Alastair walked over and sat down in the chair opposite Dar. He was still in his slacks, but had his shirt untucked and the sleeves unbuttoned and partly rolled up his forearms. "I do remember that," he said, pouring a measure of the golden liquor into one of the two glasses he'd brought and handing it to Dar. "Wasn't fond of how that day started."

"Me either." Dar waited for him to pour his own glass, and then lifted hers. "Here's to better times."

"Amen." Alastair reached over and touched his glass to hers, then sat back and sipped it. "I just talked to the missus," he said. "Seems a neighbor of ours was in the North Tower and can't be reached."

Dar shook her head.

"Nice feller," Alastair said. "His family's in tatters, of course. My wife said she'd never been so glad to have me out of the country as she was this morning." He studied the whiskey in the glass. "Could easily have been otherwise. I was in New York last week."

"Could have," Dar agreed quietly. "We all travel a lot. It was just a toss of the dice." She considered. "But then again, so is driving to work every morning in Miami." She sipped the whiskey, the unfamiliar burn making her nose twitch.

"Well, that's true, or so I've heard," Alastair said. "It's not so bad in Houston, but still." He leaned back. "You think though, so many of us work like dogs so we can retire and take it easy, and those boys in New York work harder than most, and then something like this happens."

"Sometimes it takes something like this happening to make you take a step back," Dar said, after a sip of the whiskey. "We get so damned focused sometimes." She held the glass up to the light, admiring the honey color. "Some times you have to stop and live. You miss out otherwise."

Alastair smiled. "Learned that relatively recently?"

Dar's eyes twinkled wryly. "You could say that."

Her boss chuckled. "What are you reading there?" He took the extended magazine and turned it around. "Ah--your crazy hobby." He flipped through the pages. "Those islands do look nice, but the missus won't hear of it. She wants to go see Niagara Falls on our next trip."

"I've seen them," Dar said. "Alastair, take her someplace you can spend more than ten minutes. The falls are nice, but unless you're going to go over them in a barrel they're not much fun."

"Have you?" Alastair asked. "Gone over them?"

Dar's brows shot up. "How nuts do you think I am?"

"Just asking." He chuckled again. "We usually end up at tourist central locations like Vegas. I don't mind exploration, but I like mine to come with a scotch and sour and a limo driver, I'm afraid."

"Well." Dar extended her legs and crossed her ankles. "We call our cabin down south Microsoft Rustic for a reason. Ker and I talk about going camping and hiking in the Grand Canyon, but I had my fill of that as a kid and I'd rather call room service myself if the truth be known."

"Camping in Florida?" Alastair asked. "And you lived to grow up?"

Dar smiled. "We were actually going to take a trip around Europe when we were done here. See the Alps. See if I'm as bad at skiing as I was the last time I tried, and maybe end up down in Italy." She exhaled. "Kerry was really looking forward to it. She never got the chance to travel much."