“I don’t know,” he said. “I sort of hoped the problem would just go away.”

“Just go away? How?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t say it was a realistic hope, Naomi, just a hope. What do you think I should do?”

“You’re a good man, Richard.”

“Huh?”

“You’re a good father, good husband, good provider, good son to your parents, good friend.”

“I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

Naomi took another sip of coffee. “I married a good man, that’s all. Most people can’t be bothered with somebody else’s problems. Most people would have forgotten the whole thing a long time ago. But not you, Richard. This whole thing has really been tearing you apart, hasn’t it?”

He hesitated and then nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “it has.”

“The way I see it then,” Naomi continued, “you have no choice.”

“You mean . . . ?”

“Sure, I’d love to forget the whole thing,” she said. “I probably could, too. But you can’t, Richard. You’re not built that way. You’ll drive yourself crazy and I don’t want a good crazy man for a husband. So this is what we’ll do. Until this thing is settled, you’ll have to drive the twins to school in the morning. I’ll pick them up in the afternoon. Their activities will have to be curtailed a bit. We won’t live in pure fear, but we’ll have to be more careful for a while.”

Richard said nothing. He lowered his eyes and slid his hand across the table. Naomi grasped it. On the outside she might have been composed, but Richard knew that an earthquake of pain was erupting inside of her. Her hand gripped tighter. He looked up and saw that she was crying.

GLORIA adjusted the car mirrors to cover all possible routes that could be used to sneak up on her. Then she tried to settle back, her eyes rotating between the three mirrors and the front windshield. No one had approached her. No one had even ventured onto this street.

Gloria felt like she was being watched.

She knew that it was just her imagination, that there was no eye staring out between the cracks in one of the decaying boards. She reached down to turn up the heater. No good. It was already set on full blast. There were no sounds, except for the occasional car horn or screeching of brakes on a nearby road.

What was Stan doing here? What kind of trouble had he gotten himself into this time? Trouble followed a man like Stan. It lagged behind him, tapping him on the shoulder whenever he tried to pick up speed and outrun it.

Be careful, Stan. For God’s sake, be care—

A gunshot shattered the silence of the still night.

Oh, God, no. Please . . .

All concerns for her own safety and welfare fled. Gloria grabbed the door handle, pulled, and rushed out of the car. Her legs flailed wildly as she ran for the alley entrance, her body almost tripping and spilling onto the hard concrete. But she ignored that. She ignored the cold.

Stan. Oh, Stan, please be all right. . . .

But something in the wind seemed to laugh at her prayer. She turned the corner. One of her shoes fell off but Gloria did not miss a stride. She kept moving forward, kept running down the narrow alley . . . until she found him.

“Stan!”

Footsteps echoed as somebody disappeared around the corner, but Gloria’s conscious mind did not register the noise, did not register any sound at all. Her ears pounded. Her eyes were wide with horror.

When Gloria reached where Stan lay, she knelt down quickly. The bullet had hit his chest; his blood spread and stained everything in its path. Stan’s hand tried feebly to hold back the blood and stop the flow, but it was not working. He was still breathing, still conscious, but the life was spilling out of him and onto the pavement.

Helplessness overwhelmed her. There was no phone nearby, no way to move Stan toward the car and safety. She took off her coat and pressed it against the wound, tears streaming down her face.

“I’ll be right back,” she said. “I’m going to get help.”

Stan looked up at her through his dying eyes. Delirium was beginning to set in. He was going to die, goddamn it. He was finished, through. There was no pain now but he could feel his soul slowly being torn away from his body. Something was tugging at him, dragging him away from this cold alley.

Stan could make out Gloria’s concerned eyes. Another woman looking down at him with pity. Women had been the bane of Stan’s short, miserable existence on this planet. They had punched him, abused him, hated him. They had ripped deep into his soul, leaving scars and wounds maybe death would finally heal. But Stan still craved vengeance on them, on the whole vile sex. As Gloria looked down upon him, he had one last chance before he died. He had one last opportunity to crush a woman like an insect. He would tell her that he had never cared for her, that he had only used her, that she was nothing but a worthless whore like all the others.

She rose to leave but his hand reached out and grabbed her. Now she would know pain, he thought. Now she would know what it was like to have her insides shredded.

“Gloria?”

“I’m right here.”

Death crawled toward him. His eyes began to roll back and close. “I love you.”

28

THEY were only one block away now. The time had arrived. In a few moments, Laura would see her mother.

Serita drove the car slowly. She resisted the temptation to gun the engine, to speed her white BMW down the road and past the driveway up ahead. In many ways, she wished that the ride would last longer, that they would never get out of this car, that they would never find out the truth about David’s death. She felt like they were sitting alone in a doctor’s office, waiting to hear the results of some life-and-death test, trying to distract themselves by reading the diplomas on the wall and the useless health pamphlets.

“Laura?”

Laura’s breathing came in short gasps. Serita could almost feel her friend’s mind pulling in different directions, stretching to the point where it would not snap back. “What?”

“You sure you don’t want me to go in with you?”

“No,” Laura said firmly.

“What time do you want me to come back for you?”

“I’ll make my own way home.”

“Humor me, Laura. I’ll come back in a half hour and wait out here until you’re ready, okay?”

“Okay,” Laura replied.

Serita flipped up the blinker. There was no way to put it off any longer. She swung the car into the driveway, her headlights dancing across the bushes as though searching for an intruder. She drove the BMW up to the front door of the house. No lights shone through any of the windows. No lights illuminated the outside of the familiar home. Laura opened the door and stepped out.