e sober, be vigilant; because your adversary,

the devil, as a roaring lion,

walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.

–1 Peter 58 November 23, 1999 “The man,” Joan announces, slinging her briefcase onto our kitchen table, “is an asshole.”

Neither my mother nor I blink an eye.

We’ve heard Joan rant this way about Malcolm Metz before. I sit down across from her as she shuffles through papers. “The good news,” I say, full of false cheer, “is that in a few weeks you’ll never have to see Metz again.”

Joan looks up, surprised. “Who’s talking about Metz?” She leans back in her chair, massaging her temples. “No, today I had the singular pleasure of deposing Ian Fletcher. The guy’s twenty minutes late and wouldn’t answer to anything beyond his name and address.

Back in third grade he must have learned to say “I take the fifth,” and he’s been waiting for a chance to use it ever since.” Shaking her head,

she hands Mariah a list. “All I got out of him is that he’s going to be a pain in the ass on cross.”

Mariah takes the paper, trying to get her head around Joan’s comment. Ian, a witness for Malcolm Metz? For Colin?

“Besides Fletcher, is there anyone else on the witness list you can give me some information about?”

I try to answer, but my mouth is too dry to manage more than a puff of surprise. I am dimly aware of my mother, her eyes narrowed on my face; of the sea of letters that form and dissolve into names: Colin, Dr. Orlitz, Dr.

DeSantis. “Mariah,” Joan calls, her voice a long way away, “are you all right?”

He has said, all along, that he will help me. He has said that he’ll do whatever is in his power to make sure I keep Faith. And yet here he is, in league with Malcolm Metz,

lying to me.

What else has he lied about?

With a great surge of adrenaline I stand, pushing my chair back from the table. Joan and my mother watch me walk out of the kitchen, follow me to the parlor. When it becomes clear to them what I mean to do, Joan rushes to intervene. “Mariah,”

she cautions, “don’t fly off the handle here.”

But I’m not thinking clearly; I don’t want to think clearly. I don’t care who sees me running across the yard with a speed born of hurt and fury. I barely even pay attention to the charge that electrifies the media as I close in on the Winnebago with single-minded purpose.

I don’t even bother to knock. Chest heaving,

I stand in the doorway and stare at Ian and three of his employees, gathered around a tiny table with papers strewn all over. For a beat, Ian’s eyes speak to me: surprise, pleasure,

confusion, and wariness registering one after the other.

“Miz White,” he drawls. “What a very pleasant surprise.” He turns to the other three people and asks for a moment alone; they file from the Winnebago casting curious looks my way.

As soon as the door closes behind them, Ian comes around the table and grasps my shoulders.

“What’s the matter? Did something happen to Faith?”

“Not yet,” I bite out.

He steps back, distanced by my anger.

“Well, it’s got to be something. You can’t imagine the kind of stories brewing in the heads of all the reporters who watched you walk on in here just now.” Then his face changes, slipping easily into a boyish smile. “Or maybe you just couldn’t live another moment without seeing me in person.”

I swallow hard. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re testifying for Metz?”

I can’t help it, the way my voice breaks in the middle. I have the satisfaction of watching Ian start, and then, to my surprise, he begins to laugh. “Joan told you.” I nod. “She let on how uncooperative I happened to be?”

Then Ian reaches for me. “Mariah, I’m testifying for you.”

I sniff into his shirt. Even now, when I should hate him, I notice the scent of his skin.

Steeling myself, I draw away. “Well, you may not have noticed, but Malcolm Metz is not my lawyer.”

“That’s right. I went to him, made him think I’d give him examples to kingdom come about you being an unfit parent. When it’s my turn to testify in court, though, he’ll be in for a surprise, since my speech will be dramatically different.”

“But Joan–“

“I didn’t have a choice, Mariah. I can go over my testimony with Metz to his face and then get up on the stand and start speaking Swahili without it being a big deal. After all, I’m his witness, and it just means I’m not behaving properly. But if I lie to Joan Standish in a deposition and then get up in a court of law and say something entirely different, I’ll be committing perjury. I had to plead the fifth today–

repeatedly–because it keeps her from getting in trouble, and me from getting in trouble, and Metz from getting suspicious of me.”

I want to believe him; God, I do. “You would do this for me?”

Ian inclines his head. “I would do anything for you.”

This time when he takes me into his arms, I don’t resist. “Why didn’t you tell me you were doing this?”

His hand strokes my back, gentling. “The less you know, the better. That way if it all blows up in my face, you won’t be caught in the explosion.” He kisses the corner of my mouth,

my cheek, my forehead. “You can’t tell Joan yet. If she finds out before the trial, she could get into a hell of a lot of trouble.”

In answer, I go up on my toes and kiss him. Shyly, at first; then I open my mouth on his, identifying coffee and something sweeter, like candy. Surely if Ian was lying to me, it would be evident. Surely if he was lying, I would have the good sense to see through him.

Like I did before? Closing my eyes, I firmly push away the thought of Colin and his indiscretions. I feel Ian’s heat rising between us, his hips pushing against mine.

With a gasp, he breaks away from me.

“Sugar, there’s a whole crowd of people out there waiting to see whether you’re gonna make it out of this trailer alive. And if we keep this up, I can’t make any promises.” He chastely kisses my brow and takes a deliberate step away, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“What?”

“You don’t look like you’ve been fighting with me, exactly.” Flushing, I smooth my hands over my hair and touch my fingertips to my lips.

Ian laughs. “Just look angry, and get back to the house fast. They’ll think you’re still nursing a powerful mad.”

He cups my cheek in his hand, and I turn my lips into his palm. “Ian … thanks.”

“Miz White,” he murmurs, “it’s my pleasure.”

Joan and my mother hover at the door and immediately surround me as I walk inside, making me think of circus performers who wait at the high rope ladder to make sure their companion on the trapeze returns to safety. “Good God,

Mariah,” Joan scolds. “What were you thinking?”

My mother doesn’t say a word. She stares at my mouth, red and kissed, and raises a brow.

“I wasn’t thinking,” I confess, and at least this much is true.

“What did you say to him?”

“To be polite to my attorney in the future,” I lie, staring Joan right in the eye,

“or else he’ll have to answer to me.”

A few minutes before Petra Saganoff and her film crew are due to arrive, I pull Faith aside into an alcove by the bathroom.

“You remember what we talked about?”

Faith nods solemnly. “No talk about God. At all. And there’s going to be a big camera,” Faith adds. “Like the ones outside.”

“That’s right.”

“And I can’t call Petra Saganoff the B word.”

“Faith!”

“Well, you called her that.”

“I was wrong.” I sigh, thinking that if I survive this day, I will never complain again in my life. Through Joan, I’ve arranged to have Petra Saganoff in to film what she calls “B-roll”–background footage of Faith playing and of us just being us in our house, that she’ll then go off and record over with her own narrative,

before airing the segment on Hollywood Tonight!

Joan made sure that Saganoff signed a release about what she is allowed to film and what she isn’t, but I worry about her visit all the same. Although I think Faith will be able to act normally for a half hour, this could backfire … something Joan has pointed out to me ever since I suggested this exclusive. Our lives haven’t exactly been predictable lately. What if Faith starts bleeding again?

What if she forgets, and starts talking to God?

What if Petra Saganoff makes us all look like fools?

“Mommy,” Faith says, touching my arm.

“It’ll be okay. God’s taking care of it.”

“Excellent,” I murmur. “We’ll make sure to give her a good seat.”

The doorbell rings. I pass my mother on the way to answer it.

“I still don’t like this. Not a bit.”

“Neither do I,” I say, scowling at her.

“But if I don’t say something, people are going to assume the worst.” I pull open the door and fix a smile on my face. “Ms.

Saganoff, thank you so much for coming.”

Petra Saganoff, primed and in person, is even more attractive than she is on television. “Thanks for the invitation,” she says.

With her are three men, whom she introduces as a cameraman, a sound man, and a producer. She does not make eye contact with me; instead her gaze darts around the hall, looking for Faith.

“She’s just inside,” I say dryly. “Why don’t you follow me?”

We have agreed to allow her access to Faith’s playroom. What better way, I figure,

to show that a child is just a child, than to watch her with her dolls and puzzles and books? But by the time the cameraman and the producer have decided where to set the camera and arranged the lighting for the shot, nearly thirty minutes have passed. Faith’s getting fidgety; the cameraman even gives her a “gel”–a colored piece of plastic that he’s affixed to the lights with clothespins. She takes it and peers through it, screening her world yellow, but I can tell that she’s reached the end of her patience.

At this rate, Faith will be ready to leave her toys and go somewhere else by the time Petra’s just getting started.

I am thinking of the time Ian filmed Faith at my mother’s stress test, of how even with limits in place, there is still so much that can go wrong –when suddenly a fuse blows. “Ah, damn it,” the cameraman says. “Circuits are overloaded.”

Another ten minutes until we fix the fuse. By now Faith is whining.

The cameraman turns to the producer. “You want continuous time code or time of day?” Then the sound man holds up a white card in front of Faith’s face. “Give me some tone,” the cameraman says, and a few moments later,

“Speed.” The producer looks at Petra Saganoff. “Whenever you’re ready.”

When filming begins, I’m on the floor helping Faith play with a felt board. As per Joan’s instructions, I don’t talk to Petra or the camera; I do only what I would normally be doing with Faith. I try to keep Faith’s attention from the little red light on top of the camera, a place she seems to want to fix her gaze. Petra watches from the corner.

“I’m hungry,” Faith says, and I realize it’s already lunchtime.

“Come on. We’ll go into the kitchen.”

Well, that creates a quandary. Technically we haven’t filmed for thirty minutes, but the crew is off limits to the rest of the house. I suggest that the crew take a break and continue filming after Faith eats. Graciously, I invite Petra into the kitchen.

“You have a nice place here, Mrs. White,”

she says, the first words she’s really addressed to me since her arrival.

“Thank you.” I reach into the refrigerator and pull out the peanut butter and jelly, set it on the table–Faith likes to spread her own sandwiches.

“I imagine this has been hard for you,”

Petra says, and then smiles at the expression on my face. “Want to frisk me? See if I’m wearing a mike?”

“No, of course not.” Joan’s ultimate command: Keep your cool. I choose my words carefully, sure that the voice-over narrative Saganoff does will somehow come back to whatever conversation we are about to have. “It has been difficult,” I admit. “As you’ve probably noticed, regardless of what the people outside think,

Faith’s just a little girl. That’s all she wants to be.”

Behind Petra’s back, I see Faith holding up her palm. She’s spread jelly all around the Band-Aid, so that it looks as if she’s oozing blood, and she’s waving her hand in the air and silently pretending to moan.

My mother, catching my look, rushes over to Faith and wipes the jelly off her hand with a paper towel, firmly waggling a finger in her face in warning. I focus my attention on Petra again and smile brightly. “What was I saying?”

“That your daughter’s just like any other little girl.

But, Mrs. White, there are a lot of people who’d disagree with you.”

I shrug. “I can’t tell them what to think.

But I don’t have to believe what they believe either. First and foremost, Faith is my daughter.

Plain and simple, and whatever else is going on really has nothing to do with us.” Proud of myself, I stop while I’m ahead. Even Joan couldn’t find fault with that last statement; I almost wish the camera had been rolling.

I take a head of lettuce out of the refrigerator. “Would you like some lunch, Ms.

Saganoff?”

“If it’s not too much trouble.”

For years afterward, I will never be able to figure out what made me say what I say next. It bursts out of me like a belch, and leaves me just as embarrassed. “No trouble at all,” I joke.

“We’re just having loaves and fishes.”

For a single, horrifying moment, Petra Saganoff stares at me as if I’ve grown another head. Then she breaks into laughter, steps up to the counter, and offers to help.

November 24, 1999 On Wednesday, Hollywood Tonight! runs teasers, promising an inside look at the White household: “Home with an Angel.”

To my surprise, I begin to get nervous about the broadcast. I do not know, after all, what Saganoff is going to say about us. And millions of people are going to hear it, no matter what.

At six o’clock, we eat dinner. At six-thirty, I make a bowl of microwave popcorn. By twenty to seven, my mother, Faith,

and I are sitting on the couch, waiting for Peter Jennings to stop talking so that Hollywood Tonight! will come on. “Oh, shoot,” my mother says, patting her chest. “I left my glasses at home.”

“What glasses?”

“My glasses. You know, the ones I need to see.”

I raise a brow. “You were wearing them this afternoon.

They’re probably in the kitchen.”

“I wasn’t wearing them; you’re mistaken. I clearly remember leaving them on the kitchen counter in my house.” She turns to me. “Mariah, you know how I hate driving in the dark. You have to get them for me.”

“Now?” I ask, incredulous. “I can’t leave when this show’s about to go on.”

“Oh, please. My house is five minutes away, even less. You’ll be back before the news is over. And if you aren’t, you can always turn on my TV and watch, too.”

“Why can’t you just pull a chair up close to the television set?”

“Because she’ll hurt her eyes,” Faith pipes in. “That’s what you always tell me.”

Frustrated, I press my lips together. “I cannot believe you’re making me do this.”

“If you hadn’t complained to begin with, you’d be back by now.”

I throw up my hands and grab my purse,

speeding out of the driveway so quickly that the reporters don’t have time to jump in their cars and follow me. I rip through the streets of New Canaan until I reach my mother’s house.

Not only has she forgotten her glasses,

she’s left the light on in the kitchen, as well.

I unlock the door and step inside and see Ian.

“What … what are you doing here?”

He smiles, reaches for my hands. “A little birdie gave me the key.”

I shake my head. “A little birdie about yea high, fifty-something, with a blond bob? I can’t believe it.”

Ian slides his arms around my waist. “She wanted to play fairy godmother, Mariah.

Don’t ruin it for her.”

I move around, shutting curtains, locking the door, checking to make sure that no telltale car lights are hovering outside waiting for me.

Ian’s car is nowhere to be seen. “But I have to get back home … the show …”

“It’s on in the other room. Your mama came to the trailer yesterday and asked me if I would mind coming down here, watching it with you. I guess she figured you might want some moral support.”

“She could have given me moral support,”

I say.

Ian looks affronted. “But it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun.”

That brings me up short. “Are you telling me that my mother … that she wants us …”

He touches my hair. “She’s heard you talking to me at night, on the phone. And she said that you deserve a little bit of happiness about now.”

He grins at me. “She also told me to tell you that she’ll put Faith to bed, which sounds like she’s certainly giving us her blessing, in addition to her house.” Twining his fingers with mine, he leads me into the living room, where the anchors of Hollywood Tonight! have just appeared on screen.

I am barely aware of Ian settling beside me on the couch as the television fills with pictures of my home, my daughter. Petra Saganoff’s rich voice seems oddly out of place, superimposed on the scene of Faith arranging figures on her felt board. “For weeks now we’ve heard of the miracles brought to pass by this little girl, Faith White.” The scenes cut away to pictures of the hospital,

where Petra mentions my mother’s resurrection, and to a close-up of the infant with AIDS who had played in our yard. Then Faith is on the floor of the playroom again, but this time I’m with her.

“Don’t you look fine on the small screen,” Ian whispers.

“Sssh.”

Petra continues. “Perhaps the greatest miracle, however, is the way Faith’s mother,

Mariah White, is struggling to keep a level head and a loving home for her daughter in spite of the maelstrom just outside their doors.”

“Oh,” I gasp, a smile breaking over my face even as tears come to my eyes. “Oh,

Ian, did you hear?”

He opens his arms, and I launch into them,

laughing and crying and so very, very relieved. I am not listening to Hollywood Tonight! anymore; it fades in the wake of Ian’s hands on my shoulders and back, pulling me even closer.

Cradling his face between my palms, I kiss him deeply, until I am lying flush against him on the couch and breathing just as hard as he is.

He unbuttons my shirt and presses his lips to the skin revealed at my throat. “I like the effect this show has on you.”

He is teasing, but I have moved past that point.

I want to feel him, take him, celebrate him. I am shaking as I lock my hands behind his neck.

Sensing the change in me, Ian draws back enough to look into my eyes. “I have missed you so,”

he whispers, and he kisses me. With his hands he builds a fire in me. This is love, I think. A place where people who have been alone may lock together like hawks and spin in the air, dizzy with surprise at the connection. A place you go willingly, and with wonder.

Then my hands are freeing him and as Ian moves inside me, our fingers lace together, so that we hinge on each other. Mine, mine, mine.

His hair falls over my eyes, and when I turn my face against my own shoulder, I realize that I smell of him, as if he has already taken root under my skin.

The television hums, a kaleidoscopic test pattern splashed over the screen. I touch my hand to the base of Ian’s neck, to the small knot of collarbone beneath his shirt, all places that I am beginning to know by heart. “Ian … do you ever think about going to hell?”

He pulls back and smiles quizzically.

“What brought this on?”

“Do you?”

Running a hand through his hair, he leans against the headboard. “Believing in hell means believing in some religious construction, so I’d have to say no.”

“You’d have to say no,” I agree slowly, “but that doesn’t tell me what you think.”

He covers me with his body and breathes against my neck. “What made you think of hell? Was it this?” He scrapes his teeth over my shoulder.

“Or this?”

No, I want to tell him. This is heaven.

This must be heaven because never in my life have I imagined that someone like you would want to be with me,

here, doing this. And on the heels of this thought comes another: that such pleasure, surely, comes with a price.

Then Ian tips his forehead to mine and closes his eyes. “Yes,” he whispers. “I think about going to hell.”

Metz scowls at the television set and turns it off in the middle of the videotape. “This is crap,” he announces to an empty room.

“Crap!”

Mariah White one-upped him by giving Hollywood Tonight! a backstage pass to her home, and frankly, from what Colin White has told him about the woman, it’s surprised him.

Traditionally, she’s rolled over and played dead at the first sign of confrontation. This media courting, after weeks of hiding away, is clearly a positioning strategy–one that Metz unfortunately admits is paying off. With the trial a week away, a press corps that’s in love with Faith White, and a very anxious client in the wings, he has his work cut out for him.

There is a knock on the door. “Yeah?”

Elkland, one of his young female associates,

sticks her head in. “Mr. Metz? Have you got a minute?”

Hell, he’s got a minute. He’s got a whole evening full of them, since he doesn’t seem to be using them to any advantage stacking the odds in his favor in the White case. “Sure.”

He gestures to a chair and wearily rubs his hands over his face. “What’s on your mind?”

“Well, I was watching that show Nova on PBS last night.”

“Congratulations. You want to be an attorney or a Nielsen family?”

“It’s just that it was about this disease. It’s called Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. Basically,

if you’ve got it, you make someone else look physically or mentally ill.”

Metz sits up, intrigued. “Tell me those papers in your hand are some preliminary research,”

he murmurs.

She nods. “It’s a clinical disorder.

Usually, it’s a mother doing it to her kid, in secret. And the reason is to get positive attention–to look, ironically, like a good mother because she’s dragging the child into the ER or to a psychiatrist. Of course, since the mom made her sick in the first place, that’s a crock.”

Metz frowns. “How do you make someone else have a hallucination?”

“I don’t know,” admits Elkland. “But I found someone who does. I took the liberty of interviewing an expert on Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy over the phone. He wants to talk to you about the case.”

Metz taps his fingers on his desk. The chances of Mariah White’s having this Munchausen disorder are probably rather slim, but that’s neither here nor there. His strongest cases usually have nothing to do with the truth, but simply with being able to blow smoke the right way. The best strategy for Colin White will be to make the judge find fault in Faith’s mother, so that he has no choice but to award custody to the father. Metz could hint that Mariah has leprosy, schizophrenia, or this Munchausen by Proxy–anything, just so long as it makes Rothbottam sit back and reconsider.

In a way, he’s only fighting fairly,

using the same tactic Mariah White did when she invited Hollywood Tonight! to her home.

The fact of the matter is, in this case, perception is everything. Judges don’t traditionally give custody to fathers, unless the mother is proven to be a heroin addict or a whore. Or, perhaps, crazy as a loon.

“I like this,” he says guardedly.

Elkland grins. “I haven’t told you the best part. These mothers? The ones who really have Munchausen by Proxy? They’re pathological liars–it’s part and parcel of having the syndrome. If you ask them to their faces whether they’ve hurt their children, they’ll deny it, they’ll act outraged, they’ll get very hostile.”

Metz smiles slowly. “Just like Mrs.

White is bound to do when we cross her.”

“Just like,” Elkland says.

November 25, 1999 My mother decides that it’s time for her to move back home. Whether it is the approaching trial that fuels this decision, or the fact that she’s sick of sleeping in our guest room, I don’t know. I help her pack up her things in the little suitcase that she has had since I was a young girl.

On the bed I fold her nightgown into thirds,

and thirds again. She is in the bathroom, gathering together the creams and pastes and powders that make up a smell I will always associate with her. It reminds me of the night Ian and I spent at her house. I would have thought that this scent,

so familiar from childhood, would make me rear away from the thought of making love with Ian in my mother’s house, but I was wrong. It was the smell of security, of comfort, oddly seductive to both Ian and myself.

“I haven’t thanked you,” I say, as my mother comes out of the bathroom carrying a toiletry kit.

“For what?” She waves a hand at me. “This was nothing.”

“I didn’t mean you staying here. I meant … well, for making me go.”

My mother’s head comes up. “Ah. I was wondering when we were going to get around to that.”

I can feel my cheeks going red. After all these years, I still cannot speak of boys to my mother without feeling as if I’m eleven again. “It was a nice gesture,” I say diplomatically.

“Good lord, Mariah, call a spade a spade, will you? It was a rendezvous. An assignation. A trysting spot. A love–“

“Let’s just leave it at that, okay?” I grin. “You are my mother.”

She cups my cheek. It tingles, as if she were holding my childhood right there in her palm.

“But somewhere along the way, I also became your friend.”

It is a silly thing, to put it in such terms,

but it is true. The women in my life, my two best friends, are my mother and my daughter. A few weeks ago, I almost lost one. A few days from now, I might lose the other.

“You need me, no question about that. But you needed him, too. And I figured I was the best one to make that happen.”

My mother methodically matches shoes and lays them into her suitcase. She is beautiful,

softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her. “The best one,” I say softly. “You are.”

December 2, 1999 Joan has dinner with us the night before the hearing.

Afterward, while my mother and Faith are clearing the table, we go down to my workshop for privacy. We rehearse my testimony once again, until Joan is sure that I am not going to falter on the stand. Then she hooks her heels over the rung of a stool and stares at me. “You know, this isn’t going to be a picnic for you.”

I laugh. “Well, I figured as much. I can think of a thousand other places I’d rather be.”

“I don’t mean that, Mariah. I mean what people are going to say. Colin will be downright nasty.

And Metz has a parade of other witnesses he’s coached to say things that make you look like a sorry excuse for a parent.”

Not Ian, I think, and I wonder if I am convincing myself.

“That’s not even counting what he’s going to do to you on the stand. He’s going to try to trip you up and get you confused, so that you look like the basket case he’s been setting you up as in his direct examinations of witnesses.” She leans forward.

“Don’t let him get to you. When you go home at the end of each day during this trial, know that Malcolm Metz doesn’t really know you from Adam. You’re not a person to him; you’re a means to an end.”

I look up at Joan and try to spread a smile across my face. “Don’t you worry about me. I’ve grown thicker skin lately.” But all the same, I’m hugging myself as if I’m suddenly chilled; as if I’m suddenly wary of falling apart.

The doorbell rings at ten-thirty. When I open it, braced for the quick flash of cameras, I find Colin standing there looking just as shocked to see me as I am to see him.

“Can we talk?” he asks after a moment.

For all that I want to turn him away, or tell him to contact my lawyer, I nod. We have a history between us, and in some ways I think that is thicker than anger, thicker than blood. “All right. But Faith’s asleep. Be quiet.”

As he follows me through the hallway, I wonder what he is thinking: What did she do with that photograph of the Andes? Has the tile always been this dark? What is it like to come back to your own house and not quite recognize it?

He pulls out a kitchen chair and straddles it. I imagine Joan, shouting at the top of her lungs that I shouldn’t be here without an attorney present. But I smile halfheartedly and duck my head. “So talk.”

The air leaves Colin in a great whoosh, like a hurricane. “This is killing me.”

What? The chair? The fact that he’s back in our house? Jessica? Me?

“Do you know why I fell in love with you,

Rye?”

The countertop is just behind me. I work very hard at digging my fingernails into it. “Did your attorney tell you to come here?”

The shock on Colin’s face is genuine.

“God, no. Is that what you think?”

I stare at him. “I don’t really know what to think anymore, Colin.”

He stands and walks toward the spice rack,

running his finger over each bottle. Anise,

basil, coriander. Celery salt, crushed red pepper, and dill. “You were sitting on the steps of the library at school,” he says. “And I came up with a bunch of the guys from the team.

Gorgeous spring day, but you were studying. You were always studying. I said we were going to get subs, and did you want to come?” He looks down at the floor and shakes his head. “And you did. You just left your books sitting there in this pile like you didn’t give a shit who took them or whatever,

and you followed me.”

I smile. I never did get that economics text back, but I got Colin, and at the time I believed it was more than a fair trade. I take the small vial of bay leaves Colin’s set on the counter and put it back in its place.

“I should have kept on studying.”

Colin touches my arm. “Do you really believe that?”

I am afraid to look at him. I stare down at his hand until he removes it. “You didn’t want someone who’d follow you, Colin. You wanted someone you had to chase.”

“I loved you,” he says fiercely.

I do not blink. “For how long?”

He takes a step away. “You’re different,” he accuses. “You’re not like you used to be.”

“You mean I’m not huddled in the corner, crying into a dish towel. Sorry to disappoint.”

At that, I know I’ve pushed too far. “How long this time, Rye?” Colin presses. “How long until you start looking in the medicine cabinet for escape routes? Or stare at a razor blade for the six hours that Faith’s in school? How long until you check out on her?”

“And you didn’t?”

“I won’t,” Colin says. “Not now.

Look, I made a mistake, Rye.

But that was between you and me. I’ve never been less than one hundred percent there for Faith. So what if you pat Faith’s head every morning now, if you tell her how much you love her? Up until that minute in August, you weren’t the sure thing–

I was. Do you think she’s forgotten how it was when she was little, how her mom spent afternoons lying down with a headache, or sleeping off Haldol,

or talking to a fucking shrink instead of taking her to preschool?” He points a shaking finger. “You are not any better than me.”

“The difference between us is that I never said I was.”

Colin looks at me so angrily that I wonder if I am in danger. “You won’t take her away from me.”

I hope he cannot tell how hard I am shaking. “You won’t take her away from me.”

We have worked ourselves into such a fury that neither one of us notices Faith standing nearby until she draws a shaky breath.

“Honey. We woke you up?”

“Sweetheart.” Colin’s face dissolves into a smile. “Hi.”

Something in her eyes stops me just seconds before I touch her shoulder. Faith is stiff, her eyes wide with fear, her hands fisted at her sides, and her face drained of color.

“Mommy?” she says, her lower lip trembling.

“Daddy?”

But before either of us can explain ourselves or our behavior, we see the blood that wells between the seams of her fingers.

Within seconds Faith is writhing on the floor and crying out words I do not understand. “Eli!

Eli!” she calls out, and although I have no idea who this is, I tell her he is coming. I try not to notice that this time she is bleeding from her side,

too. I hold her shoulders down so that she will not hurt herself, and all the while her palms leave smears of blood on the tile.

I hear Colin’s voice, high and panicked,

speaking into the portable phone. “Eighty-six Westvale Hill, first driveway on the left.” Once he hangs up, he gets to the floor beside me. “The ambulance is on its way.” He presses his cheek against Faith’s,

which actually calms her for a moment. “Daddy’s here. Daddy’s going to take care of you.”

Faith shudders, then twists in pain. Her voice sounds like a river, syllables and grunts that escalate into sobs.

Colin’s mouth drops open. Then he mobilizes to action, taking off his jacket and wrapping it around Faith, swaddling her in his arms the way he used to when she was a baby. He sings a lullaby I have not heard in years, and to my surprise Faith goes limp and docile.

The paramedics burst into the house. Colin steps back and lets them work on Faith. I watch these people lay hands on my daughter and say what I already suspect: that her blood pressure is fine, that the pupils are responsive, that the bleeding will not stop. After all, I have played out this scene once before. I feel Colin’s hand slip over mine like a glove. “We can ride in the ambulance,” he says.

“Colin–“

“Look,” he announces in a tone that brooks no argument, “I don’t care what the hell is going on in court. We’re both her parents. We’re both going.”

I want to talk to Dr. Blumberg alone,

yet I want Colin to hear him say the things he has already said to me. I want to yank my hand out of Colin’s and stand completely on my own. I want, badly, to speak to Ian. But Colin has always had a pull on me, like the moon with the tide,

and I find my feet following him out of habit,

into the belly of the ambulance, where I sit with Colin’s shoulder bumping mine and my eyes adjusting to darkness, watching the shifting snakes of IV’S that feed into my child.

Colin and I sit side by side on the ugly tubular couches that make up the waiting room of the ER. By now Faith’s bleeding has been stabilized, and she’s been carted off to X ray.

The emergency physician, referring to her chart,

has summoned Dr. Blumberg.

Colin has been busy for the past half hour.

He answered the questions of the paramedics and the doctors, he paced incessantly, he smoked three cigarettes just outside the glass doors of the ER, his profile gilded with moonlight.

Finally he comes back inside and crouches down beside my seat, where I am resting my head in my hands. “Do you think,” he whispers, as if giving voice to the thought will make it take wing,

“that she’s doing it for attention?”

“Doing what?”

“Hurting herself.”

At that, I raise my eyes. “You’d believe that of Faith?”

“I don’t know, Mariah. I don’t know what to believe.”

We are saved from an argument by the arrival of Dr. Blumberg. “Mrs. White. What happened?”

Colin extends his hand. “I’m Colin White. Faith’s father.”

“Hello.”

“I understand this isn’t the first time you’ve examined Faith,” Colin says. “I’d appreciate being brought up to date on her history.”

Dr. Blumberg slants a glance at me.

“I’m sure that Mrs. White–“

“Mrs. White and I are estranged,” Colin says bluntly. “I’d like to hear it from you.”

“Okay.” He sits across from us and settles his hands on his knees. “I’ve already done a variety of tests on Faith, but have found no medical explanation why she spontaneously bleeds.”

“It’s definitely blood?”

“Oh, yes. It’s been laboratory tested.”

“Is it self-inflicted?”

“Not that I can see,” Dr. Blumberg says.

“Then it might be someone else?” Colin asks.

“Pardon me.”

“Did someone hurt Faith?”

Blumberg shakes his head. “I don’t believe so, Mr. White. Not the way you mean.”

“How do you know?” Colin shouts. There are tears in his eyes. “How the hell could you know?

Look–I watched her fall into some fit and start bleeding for no reason. I have insurance. Don’t you tell me you’ve got no medical explanation for this. Order a frigging CT scan or do bloodwork or something. You’re a doctor. You’re supposed to figure it out, and I want my daughter here until you do. Because if you release her again and she has another episode, I’m going to sue you for malpractice.”

I think of a piece of research Dr.

Blumberg told me about–of doctors at the turn of the century who hospitalized a stigmatic and welded an iron boot over his bleeding foot to make sure that the man was not producing the wound himself. I wonder how Colin can accuse me of ruining Faith’s life.

Dr. Blumberg hesitates. “I can’t run tests without her mother’s consent.”

“You have her father’s,” Colin says coldly.

“I’ll admit her,” the doctor concedes.

“But I don’t expect to find anything new.”

Satisfied, Colin stands. “Can we see her now?”

“Faith will be up on the pedi ward in a few minutes. She’ll be groggy; I gave her a sedative.” He looks from me to Colin.

“I’ll check on her again in the morning.

Hospital policy says that one of you can remain overnight in her room.” With a nod, he walks off.

I straighten my shoulders, gearing for a fight,

but to my surprise Colin announces that he’ll leave. “Faith will expect you. You stay.”

We walk in silence to the elevator and take it to the pediatric floor. The desk nurse tells us which room is Faith’s, although she hasn’t yet returned from radiology. Colin and I enter the room, where he takes the only chair and I stand by the window with a view of the hospital’s helicopter landing pad.

After a few minutes a nurse wheels Faith inside and helps her stumble into the bed. Her hands are wound in white bandages. “Mommy?”

“I’m here.” I sit on the edge of the bed and touch Faith’s cheek. “How are you feeling?”

She turns away. “I want to go home.”

I brush her bangs back from her face. “The doctor wants you to sleep here overnight.”

Colin leans down on the other side of the bed.

“Hi, cookie.”

“Daddy.”

He gently takes her bandaged hand and strokes the skin above the gauze. “How did this happen,

honey?” he asks. “You can tell me, and I won’t get mad. Did you hurt yourself? Did someone else hurt you? Grandma, maybe? Or that priest who visits?”

“Oh, for God’s sake–” I interject.

Colin narrows his eyes. “You’re not there every minute. You never know, Mariah.”

“Next you’re going to be saying that I did it to her,” I spit out.

Colin simply raises his brows.

After Faith falls asleep, Colin gets to his feet. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s just eating me up inside to see her like this and not know how to fix it.”

“You know, apologies don’t count when you qualify them.”

Colin looks at me for a long moment. “Do we have to do it like this?”

“No,” I whisper. “We don’t.”

And then I am in Colin’s arms, my face pressed against his neck. He touches his forehead to my brow in a gesture that brings a stream of memories. This man I was supposed to spend my life with, I will instead be meeting in a courtroom tomorrow. “I’ll be back in the morning. I’m sure the judge can give us a continuance.”

“I’m sure,” I repeat against his chest.

“For what it’s worth,” he says, so quietly that I may be dreaming it, “I know it’s not you.”

With that assurance, Colin leaves me once again.

Kenzie microwaves a box of Pizza Bites and pours a big glass of red wine before she sits down to finish writing her recommendation to Judge Rothbottam. She imagines eating the entire box of hors d’oeuvres and maybe another and then methodically working her way through the refrigerator and freezer, stuffing herself until she cannot move. Cannot lift a finger. Cannot write this report of a guardian ad litem.

Judge Rothbottam is expecting this report on his desk tomorrow morning, before the custody hearing is in session. Kenzie–the objective observer, the eye in the storm–is supposed to lay a foundation upon which he can balance the arguments of the plaintiff and the defendant.

Kenzie takes a long, slow sip of wine.

The White case is so filled with shades of gray that sometimes Kenzie doubts her ability to see clearly.

On the one hand, she has Colin and Jessica White, a new family anchored by a father who clearly loves Faith. But Kenzie can barely stomach giving custody to a man who was so grievously unfaithful. On the other hand, there’s Mariah White, carting her emotional baggage from the past and even now–Kenzie’s sure of it!–lying, either to herself, or to Faith, or to Kenzie herself. If she leaves Faith in her mother’s custody, she does so without knowing the whole story. Yet she cannot help but notice that Mariah White, self-professed poster child for insecurity, has truly begun to turn her life around. It’s clear, too, that Faith feels very attached to her mother. But is it a healthy connection,

or does Faith simply feel the need to take care of a mother who isn’t strong enough to take care of her?

Kenzie sets down her wine and waits for the cursor on the computer screen to focus at the top of the document. Then she turns it off, wishing for a miracle.

A pair of grieving relatives stand around the bed of Mamie Richardson, age eighty-two.

After last week’s stroke, she’s been comatose.

The doctors have explained the extent of the massive brain damage. The family has come together to pull the plug.

Mamie’s daughter sits on one side of the bed in the ICU; Mamie’s husband of sixty years sits on the other. He strokes her leopard-spotted hand as if it were a good-luck charm, oblivious to the tears that have made a small wet spot in the waffle-weave blanket that covers Mamie’s thin legs.

The daughter looks to the resident beside the heart-lung machine, then at her father. “All right, Daddy?” The elderly man just bows his head.

She nods to the doctor and is suddenly stopped by the strident sound of her mother’s voice.

“Isabelle Louise!” Mamie shouts, sitting up in bed. “What in the name of the good Lord do you think you’re doing?”

“Mother?” the woman breathes.

“Mamie!” her husband yells. “Oh,

God. God! Mamie!”

The old woman yanks the breathing tube out of her nose. “What kind of contraption have you got me hooked up to, Albert?”

“Lie down, Mother. You had a stroke.” The daughter looks at the doctor, who first steps away in shock and then falls to checking Mamie.

“Get a nurse,” the doctor orders Albert. But it takes a moment, because Albert cannot tear his eyes away from the woman who has defined him for half a century, the woman whose passing would have made a major part of him die, too. Then he rushes into the corridor with the energy of a man half his age, waving his arms and shouting for medical personnel to come quickly,

to converge on the ICU room that happens to be one floor directly above that of Faith White’s.

In the middle of the night Faith’s arm shifts and strikes me across the face. The pediatric ICU offers a cot for the parent who’s sleeping in, but I preferred to crawl into the narrow bed with Faith. This way, I could protect her, be there if she was in pain.

Faith tosses and turns, and I press my lips to her forehead. Immediately, I draw back–

she is burning up, hotter than I can ever remember her being. I lunge toward the headboard and push the call button.

“Yes?”

“My daughter’s got a fever.”

“We’ll be right in.”

When the nurses come, poking and prodding with thermometers and sponges of alcohol, Faith doesn’t even stir. There is a strange soundtrack accompanying their movements; it takes me a moment to recognize it as a rhythmic,

tiny moan coming from deep inside Faith.

“Can’t you page Dr. Blumberg?”

“Mrs. White,” says one nurse, “just let us do our job, all right?”

But I am her mother, I want to say. Won’t you let me do mine?

“She’s a hundred and five point five,”

I hear one nurse murmur.

A hundred and five? I start thinking of infections of the blood, spinal meningitis,

spreading cancers. If it was serious, wouldn’t the tests this evening have picked it up–a high white-blood-cell count? But if it wasn’t serious, why would she have such a high fever?

I do not want to leave her, but I know I have an obligation. Stepping into the hallway, I ask to borrow the phone at the nurses’ station. There are too many people crowded into Faith’s room to let me use the one beside the bed. I rummage in my purse and unfold a small green sheet of paper with a phone number on it. “Jessica, this is Mariah White,” I manage to say. “Can you tell Colin that Faith’s taken a turn for the worse?”

When Malcolm Metz gets to the ofice,

called by an extremely apologetic Elkland –who was pulling an all-nighter when Colin White stormed into the lobby like an unconfined tiger–his head is still wet from his shower and his eyes are bloodshot. It pisses him off,

particularly because he likes to look his best on days he litigates, yet he’s due in court in less than five hours, and he’s going to look as if he’s been out carousing the whole night before.

He draws up short at the sight of his client –hair standing in tufts around his head, jacket looking slept in … and is that blood on the sleeve?

“Christ,” Metz says. “You look worse than I do.”

“Okay,” Colin begins, not even bothering to look at his attorney. “This is the thing.

She’s in pain. She’s in the goddamned hospital. And I don’t care what you say, people listen to TV, and it’s going to sway what the judge thinks. Look at that nanny trial in Boston! I’m paying you a shitload of money to get a winning verdict. And I’m telling you,

it’s happening to her in the house, Malcolm. I saw it with my own eyes. Someone or something in there is making her sick.”

“Hang on,” Metz says. “Who’s sick?

Who’s in the hospital?”

Colin looks at him as if he is crazy.

“Faith.”

Metz’s eyes widen. “Faith’s in the hospital?”

“She started bleeding last night. It happened right in front of me. She was just standing there and all of a sudden …” He shakes his head. “Christ,

I’ve got to believe they can do more than give her drugs to take the edge off. I mean … something has to happen to make you bleed.”

Metz holds up a hand. “Your daughter is in the hospital,” he clarifies.

“Yeah.”

“She’s under observation.”

“That’s right.”

A smile breaks across Metz’s face.

“Oh, God, how perfect.” At Colin’s glare he hastens to explain himself.

“We’ve been working up an angle for your case,

Colin, and strangely enough, this corroborates it.” As Elkland outlines Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy for Colin, Metz thinks back to his original ex parte motion, lobbed at the judge for the hell of it, but clearly now an unconscious stroke of genius. “Picture this:

We walk into chambers this morning and file an emergency motion, begging Rothbottam to separate Faith from her mother because her life is in serious jeopardy. The first time we did it, he thought we were bluffing, and he let her stay with her mother. But thanks to his faulty judgment, the kid’s now in the hospital. I explain Munchausen’s and tell him that our expert will prove why we need this emergency provision. Then I ask for a court order keeping Mariah away from Faith. The judge will feel so guilty about throwing out the first motion that this time he’ll jump right through my hoop.”

Colin stares at him, scowling. “I’ve never heard of this Munchausen thing.”

Metz grins. “Me neither. But by the time the hearing’s over, we’ll be pros.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know,

Malcolm. Mariah … well, she may be a little preoccupied with herself sometimes, but she’d never intentionally hurt Faith.”

Elkland bites her lip. “Mr. White, from what I’ve read, that’s part of the psychological disorder–looking like the ideal, concerned parent while you lie about what you’ve done.”

“I stood two feet away from Faith last night and watched her just start to bleed,” Colin says slowly. “She didn’t prick herself on anything; she didn’t touch anything at all, in fact … and Mariah was even farther away than I was. But you’re saying that you think … you think–“

Metz shakes his head. “The question isn’t what I think, or what you think, Colin,” he says, “but rather, what do you want the judge to think?”

Kenzie is asleep beside her laptop when the phone rings. “Ms. van der Hoven,” says a silky voice when she lifts the receiver.

It would be impossible, even in her state of muzzy confusion, to not recognize Malcolm Metz. “You’re up early.”

“Five A.m. is the best part of the day.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Metz chuckles. “I guess you’ve already sent in your report.”

With a sinking sensation, Kenzie looks at the computer screen, blank as a wall.

“I assume you faxed it to His Honor last night so the judge could read it before today’s trial.

But I felt honor-bound to let you know something before court began.”

“Which is what, Mr. Metz?”

“Faith White was hospitalized last night.”

At that, Kenzie snaps upright. “She what?”

“As I understand from my client, she started bleeding from her hands again, and that escalated into a more serious condition.”

“Oh, my God. Who’s with her now?”

“Her mother, I assume.” There is a hesitation on the line. “But I wanted you to know that I plan to amend that. I’m asking the judge for a restraining order to keep Mariah away from the child.

I have reason to believe that Mariah’s the one who’s harming Faith.”

“You have evidence?” she asks.

“I’ve come to the conclusion that Mrs. White suffers from a certain psychological disorder. I have an expert who’s reviewed the case, and who agrees with me.”

“I see.”

“Well, you will anyway. I just thought you might like to know in advance,” Metz says, and then he hangs up.

Kenzie turns on her computer and waits for the screen to spring to life. It makes her wince–

too much energy all at once. She begins to type furiously, hoping that she will have a chance to visit Faith before court is in session, hoping that if there is indeed a heavenly being watching over Faith, it can follow her into an ambulance, a hospital, a new and safer home.

“I recommend that custody of Faith White,” she types, “be awarded to her father.”

KEEPING FAITH