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  I forced myself to relax in Alex's grasp. "Nothing," I said, my voice just over a whisper. "Nothing you would ever believe."

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I used to think my suicide note would have read,You won . Not that it had been a game--but at the very worst times, I knew that Alex could always act better than I could; that when I cracked under the pressure and told someone the truth he would still be able to save face. And in Los Angeles, a city he commanded, who would people believe?

  But the real reason I could never tell anyone the truth about our marriage had less to do with my fear of not being believed than with Alex himself. I just didn't want to hurt him. When I pictured him, it wasn't standing with his fists above me. I saw him slow-dancing with me on the veranda, latching the clasp on an emerald necklace he'd just brought me, moving inside me with a striking sense of wonder. This, to me, was Alex. This was the man I still wanted to spend my life with.

  I never would have left him if there weren't somebody else involved. But I forced myself to set an ultimatum in my mind.One more time , I thought,one more threat to this life inside me, and I will go . I tried not to think of it as leaving Alex; I imagined it instead as saving my child. I didn't let myself think about it any more than that, because so much of me was hoping that it wouldn't happen.

  But then Alex had heard, the day he left for Scotland, about being placed second on the Barbara Walters broadcast, instead of third. And he was superstitiously sure that it was a forecast of what was to come at the Academy Awards in March. He wouldn't win his Oscars; he would be a failure. He had told me these things, and then he had lashed out.

  Well, you know the rest. I must have passed out from the head wound sometime after I left the house, because I knew enough to leave. I met you purely by accident at St. Sebastian's cemetery and you took care of me until Alex came charging in from Scotland and took me home.

  So I had come full circle: in late February, several days after you'd turned me over to Alex at the police station, I was standing in my bedroom closet getting ready to pack so I could return to Scotland with Alex. Then I found the box with the extra pregnancy test. And I tried to make myself believe that I would be taking a piece of Alex with me when I ran away again.

  AN HOUR AFTERI'D LEFT THE HOUSE I WAS WELL OUT OF BEL-AIR, but I had nowhere to go. The banks were closed and I had less than twenty dollars in my wallet. I didn't think of you, not right away. Again I considered running to Ophelia; and again I couldn't, because it was where Alex would expect me to go.

  I didn't feel comfortable enough to turn to a colleague from UCLA, and I couldn't hide in my office, since that would be the second place Alex would check. And then I remembered what you said to me Wednesday morning, and the way you looked at me after Alex's fight at Le Dome. I knew you would take me in; I knew it maybe even before I left the house, so I waited at the corner for a bus that would take me toward Reseda.

  Your home could fit into a corner of ours, and the trees on your front lawn are all in varying stages of death, but I have never seen any place so inviting. A warm yellow light floods the front porch, and when I step under its glow I feel protected, not on display.

  You open the door before I have a chance to knock. You don't seem surprised to see me; it is as if you have been waiting all along. You pull me into the tiny entry hall and close the door behind me. It seems perfectly natural that you haven't spoken a word when you begin to run your hands gently over my back, my ribs, my hips, hesitating at the spots where I have been bruised. You sense the places through the cotton of my shirt, as if you are feeling for the change of temperature that comes with pain.

  And Will, when you are finished, you look at me. Your eyes are as dark as Alex's during a rage. I stare back at you, not knowing how or where I am supposed to begin.

  I don't have to. You put your arms around me, giving me the simple beat of your heart to measure time. I keep my hands balled at my sides, stiff in another man's embrace. "Cassie," you whisper into my hair, "I believe you." Outside, an owl sobs. I close my eyes, lean into your faith, and I let myself go.

  1993

  A long time ago, when the world had just begun, six young women lived in a village set beside a huge boulder. As was their custom, one day while their husbands were out hunting, they went out to dig for herbs. Some time passed, each of the women rooting with her digging stick, and then one of the wives found something new to eat.

  "Come and try this," she told her friends. "This plant tastes delicious!"

  Within minutes, the six women were all eating sweet onions. They were so tasty that they ate until the sun set. One of the wives looked at the dark sky. "We'd better get home to cook dinner for our husbands," she pointed out, and they all left.

  When the husbands came home that night they were exhausted but happy, since they had each killed a cougar. "What smells so awful?" one man asked as he stood in the doorway of his lodge.

  "Maybe it is some food that has spoiled," another husband suggested. But when they leaned over to kiss their wives hello, they realized where the odor was coming from.

  "We found something new to eat," the wives said, bubbling with excitement. They held out the onions. "Here, try them."

  "They smell terrible," the husbands said. "We won't eat them. And you're not going to stay in the same lodge as us, not smelling like that. You'll have to sleep outside tonight." So the wives gathered their things and slept beneath the stars.

  When the husbands left to go hunting the next day, the wives returned to the spot where they had dug up the wild onions. They knew their husbands didn't like the smell, but the onions were so delicious that the wives could not help but eat them. They filled their bellies and stretched out on the soft red earth.

  The husbands came home that night, gruff and irritable. They had not caught any cougars. "We smelled like your onions," they accused, "so the animals ran away. It is all your fault."

  The wives didn't believe them. They slept outside a second night, and a third, until a week had passed. The wives kept eating the onions that were so delicious, and the men could not catch any cougars. Frustrated, the men yelled at their wives, "Get away from us! We can't stand your onion smell."

  "Well, we can't get any sleep outside," the wives countered.

  The seventh day, the wives took their woven ropes with them when they went to dig the onions. One wife carried along her baby daughter. They scaled the large rock beside their village and turned their faces to the sinking crimson sun.

  "Let's leave our husbands," one wife suggested. "I don't want to live with mine anymore." The wives all agreed.

  The oldest wife stood on the boulder and chanted a magical word. She tossed her rope into the sky, and it hooked over a cloud so that the ends hung down. The other wives tied their own ropes to the one that was swinging and then they stood on the frayed edges of the ropes. Slowly they began to rise, swaying around like starlings. They moved in circles, passing each other, reaching higher and higher.

  The other villagers saw the wives ascending in the sky. "Come back!" the People called as the women floated over the camp. But the wives and the little girl kept going.

  When the husbands returned that night, they were hungry and lonely. They wished they had not driven their wives away. One of them got the idea to go after the women, using the same kind of magic they had. They ran to their lodges and brought their own ropes, and soon they too were rising in the night.

  The wives glanced down and saw the husbands coming after them. "Should we wait for them?" one woman asked calmly.

  The others shouted and shook their heads. "No! They told us to leave. We won't let them catch us." They danced and swung on their ropes. "We will be happier in the sky."

  When the husbands were close enough to hear, the wives shouted for them to stop, and the men stayed right where they were, a little behind their wives.

  So the women who loved onions stayed in Sky Country. They are still there, seven stars that we call the Pleiades. T