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  Allie leaned forward in her seat. "You knew that Maggie was going to ask him?"

  Pauline nodded, as if the conversation she'd had with Maggie had been as mundane as a discussion of the weather, or brands of cereal. Allies mind began to spin with the implications of putting Pauline on a witness stand for Jamie. Would her story uphold the confession Jamie had signed for Cam? Or would it only be dismissed as hearsay?

  "Jamie MacDonald is a blessing and a curse."

  Allies head snapped up. "What do you mean by that?"

  "Maggie says it to me all the time--" she said, and then corrected herself. "Said it to me." In the low light of the afternoon Allie could see the film of tears over Pauline's eyes. "I'm sorry. I thought I was ready for this. I mean, I knew that it was coming, and Maggie and I had talked about it, but when you get right down to it, preparing doesn't make it hurt any less." She took a deep breath and faced Allie again. "Tell me again why you're here. I'll help Maggie any way I can."

  "You said that Jamie was a blessing and a curse," Allie prompted.

  "Oh, yes. Maggie loved him to death." She stopped abruptly, realizing the implications of the idiom she'd used. "Maggie loved him to death," she repeated softly. "She knew that Jamie would have done anything for her, so she figured that if she pushed him hard enough, he'd make it easier when the time came." She looked up at Allie. "Did you know her? Maggie?"

  Allie shook her head. "I wish I had. I wish I could."

  Pauline walked over to the playpen and retrieved her youngest child, a little girl who began to chew on the long rope of her mother's braid. "It's impossible to tell you what Maggie was like unless you figure Jamie into the situation. They were inseparable, I swear. But not through any doing of Maggie's. I used to tell her I'd swap lives with her in a second--trade her all the dirty diapers and the school lunches and the carpooling for a man who was hanging on my every word, and Maggie said it wasn't the bliss that I thought it was. I think she felt bad because Jamie couldn't let go and she couldn't hold on as tight as he did."

  She bounced the baby in her arms. "She told me that if it was the other way around--if Jamie had the cancer--she wouldn't be able to . . . you know. Said she'd worry too much about what was going to happen to her, after. She said it wasn't like that for Jamie, since he wouldn't imagine a future that didn't have Maggie in it too." Pauline glanced up. "What Maggie said to me--about the dying--was that she didn't have a choice anymore. She knew she'd be using Jamie horribly, but she didn't even care, if that was what it took to stop the pain."

  Allie watched Pauline press a kiss to her daughter's tangled hair, and swallowed thickly. "How's Jamie doing?"

  Allie took a deep breath. "He's angry. And frustrated. Lonely. I think he's starting to feel guilty."

  Pauline nodded. "Just like Maggie." She waved her free arm around the room, encompassing the clutter and the discord that made up a family. "She was jealous of me. Me! She used to say that whatever else my marriage was, at least it was still equal between Frank and me. But with Jamie, well, no matter how hard he tried--no matter how much he gave--it would only make Maggie feel worse, more guilty for what she couldn't give." Pauline shook her head. "I told her she was crazy."

  Allie thought of Jamie clutching Maggie's limp body in the cab of his truck, unwilling to let anyone else close enough to touch her. She thought of the way her heart lodged at the back of her throat every time she opened the door to the police station to visit Cam unannounced, hoping that he would say or do something to make her believe he had wanted her there in the first place. "Crazy," Allie repeated. "I don't think so."

  Cam drove out of Wheelock with the windows rolled down, his car speeding down side roads in an effort to outrace his guilt. With the wind blinding him and the cold numbing his fingers and his cheeks, it was easier to forget about Mia. It was easier to concentrate on Allie.

  The leaves were starting to fall--crimson and orange, they spi-raled like tiny, stiff ballerinas across the windshield of the car. It was nearly time for fall colors, that three-week stretch of October when everyone and his brother decided to visit the Berkshires for the scenery. It was the only month of the year when the Wheelock Inn was filled to capacity; when the coffee shop in town had a line out the front door. Wheelock did not have the grandeur of Great Barrington or the charm of Lenox, but it was one of those towns off Route 8 that still seemed quaint and untouched. The reputation led to problems--tourists seemed to think it was a reconstructed village, like the Shaker town down in Pittsfield, a place too cute for people to really live in. He remembered once, as a child, someone had knocked on the door of the house. His mother had smiled politely at the man in his sleek Italian suit and wing-tip shoes, at the woman on his arm with a feathered cap and a muff made of rabbit fur. "We were wondering," the man had said in a tight Long Island lockjaw, "have you any antiques you'd be willing to sell?"

  Cam pulled over to the side of the road and leaned his forehead against the steering wheel. It was impossible to think of the influx of hundreds of strangers into a town that no longer seemed big enough for Mia, Allie, and himself. And with this damned murder trial in the local papers, Wheelock was guaranteed to become a circus.

  Cam stepped out of the car and slammed the door shut, realizing as he stretched to his full height that he was still wearing a tie and a jacket, the trappings of a morning at Mass. He hooked his finger into the knot at his neck and pulled, loosening his tie. He unbuttoned the top of his shirt. Then he took off his shoes and socks and set them on the hood of the car.

  He went barefoot all the time in the house, in spite of Allies warnings about drafts and colds, but the last time he'd run free outdoors had been seven years before. It was early October, just as it was now, and Allie had shown up at the station with a picnic. "Come on," she'd said. "No one's going to commit a crime on a day as beautiful as this."

  They had been dating for a few months. Cam liked her enough and had become accustomed to spending Sunday afternoons at Allies apartment, reading the newspaper. He knew that when she looked at him, she was seeing him at the altar of the church, holding out a gold band, but this did not bother him. If he wanted to get married, he would do so in his own time. He had been forced into coming back to Wheelock, forced into succeeding his father as police chief, but no one was going to make him sign the rest of his life away.

  Allie had wanted to eat behind the football field at the high school--some misguided sense of nostalgia for their roots, he supposed--but Cam insisted that he'd only take time off for lunch if he got to pick the picnic site. Allie agreed, as he had known she would, and he had driven her in one of the cruisers toward Wee Loch at the northern end of town.

  He remembered looking across at her when they came to a stoplight. He had wanted her to look up at him and smile--he'd silently willed this to happen--but Allie had been fixated on the dashboard of the car. Without glancing at Cam, she'd pointed to a button. "Are those the lights?" She gently traced the button with her finger.

  Cam laughed and covered her hand with his own. "Go ahead," he said. "Now's your big chance."

  Allie pushed the button for the flashing lights, and they sped toward the lake without the siren. When Cam pulled into the shade of the trees at the edge of the water, he put the cruiser into park and sat back, arms crossed, watching Allie. "Well?"

  "I feel very privileged. Of course, I couldn't really see them from in here."

  Cam grinned. "You'd rather be an observer than a part of the action?"

  "Well," Allie said, "that depends on what's being observed."

  Cam insisted they leave their shoes in the car--what was a picnic with shoes? He helped her carry the Playmate slowly across the stretch of grass, giving time for Allie's feet to feel out acorns and stones he did not notice. Allie had brought huge submarine sandwiches--pastrami on French bread, Italian salami and provolone, roast beef and boursin. She'd packed a thermos of peach iced tea and a small container of red potato salad. There were, for dessert, individual apple ta