nnie stared at Nick, too stunned to respond. “I...” She couldn’t say the pat I’m sorry. The words were too hollow, almost obscenely expected. She gulped a huge swallow of wine.

Nick didn’t seem to notice that she hadn’t spoken—or maybe he was grateful for it. He stared out at the lake, sighing heavily. “Remember how moody she used to be? She was teetering on the edge of despair even then—her whole life—and none of us knew it. At least, I didn’t know it... until it started to get bad. The older she got, the worse it became. Manic-depressive. That’s the technical term. She started having episodes right after her twentieth birthday, just six months after her folks were killed in a car accident. Some days she was sweet as pie, then something would happen... she’d cry and lock herself in a closet. She wouldn’t take her medication most of the time, said it made her feel like she was breathing through Jell-O.” His voice cracked, and he took a huge, gulping swallow of wine. “One day, when I came home from work early, I found her standing in the bathroom, crying, knocking her head against the wall. She just turned to me, her face all smeared with tears and blood, and said, ‘Hi, honey. You want me to make you lunch?’

“I bought this place to make her happy, hoping maybe it would help her remember what life used to be like. I thought... if I could just give her a home, a safe place where we could raise our kids, everything would be okay. Christ, I just wanted to help her...”

His voice cracked again, and he took another drink of wine. “For a while, it worked. We poured our hearts and souls and savings into this old mausoleum. Then Kathy got pregnant. For a while after Izzy was born, things were good. Kathy took her medication and tried... she tried so hard, but she couldn’t handle a baby. She started to hate this place—the heating that barely worked, the plumbing that pinged. About a year ago, she gave up the medications again... and then everything went to hell.”

He finished his second glass of wine and poured another. Shaking his head, he said softly, “And still, I didn’t see it coming.”

She didn’t want to hear any more. “Nick, you don’t—”

“One night I came home from work with a quart of butter brickle ice cream and a rented video and found her. She’d shot herself in the head... with my gun.”

Annie’s fingers spasmed around the stem of her glass. “You don’t have to talk about her.”

“I want to. No one else has asked.” He closed his eyes, leaning back on his elbows. “Kathy was like the fairy tale—when she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad, you wanted to be in Nebraska.”

Annie leaned back beside him, gazing up at the stars. The wine was making her dizzy, but she was glad; it blurred the hard edges of his words.

He gave her a tired smile. “One day she loved me with all her heart and soul, and the next day, she wouldn’t even speak to me. It was worst at night; sometimes she’d kiss me, and other times she’d roll toward the wall. If I even touched her on those nights, she’d scream for me to get away. She started telling wild stories—that I beat her, that Izzy wasn’t really her child, that I was an imposter who’d murdered her real husband in cold blood. It made me... crazy. The more she pulled away, the more I reached out. I knew I wasn’t helping, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I kept thinking that if I loved her enough, she’d be okay. Now that she’s gone, all I can think about is how selfish I was, how stupid and naive. I should have listened to that doctor and hospitalized her. At least she’d be alive....”

Without thinking, Annie reached for him, touched his face gently. “It’s not your fault.”

He gave her a bleak look. “When your wife blows her brains out in your bed, with your baby daughter just down the hall, believe me, she thinks it’s your fault.” He made a soft, muffled sound, like the whimpering of a beaten pup. “God, she must have hated me....”

“You don’t really believe that.”

“No. Yes. Sometimes.” His mouth trembled as he spoke. “And the worst part is—sometimes I hated her, too. I hated what she was doing to me and Izzy. She started to be more and more like my mother... and I knew, somewhere down inside, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to save her. Maybe I stopped trying... I don’t know.”

His pain called out to her, and she couldn’t turn away. She took him in her arms, stroking him as she would have soothed a child. “It’s okay, Nick....”

When he finally drew back and looked at her, his eyes were flooded with tears. “And there’s Izzy. My... baby girl. She hasn’t said a word in months... and now she thinks she’s disappearing. At first it was just a finger on her left hand, then her thumb. When the hand went, she started wearing a black glove and stopped talking. I’ve noticed lately that she only uses two fingers on her right hand—so I guess she thinks that hand is disappearing, too. God knows what she’ll do if...” He tried to smile. She could see the superhuman effort he was making simply to speak, but then he failed. She could see when the control slipped away from him, tearing away like a bit of damp tissue. “What can I do? My six-year-old daughter hid under her bed one night because she heard a noise. She wanted to go to her mommy and get a hug, but thank God, she didn’t. Because her mommy had put a gun to her head and blown her brains out. If Izzy had walked down the hall that night, she would have seen bits and pieces of her mommy on the mirror, on the headboard, on the pillow....” Tears streaked down his unshaven cheeks.

His grief sucked her under, mingled somewhere in the darkness with her own pain. She wanted to tell him that it would all be okay, that he would survive, but the words wouldn’t come.

Nick gazed at her, and she knew he was seeing her through the blur of his tears. He touched her cheek, his hand slid down to coil around her neck and pulled her closer.

She knew that this moment would stay with her forever, long after she wanted to forget it. She would perhaps wonder later what had moved her so—was it the shimmering of the stars on the lake, or the way the mixture of moonlight and tears made his eyes look like pools of molten silver? Or the loneliness that lay deep, deep inside her, like a hard square of ice pressed to her broken heart.

She whispered his name softly; in the darkness it sounded like a plea, or a prayer.

The kiss she pressed to his lips was meant to comfort; of that she was sure, a gentle commiseration of understood heartache. But when their lips touched, soft and pliant and salty with teardrops, everything changed. The kiss turned hot and hungry and desperate. She was thinking of Blake, and she knew he was thinking of Kathy, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was the heat of togetherness.

She fumbled with the buttons on his shirt and pressed her hands beneath the worn flannel as quickly as she could, sliding her open palms against the coarse wiry hairs on his chest. Her hands moved tentatively across his shoulder, down his naked back. Touching him felt secret and forbidden, dangerous, and it made her want...

With a groan, he wrenched his shirt off and tossed it aside. Annie’s clothes came next. Her gray sweatshirt and bra sailed across the wet grass like flags of surrender.

Cool night air breezed across her bare skin. She closed her eyes, embarrassed by the intensity of her desire. His hands were everywhere, touching her, rubbing, stroking, squeezing, sliding down the curve of her back. In some distant part of her mind, she knew that she was getting carried away, that this was a bad idea, but it felt so good. No one had wanted her this badly for a long, long time. Maybe forever...

They became a wild, passionate tangle of naked limbs and searching mouths. Annie gave in to the aching pleasure of it all—the hard, calloused feel of his fingers on her face, her breasts, between her legs. He touched her in places and ways she’d never imagined, brought her body to a throbbing edge between pleasure and pain. Her breathing shattered into choppy, ragged waves, until she was gasping for air and aching for release. “Please, Nick...” she pleaded.

She clung to him, feeling the damp moisture of tears on her cheeks, and she didn’t know if they were his or hers or a mingling of the two, and when he entered her, she had a dizzying, desperate moment when she thought she would scream....

Her release was shattering. He clung to her, moaned, and when she felt his orgasm, she came again, sobbing his name, collapsing on his damp, hairy chest. He gathered her into his arms, stroking her hair, murmuring soft, soothing words against her ear. But her heart was pounding so hard and her pulse was roaring so loudly in her ears she had no idea what he said.

When Annie fell back to earth, amid a shower of stars, she landed with a thud. She lay naked beside Nick, her breathing ragged. Overhead, the sky was jet-black and sprinkled with starlight, and the night smelled of spilled wine and spent passion.

Very slowly, Nick pulled his hand away from hers. Without the warmth of his touch, her skin felt clammy and cold.

She grabbed one end of the blanket and pulled it across her naked breasts, sidling away from him. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “What have we done?”

He curled forward, burying his face in his hands.

She scouted through the wet grass and grabbed her shirt, pulling it toward her. She had to get out of here, now, before she fell apart. “This didn’t happen,” she said in a whispery, uncertain voice. “This did not happen.”

He didn’t look at her as he scooped up his clothes and hurriedly dressed. When he was armored again, he stood up and turned his back on her.

She was shaking and doing her best not to cry as she dressed. He was probably comparing her to Kathy, remembering how beautiful his wife had been, and wondering what the hell he’d done—having sex with a too-thin, too-old, too-short-haired woman who had let herself become such a nothing....

Finally, she stood. She stared down at her own feet, wishing the ground would open up and swallow her. “I better get—” She’d been about to say home, but she didn’t have a home any more than she had a husband there waiting for her. She swallowed thickly and changed her words. “Back to my dad’s house. He’ll be worried—”

At last, Nick turned to her. His face was lined and drawn, and the regret in his eyes hit her like a slap. God, she wanted to disappear....

“I’ve never slept with anyone but Kathy,” he said softly, not quite meeting her eyes.

“Oh” was all she could think of to say, but his quiet admission made her feel a little better. “This is a first for me, too.”

“I guess the sexual revolution pretty much passed us by.”

Another time it might have been funny. She nodded toward her car. “I guess I should get going.”

Wordlessly, they headed back to the car. She was careful not to touch him, but all the way there, she kept thinking about his hands on her body, the fire he’d started deep inside her, in that place that had been cold and dead for so long....

“So,” he said into the awkward silence, “I guess Bobby Johnson was lying when he said he nailed you after the Sequim game?”

She stopped dead and turned to him, fighting the completely unexpected urge to laugh. “Nailed me?”

He shrugged, grinning. “He said it, not me.”

“Nailed me?” She shook her head. “Bobby Johnson said that?”

“Don’t worry—he said you were good. And he didn’t even imply a blow job.”

This time she did laugh, and some of her tension eased. They started walking again, across the wet grass, to her car. He opened the door for her, and it surprised her, that unexpected gesture of chivalry. No one had opened a car door for her in years.

“Annie?” He said her name softly.

She glanced up at him. “Yes?”

“Don’t be sorry. Please.”

She swallowed hard. For a few moments, Nick had made her feel beautiful and desirable. How could she feel sorry about that? She wanted to reach out for him again, anything to stave off the cold loneliness that would engulf her again the moment she climbed into her rented car and closed the door. “Lurlene told me you were looking for a nanny... for Isabella. I could watch her... during the day... if that would help you out....”

He frowned. “Why would you do that for me?”

The question saddened her; it was full of mistrust and steeped in a lifetime’s disappointments. “It would help me out, Nick. Really. Let me help you.”

He stared at her a long time, that wary cop’s look again. Then slowly, pointedly, he took hold of her hand and lifted it. In the pale moonlight, the three-carat diamond glittered with cold fire. “Don’t you belong somewhere else?”

Now he would know what a failure she was, why she’d come running back to Mystic after all these years. “My husband and I have recently separated....” She wanted to say more, tack a lighthearted excuse on the end of the glaring, ugly statement, but her throat closed up and tears stung her eyes.

He dropped her hand as if it had burned him. “Jesus, Annie. You shouldn’t have let me act like such a whiny asshole, as if no one else in the world had a problem. You should have—”

“I really do not want to talk about it.” She saw him flinch, and was immediately sorry for her tone of voice. “Sorry. But I think we’ve had enough shoulder-crying for one night.”

He nodded, looking away for a minute. He stared at his house. “Izzy could use a friend right now. I’m sure as hell not doing her any good.”

“It would help me out, too. I’m a little... lost right now. It would be nice to be needed.”

“Okay,” he said at last. “Lurlene could use a break from baby-sitting. She and Buddy wanted to go to Branson, and since Izzy’s out of school...” He sighed. “I have to pick Izzy up from Lurlene’s tomorrow. I could meet you at her house—she lives down in Raintree Estates—you remember where that is? Pink house with gnomes in the front yard. It’s hard to miss.”

“Sure. What time?”

“Say one o’clock? I can meet you there on my lunch break.”

“Perfect.” She stared up at him for another long minute, then turned and opened her car door. She climbed in, started the engine, and slowly pulled away. The last thing she saw, out of her rearview mirror as she drove away, was Nick looking after her.

Long after she’d driven away, Nick remained on the edge of the lawn, staring down the darkened road. Slowly, he walked back into the house, letting the screen door bang shut behind him. He went to the fireplace and picked up the photograph of the three of them again. He looked at it for a long, long time, and then, tiredly, he climbed the long, creaking staircase up to his old bedroom. Steeling himself, he opened the door. He moved cautiously inside, his eyes adjusting quickly to the gloom. He could make out the big, unmade bed, the clothes heaped everywhere. He could see the lamp that Kathy had ordered from Spiegel and the rocking chair he’d made when Izzy was born.

He grabbed a T-shirt from the floor, slammed the door behind him, and went down to his lonely couch, where he poured himself a stiff drink. He knew it was dangerous to use alcohol to ease his pain, and in the past months, he’d been reaching for that false comfort more and more.

Leaning back, he took a long, soothing drink. He finished that drink and poured another.

What he and Annie had done tonight didn’t change a thing. He had to remember that. The life she’d stirred in him was ephemeral and fleeting. Soon, she’d be gone, and he’d be left alone again, a widower with a damaged child who had to find a way to get through the rest of his life.

There was a light on in the living room when Annie pulled up to her dad’s house. She winced at the thought of confronting him now, at two o’clock in the morning, with her clothes all wrinkled and damp. God, she probably smelled like sex.

She climbed out of the car and headed into the house. As she’d expected, she found Hank in the living room, waiting up for her. A fire crackled cheerily in the fireplace, sending a velvet-yellow glow into the darkened room.

She closed the door quietly behind her.

Hank looked up from the book he was reading. “Well, well,” he said, easing the bifocals from his eyes.

Annie self-consciously smoothed her wrinkled clothes and ran a hand through her too-short hair, hoping there was no grass stuck to her head. “You didn’t need to wait up for me.”

“Really?” He closed the book.

“There’s no need to worry. I’m a hell of a long way from sixteen.”

“Oh, I wasn’t worried. Not after I called the police and the hospital.”

Annie sat down on the leather chair beside the fireplace. “I’m sorry, Dad. I guess I’m not used to checking in. Blake never cared...” She bit back the sour confession and forced a thin smile. “I visited an old friend. I should have called.”

“Yes, you should have. Who did you go see?”

“Nick Delacroix. You remember him?”

Hank’s blunt fingers tapped a rhythm on the cover of the book, his eyes fixed on her face. “I should have expected you’d end up there. You three were as tight as shoelaces in high school. He’s not doing so good, from what I hear.”

Annie imagined that Nick was a delectable morsel for the town’s gossips. “I’m going to help him out a little. Take care of his daughter while he’s at work, that sort of thing. I think he needs a breather.”

“Didn’t you two have sort of a ‘thing’ in high school?” His gaze turned assessing. “Or are you planning to get back at Blake?”

“Of course not,” she answered too quickly. “You told me I needed a project. Something to do until Blake wakes up.”

“That man’s trouble, Annie Virginia. He’s drowning, and he could take you down with him.”

Annie smiled gently. “Thanks for worrying about me, Dad. I love you for it. But I’m just going to baby-sit for him. That’s all.”

“That’s all?” It wasn’t a question.

“You told me I needed to find a project. What am I supposed to do—cure cancer? I’m a wife and mother. It’s all I know. All I am.” She leaned forward, ashamed that she couldn’t tell him the whole truth—that she didn’t know how to be this alone. So, she told him the next best thing. “I’m too old to lie to myself, Dad, and I’m too old to change, and if I don’t do something I’m going to explode. This seems as good as anything. Nick and Izzy need my help.”

“The person you need to help right now is you.”

Her answering laugh was a weak, resigned little sound. “I’ve never been much good at that, now have I?”