t one point in my life, I had wanted to save the world. I'd listened, dewy-eyed, to law school professors and truly believed that as a prosecutor, I had a chance to rid the planet of evil. This was before I understood that when you have five hundred open cases, you make the conscious decision to plead as many as you can. It was before I realized that righteousness has less to do with a verdict than persuasion. Before I realized that I had not chosen a crusade, but only a job.

Still, it never entered my mind to be a defense attorney. I couldn't stomach the thought of standing up and lying on behalf of a morally depraved criminal, and as far as I was concerned most of them were guilty until proven innocent. But sitting in Fisher Carrington's sumptuous paneled office, being handed Jamaican coffee, $27.99 per pound, by his trim and efficient secretary, I start to understand the attraction.

Fisher comes out to meet me. His Newman-blue eyes twinkle, as if he couldn't be more delighted to find me sitting in his antechamber. And why shouldn't he be? He could charge me an arm and a leg and knows I will pay it. He has the chance to work on a high-profile murder that will net him a ton of new business. And finally, it's a departure from your run-of-the-mill case, the kind Fisher can do in his sleep.

“Nina,” he says. “Good to see you.” As if, less than twenty-four hours ago, we hadn't met each other in the conference room of a jail. “Come back to my office.”

It is heavily paneled, a man's room that conjures the smell of cigar smoke and snifters of brandy. He has the same books of statutes lining his shelves that I do, and somehow that is comforting. “How's Nathaniel?”

“Fine.” I take a seat in an enormous leather wing chair and let my eyes wander.

“He must be happy to have his mother home.”

More than his father is, I think. My attention fixes on a small Picasso sketch on the wall. Not a lithograph-the real thing.

“What are you thinking?” Fisher asks, sitting down across from me.

“That the state doesn't pay me enough.” I turn to him. “Thank you. For getting me out yesterday.”

“Much as I'd like to take the credit, that was a gift horse prancing in, and you know it. I didn't expect leniency from Brown.”

“I wouldn't expect it again.” I can feel his eyes on me, measuring. As compared to my behavior at yesterday's brief meeting, I'm under much greater control.

“Let's get down to business,” Fisher announces. “Did you give the police a statement?”

“They asked. I repeated that I'd done all I could do. That I couldn't do any more.”

“You said this how many times?”

“Over and over.”

Fisher sets down his Waterman and folds his hands. His expression is a curious mix of morbid fascination, respect, and resignation. “You know what you're doing,” he says, a statement.

I look at him over the rim of my coffee mug. “You don't want to ask me that.”

Leaning back in his chair, Fisher grins. He has dimples, two in each cheek. “Were you a drama major before you got to law school?”

“Sure,” I say. “Weren't you?”

There are so many questions he wants to ask me; I can see them fighting ins ide of him like small soldiers desperate to join this fray. I can't blame him. By now, he knows I'm sane; he knows the game I have chosen to play. This is equivalent to having a Martian land in one's backyard. You can't possibly walk away without poking it once, to see what it's made of inside.

“How come you had your husband call me?”

“Because juries love you. People believe you.” I hesitate, then give him the truth. “And because I hated going up against you.” Fisher accepts this as his due. “We need to prepare an insanity defense. Or go with extreme anger.”

There are no different degrees of murder in Maine, and the mandatory sentence is twenty-five years to life. Which means if I am to be acquitted, I have to be not guilty-(difficult to prove, given that the act is on film); not guilty by reason of insanity; or under the influence of extreme anger brought on by adequate provocation. That final defense reduces the crime to manslaughter, a lesser charge. It's somewhat amazing that in this state, it is legal to kill someone if they piss you off enough and if the jury agrees you had good reason to be pissed off, but there you have it.

“My advice is to argue both,” Fisher suggests. “If-”

“No. If you argue both, it looks sleazy to the jury. Trust me. It seems like even you can't make up your mind why I'm not guilty.” I think about this for a minute. “Besides, having twelve jurors agree on what justifies provocation is more of a long shot than having them recognize insanity when a prosecutor shoots a man right in front of a judge. And winning on extreme anger isn 't an out-and-out win-it only lessens the conviction. If you get me off on an insanity charge, it's a complete acquittal.”

My defense is starting to form in my mind. “Okay.” I lean forward, ready to let him in on my plan. “We're going to get a call from Brown for the state psychiatric investigation. We can go to that shrink first, and based on that report, we can find someone to use as our own psychiatric expert.”

“Nina,” Fisher says patiently. “You are the client. I am the attorney. Understand that now, or this isn't going to work.”

“Come on, Fisher. I know exactly what to do.”

“No, you don't. You're a prosecutor, and you don't know the first thing about running a defense.”

“It's all about putting on a good act, right? And haven't I already done that ?“ Fisher waits until I settle back in my chair with my arms crossed over my chest, defeated. ”All right, fine. Then what are we going to do?”

“Go to the state psychiatrist,” Fisher says dryly. “And then find some-one to use as our own psychiatric expert.” When I lift my brows, he ignores me. “I'm going to ask for all the information Detective Ducharme put toget her on the investigation involving your son, because that was what led you to believe you needed to kill this man.”

Kill this man. The phrase sends a shiver down my spine. We toss these words about so easily, as if we are discussing the weather, or the Red Sox scores.

“Is there anything else you can think of that I need to ask for?”

“The underwear,” I tell him. “My son's underwear had semen on it. It was sent out for DNA testing but hasn't come back yet.”

“Well, that doesn't really matter anymore-”

“I want to see it,” I announce, brooking no argument. “I need to see that report.”

Fisher nods, makes a note. “Fine, then. I'll request it. Anything else?” I shake my head. “All right. When I get the discovery in, I'll call you. In the meantime, don't leave the state, don't talk to anyone in your office, don't screw up, because you're not going to get a second chance.” He stands, dismissing me.

I walk to the door, trailing my fingers over the polished wainscoting. With my hand on the knob, I pause, then look over my shoulder. He is making notes inside my file, just the way I do when I begin a case. “Fisher?” He glan ces up. “Do you have any children?”

“Two. One daughter's a sophomore at Dartmouth, the other is in high school.”

It is suddenly hard to swallow. “Well,” I say softly. “That's good to know.” Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.

None of the reporters or parishioners who have come to Father Szyszynski's funeral Mass at St. Anne's recognize the woman draped in black and sitting in the second-to-last row of the church, not responding to the Kyrie. I have been careful to hide my face with a veil; to keep my silence. I have not told Caleb where I am headed; he thinks I am coming home after my appointment with Fisher. But instead I sit in a state of mortal sin, listening to the arch bishop extol the virtues of the man I killed.

He may have been accused, but he was never convicted. Ironically, I have turned him into a victim. The pews are crushed with his flock, coming to pay their last respects. Everything is silver and white-the vestments of the clergy that have come to send Szyszynski off to God, the lilies lining the aisle, the altar boys who led the procession with their tapers, the pall over the casket-and the church looks, I imagine, like Heaven does.

The archbishop prays over the gleaming coffin, two priests beside him waving the censer and the Holy Water. They seem familiar; I realize they are the ones that recently visited the parish. I wonder if one of them will take over, now that there is no priest.

I confess to Almighty God, and to you here present, that I have sinned through my own fault.

The sweet smoke of candles and flowers makes my head swim. The last funeral Mass I attended was my father's, one with far less pageantry than this, although the service bled by in the same stream of disbelief. I can remember the priest who had put his hands over mine and offered me the greatest condolence he could: “He's with God, now.”

As the Gospel is read, I look around the congregation. Some of the older women are sobbing; most are staring at the archbishop with the solemnity he commands. If Szyszynski's body belongs to Christ, then who controlled his mind? Who placed in that brain the seed to hurt a child? What made him pick mine?

Words jump out at me: commend his soul; with his Maker; Hosanna in the highest.

The organ's notes throb, and then the archbishop stands to deliver the eulogy. “Father Glen Szyszynski,” he begins, “was well loved by his congregation.”

I cannot say why I came here; why I knew that I would swim an ocean, break through fetters, run cross-country if need be to witness Szyszynski's burial. Maybe it is closure for me; maybe it is the proof I still need. This is My Body.

I picture his face in profile, the minute before I pulled the trigger. This is the cup of My Blood.

His skull, shattered.

Into the silence I gasp, and the people sitting on either side of me turn, curious.

When we stand like automatons and file into the aisle to take Communion, I find my feet moving before I can remember to stop them. I open my mouth for the priest holding the Host. “Body of Christ,” he says, and he looks me in the eye.

“Amen,” I answer.

When I turn my gaze falls on the front left pew, where a woman in black is bent over at the waist, sobbing so hard she cannot catch her breath. Her iron-gray curls wilt beneath her black cloche hat; her hands are knotted so tightly around the edge of the pew I think she may splinter the wood. The priest who has given me Communion whispers to another clergyman, who takes over as he goes to comfort her. And that is when it hits me:

Father Szyszynski was someone's son, too.

My chest fills with lead and my legs melt beneath me. I can tell myself that I have gotten retribution for Nathaniel; I can say that I was morally right-but I cannot take away the truth that another mother has lost her child because of me.

Is it right to close one cycle of pain if it only opens up another one?

The church starts to spin, and the flowers are reaching for my ankles. A face as wide as the moon looms in front of me, speaking words that I cannot hear. If I faint, they will know who I am. They will crucify me. I summon all the strength I have left to shove aside the people in my way, to lurch down the aisle, to push open the double doors of St. Anne's and break free. Mason, the golden retriever, has been called Nathaniel's dog for as long as Nathaniel can remember, although he was part of the family for ten months be fore Nathaniel was even born. And the strange thing is, if it had been the other way around-if Nathaniel had gotten here first-he would have told his parents that he really wanted a cat. He likes the way you can drape a kitten over your arm, the same way you'd carry a coat if you got too hot. He likes the sound they make against his ear, how it makes his skin hum, too. He likes the way they don't take baths; he likes the fact that they can fall from a great height, but land on their feet.

He asked for a kitten one Christmas, and although Santa had brought him everything else, the cat didn't happen. It was Mason, he knew. The dog had a habit of bringing in gifts-the skull of a mouse he'd chewed clean, the body of a thrashed snake found at the end of the drive, a toad caught in the bowl of his mouth. God knows, Nathaniel's mother said, what he'd do to a kitten. So that day when he wandered in the basement of the church, the day he'd been looking at the dragon painting in Father Glen's office, the first thing Nathaniel noticed was the cat. She was black, with three white paws, as if she'd stepped into paint and realized, partway through, that it wasn't such a good idea. Her tail twitched like a snake charmer's cobra. Her face was no bigger than Nathaniel's palm.

“Ah,” the priest said. “You like Esme.” He reached down and scratched between the cat's ears. “That's my girl.” Scooping the cat into his arms, he sat down on the couch beneath the painting of the dragon. Nathaniel thought he was very brave. Had it been him, he'd be worried about the monster coming to life, eating him whole. “Would you like to pet her?” Nathaniel nodded, his throat so full of his good fortune that he couldn't even speak. He came closer to the couch, to the small ball of fur in the priest's lap. He placed his hand on the kitten's back, feeling the heat and the bones and the heart of her. “Hi,” he whispered. “Hi, Esme.” Her tail tickled Nathaniel under the chin, and he laughed. The priest laughed too, and put his hand on the back of Nathaniel's neck. It was the same spot where Nathaniel was petting the cat, and for a moment he saw something like the endless mirror in a carnival's fun house-him touching the cat, and the priest touching him, and maybe even the big invisible hand of God touching the priest. Nathaniel lifted his palm, took a step back.

“She likes you,” the priest said.

“For real?”

“Oh, yes. She doesn't act this way around most of the children.” That made Nathaniel feel tall all over. He scratched the cat's ears again, and he would have sworn she smiled.

“That's it,” the priest encouraged. “Don't stop.” Quentin Brown sits at Nina's desk in the district attorney's office, wondering what's missing. For lack of space, he has been given her office as a base of operations, and the irony has not been lost on him that he will be planning the conviction of this woman from the very seat in which she once sat. What he has learned, from observation, is that Nina Frost is a neat-freak-her paper clips, for the love of God, are sorted by size in small dishes. Her files are alphabetized. There is not a clue to be found-no crumpled Post-it with the name of a gun dealer; not even a doodle of Father Szyszynski's face on the blotter. This could be anyone's workspace, Quentin thinks, and there in lies the problem.

What kind of woman doesn't keep a picture of her kid or her husband on her desk?

He mulls over what this might or might not mean for a moment, then takes out his wallet. From the folds he pulls a worn baby photo of Gideon. They'd had it taken at Sears. To get that smile on the boy's face, Quentin had pretended to hit Tanya on the head with a Nerf football, and he'd inadvertently knocked out her contact lens. He sets the photograph square, now, in the corner of Nina Frost's blotter, as the door opens.

Two Biddeford detectives enter-Evan Chao and Patrick Ducharme, if Quentin recalls correctly. “Come in,” he says, gesturing to the seats across from him. “Take a seat.”

They form a solid block, their shoulders nearly touching. Quentin lifts a remote control and turns on a television/VCR on the shelf behind them. He has already watched the tape a thousand times himself, and imagines that the two detectives have seen it as well. Hell, most of New England has seen it by now; it was run on all the CBS news affiliates. Chao and Ducharme turn, mesmerized by the sight of Nina Frost on the small screen, walking with a preternatural grace toward the railing of the gallery and lifting a handgun. In this version, the unedited one, you can see the right side of Glen Szys zynski's head exploding.

“Jesus,” Chao murmurs.

Quentin lets the tape run. This time, he isn't watching it-he's watching the reactions of the detectives. He doesn't know Chao or Ducharme from a hole in the wall, but he can tell you this-they've worked with Nina Frost for seven years; they've worked with Quentin for twenty-four hours. As the camera tilts wildly, coming to rest on the scuffle between Nina and the bailiffs, Chao looks into his lap. Ducharme stares resolutely at the screen, but there is no emotion on his face. With one click, Quentin shuts off the TV. “I've read the witness statements, all 124 of them. And, naturally, it doesn't hurt to have the entire fiasco in living color.” He leans forward, his elbows on Nina's desk. “The evidence is solid here. The only question is whether she is or isn't guilty by reason of insanity. She'll either run with that, or extreme anger.” Turning to Chao, he asks, “Did you go to the autopsy?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“And?”

“They already released the body to the funeral home, but they won't give me a report until the victim's medical records arrive.”

Quentin rolls his eyes. “Like there's a question here about the cause of death?”

“It's not that,” Ducharme interrupts. “They like to have all the medical records attached. It's the office protocol.”

“Well, tell them to hurry up,” Quentin says. “I don't care if Szyszynski had full-blown AIDS . . . that isn't what he died of.” He opens a file on his desk and waves a paper at Patrick Ducharme. “What the hell was this?” He lets the detective read his own report about the interrogation of Caleb Frost, under suspicion for molesting his own son. “The boy was mute,” Patrick explains. “He was taught basic sign language, and when we pressed him to ID the perp, he kept making the sign for father.” Patrick hands back the paper. “We went to Caleb Frost first.”

“What did she do?” Quentin asks. There is no need to spell out to whom he's referring.

Patrick rubs a hand over his face, muttering into his hand.

“I didn't quite catch that, Detective,” Quentin says.

“She got a restraining order against her husband.”

“Here?”

“In Biddeford.”

“I want a copy of that.”

Patrick shrugs. “It was vacated.”

“I don't care. Nina Frost shot the man she was convinced molested her son. But just four days earlier, she was convinced it was a different man. Her lawyer's going to tell a jury that she killed the priest because he was the one who hurt her child . . . but how sure was she?”

“There was semen,” Patrick says. “On her son's underwear.”

“Yes.” Quentin rifles through some more pages. "Where's the DNA on that?"

“At the lab. It should be back this week.”

Quentin's head comes up slowly. “She didn't even see the DNA results on the underwear before she shot the guy?”

A muscle jumps along Patrick's jaw. “Nathaniel told me. Her son. He made a verbal ID.”

“My five-year-old nephew tells me the tooth fairy's the one who brought him a buck, but that doesn't mean I believe him, Lieutenant.” Before he has even finished his sentence, Patrick is out of his chair, leaning across the desk toward Quentin. “You don't know Nathaniel Frost,” he bites out. “And you have no right to question my professional judgment.” Quentin stands, towering over the detective. “I have every right. Because reading your file on the investigation, it sure looks to me like you fucked up simply because you were giving a DA who jumped to conclusions special treatment. And I'll be damned if I'm going to let you do that again while we prosecute her.”

“She didn't jump to conclusions,” Patrick argues. “She knew exactly what she was doing. Christ, if it were my kid, I would have done the same thing.”

“Both of you listen to me. Nina Frost is a murder suspect. She made the choice to commit a criminal act. She killed a man in cold blood in front of a courtroom of people. Your job is to uphold laws, and no one-no one-gets to bend those to their own advantage, not even a district attorney.” Quentin turns to the first policeman. “Is that clear, Detective Chao?” Chao nods tightly.

“Detective Ducharme?”

Patrick meets his eye, sinks into his chair. It is not until long after the detectives have left the office that Quentin realizes Ducharme never actually answered.

Getting ready for winter, in Caleb's opinion, is only wishful thinking. The best preparation in the world isn't going to keep a storm from catching you unaware. The thing about nor'easters is that you don't always see them coming. They head out to sea, then turn around and batter Maine hard. There have been times in recent years that Caleb has opened the front door to find a chest-high drift of snow; has dug his way free with a shovel kept in the front closet to find a world that looks nothing like it did the night before. Today, he is readying the house. That means hiding Nathaniel's bike in the garage, and unearthing the Flexible Flyer and the cross-country skis instead. Caleb has covered the shrubs in the front of the house with triangular wooden horses, little hats to keep their fragile branches from the ice and snow that slide off the roof.

All that is left, now, is storing enough chopped wood to last through the winter. He's brought in three loads now, stacking them in cross-hatches in the basement. Slivers of oak jab his thick gloves as he moves in rhythm, taking a pair of split logs from the pile dumped down the bulkhead and laying them neatly in place. Caleb feels a wistfulness press in on him, as if each growing inch of the woodpile is taking away something summerish-a bright flock of goldfinches, a raging stream, the steam of loam overturned by a tiller. All winter long, when he burns these stacks, Caleb imagines it like a puzzle. With each log he tosses on a fire, he is able to remember the song of a cricket, or the arc of stars in the July sky. And so on, until the basement is empty again, and springtime has flung itself, jubilant, over his property.

“Do you think we'll make it through the winter?”

At Nina's voice, Caleb startles. She has come down the basement stairs and stands at the bottom with her arms crossed, surveying the stacks of wood. “Doesn't seem like much,” she adds.

“I've got plenty.” Caleb places two more logs. “I just haven't brought it all in yet.”

He is aware of Nina's eyes on him as he turns and bends, lifts a large burl into his arms, and deposits it at the top of a tall stack. “So.”

“Yes,” she answers.

“How was the lawyer's?”

She shrugs. “He's a defense attorney.”

Caleb assumes this is meant as an insult. As always in legal matters, he doesn't know what to say in response. The basement is only half full, but Caleb is suddenly aware of how big he is, and how close he is to Nina, and how the room does not seem able to hold both of them. “Are you going back out again? Because I need to go to the hardware store to get that tarp.” He doesn't need a tarp; he has four of them stored in the garage. He does not even know why those words have flown from his mouth, like birds desperate to escape through a chimney flue. And yet, he keeps speaking: “Can you watch Nathaniel?”

Nina goes still in front of his eyes. “Of course I can watch Nathaniel. Or do you think I'm too unstable to take care of him?”

“I didn't mean it like that.”

“You did, Caleb. You may not want to admit it, but you did.” There are tears in her eyes. But because he cannot think of the words that might take them away, Caleb simply nods and walks past her, their shoulders brushing as he makes his way up the stairs.

He doesn't drive to the hardware store, naturally. Instead he finds himself meandering across the county on back roads, pulling into Tequila Mockingbird, the little bar that Nina talks about from time to time. He knows she meets Patrick there for lunch every week; he even knows that the ponytailed bartender is named Stuyvesant. But Caleb has never set foot in the place, and when he walks through the door into the nearly empty afternoon room, he feels like a secret is swelling beneath his ribs-he knows so much more about this place than it knows about him.

“Afternoon,” Stuyvesant says, as Caleb hovers at the bar. Which seat does Nina take? He stares at each of them, lined up like teeth, trying to divine the one. “What can I get you?”

Caleb drinks beer. He's never been much for hard liquor. But he asks for a shot of Talisker, a bottle he can read across the bar whose name sounds just as soothing on the tongue as, he imagines, the whiskey it describes. Stuyvesant sets it down in front of him with a bowl of peanuts. There is a businessman sitting three stools away, and a woman trying not to cry as she writes a letter at a booth. Caleb lifts the glass to the bartender. “Sldinte,” he says, a toast he once heard in a movie.

“You Irish?” Stuyvesant asks, running a cloth around the polished hood of the bar.

“My father was.” In fact, Caleb's parents had both been born in America, and his ancestry was Swedish and British.

“No kidding.” This from the businessman, glancing over. “My sister lives in County Cork. Gorgeous place.” He laughs. “Why on earth did you come over here?”

Caleb takes a sip of his whiskey. “Didn't have much choice,” he lies. “I was two years old.”

“You live in Sanford?”

“No. Here on business. Sales.”

“Aren't we all?” The man lifts his beer. “God bless the corporate expense account, right?” He signals to Stuyvesant. “Another round for us,” he says, and then to Caleb: “My treat. Or rather, my company's.” They talk about the upcoming Bruins season, and the way it feels like snow already. They debate the merits of the Midwest, where the businessman lives, versus New England. Caleb doesn't know why he is not telling the businessman the truth-but prevarication comes so easily, and the knowledge that this man will buy anything he says right now is oddly liberating. So Caleb pretends he's from Rochester, New Hampshire, a place he has never actually been. He fabricates a company name, a product line of construction equipment, and a history of distinguished achievement. He lets the lies tumble from his lips, gathers them like marker chips at a casino, almost giddy to see how many he can stack before they come crashing down.

The man glances at his watch and swears. “Gotta call home. If I'm late, my wife assumes I've wrapped my rental car around a tree. You know?”

“Never been married,” Caleb shrugs, and drinks the Talisker through the sieve of his teeth, like baleen.

“Smart move.” The businessman hops off the stool, headed toward the rear of the bar, a pay phone from which Nina has called Caleb once or twice when her own cell phone's battery died. As he passes, he holds out his hand. “Name's Mike Johanssen, by the way.”

Caleb shakes. “Glen,” he answers. “Glen Szyszynski.” He remembers too late that he is supposed to be Irish, not Polish. That Stuyvesant, who lives here, will surely pick up on the name. But neither of these things matters. By the time the businessman returns and Stuyvesant thinks twice, Caleb has left the bar, more comfortable wearing another man's unlikely identity than he feels these days in his own.

The state psychiatrist is so young that I have a profound urge to reach across the desk separating us and smooth his cowlick. But if I did that, Dr. Storrow would probably die of fright, certain I mean to strangle him with the strap of my purse. It is why he chose to meet me at the court in Alfred, and I can't say I blame him. All of this man's clients are either insane or homicidal, and the safest place to conduct his interview-in lieu of jail-is a public venue with plenty of bailiffs milling around.

I have dressed with great deliberation, not in my usual conservative suit, but in khaki pants and a cotton turtleneck and loafers. When Dr. Storrow looks at me, I don't want him to be thinking lawyer. I want him to remember h is own mother, standing on the sidelines of his soccer game, cheering him to victory.

The first time he speaks, I expect his voice to crack. “You were a prosecutor in York County, weren't you, Ms. Frost?”

I have to think before I answer. How crazy is crazy? Should I seem to have trouble understanding him, should I start gnawing the collar of my shirt? It will be easy to deceive a shrink as inexperienced as Storrow . . . but that is no longer the issue. Now, I need to make sure that the insanity is temporary. That I get, as we call it, acquitted without being committed. So I smile at him. “Call me Nina,” I offer. “And yes.”

“Okay,” Dr. Storrow says. “I have this questionnaire, um, to fill out, and give to the court.” He takes out a piece of paper I have seen a thousand times, fill-in-the-blanks, and begins to read. “Did you take any medication before you came here today?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been charged with a crime before?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been to court before?”

“Every day,” I say. “For the past ten years.”

“Oh ...” Dr. Storrow blinks at me, as if he's just remembered who he is talking to. “Oh, that's right. Well, I still need to ask you these questions, if that's okay.” He clears his throat. “Do you understand what the role of the judge is in a trial?”

I raise one eyebrow.

“I'm going to take that as a yes,” Dr. Storrow scribbles on his form. “Do you know what the role of the prosecutor is?”

“Oh, I think I have a pretty good idea.”

Do you know what the defense attorney does? Do you understand that the state is trying to prove you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? The questions come, silly as cream pies thrown at the face of a clown. Fisher and I will use this ridiculous rubber stamp interview to our advantage. On paper, without the inflection of my voice, my answers will not look absurd-they will only seem a little evasive, a little strange. And Dr. Storrow is too inexperienced to communicate on the stand that all along I knew exactly what he was talking about.

“What should you do if something happens in court that you don't understand?”

I shrug. “I'd have my attorney ask what legal precedent they were following, so that I could look it up.”

“Do you understand that anything you say to your lawyer, he can't repeat?”

“Really?”

Dr. Storrow puts down the form. With a perfectly straight face, he says, “I think we can move on.” He looks at my purse, from which I once pulled a gun. “Have you ever been diagnosed with a psychiatric illness?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been on any medication for psychiatric problems?”

“No.”

“Do you have a history of emotional breakdown triggered by stress?”

“No.”

“Have you ever owned a gun before?”

I shake my head.

“Have you ever been to counseling of any kind?”

That question gives me pause. “Yes,” I admit, thinking back to the confessional at St. Anne's. “It was the worst mistake of my life.”

“Why?”

“When I found out my son had been sexually abused, I went to confession at my church. I talked to my priest about it. And then I found out that he was the bastard who did it.”

My language makes a blush rise above the collar of his button-down shirt. “ Ms. Frost-Nina-I need to ask you some questions about the day that . . . that everything happened.”

I start to pull at the sleeves of my turtleneck. Not a lot, just so that fabric covers my hands. I look into my lap. “I had to do it,” I whisper. I am getting so good at this.

“How were you feeling that day?” Dr. Storrow asks. Doubt ices his voice; ju st moments ago, I was perfectly lucid.

“I had to do it ... you understand. I've seen this happen too many times. I couldn't lose him to this.” I close my eyes, thinking of every successful insanity defense I've ever heard proposed to a court. “I didn't have a choice. I couldn't have stopped myself... it was like I was watching someone else do it, someone else reacting.”

“But you knew what you were doing,” Dr. Storrow replies, and I have to catch myself before my head snaps up. “You've prosecuted people who've done horrible things.”

“I didn't do a horrible thing. I saved my son. Isn't that what mothers are supposed to do?”

“What do you think mothers are supposed to do?” he asks. Stay awake all night when an infant has a cold, as if she might be able to breathe for him. Learn how to speak Pig Latin, and make a pact to talk that way for an entire day. Bake at least one cake with every ingredient in the pantry, just to see how it will taste.

Fall in love with your son a little more every day.

“Nina?” Dr. Storrow says. “Are you all right?” I look up and nod through my tears. “I'm sorry.”

“Are you?” He leans forward. “Are you truly sorry?” We are not talking about the same thing anymore. I imagine Father Szyszynski, on his way to Hell. I think of all the ways to interpret those words, and then I meet Dr. Storrow's gaze. “Was he?”

Nina has always tasted better than any other woman, Caleb thinks, as his lips slip down the slope of one shoulder. Like honey and sun and caramel-from the roof of her mouth to the hollow behind her knee. There are times Caleb believes he could feast on his wife and never feel that he is getting enough.

Her hands come up to clutch his shoulder, and in the half dark her head falls back, making the line of her throat a landscape. Caleb buries his face there, and tries to navigate by touch. Here, in this bed, she is the woman he fell in love with a lifetime ago. He knows when she is going to touch him, and where. He can predict each of her moves.

Her legs fall open to either side of him, and Caleb presses himself against her. He arches his back. He imagines the moment he will be inside her, how the pressure will build and build and explode like a bullet.

At that moment Nina's hand slips between their bodies to cup him, and just like that, Caleb goes soft. He tries grinding against her. Nina's fingers play over him like a flutist's, but nothing happens.

Caleb feels her hand come up to his shoulder again, feels the cold air of its absence on his balls. “Well,” Nina says, as he rolls to his back beside her. “ That's never happened before.”

He stares at the ceiling, at anything but this stranger beside him. It's not the only thing, he thinks.

On Friday afternoon, Nathaniel and I go grocery shopping. The P&C is a gas tronomic fest for my son: I move from the deli counter, where Nathaniel gets a free slice of cheese; to the cookie aisle, where we pick up the box of Animal Crackers; to the breads, where Nathaniel works his way through a plain bagel. “What do you think, Nathaniel?” I ask, handing him a few grapes from the bunch I've just put in the cart. “Should I pay $4.99 for a honeydew?”

I pick up the melon and sniff at the bottom. In truth, I have never been a go od judge of fruit. I know it's all about softness and scent, but in my opinio n some with the sweetest insides have been hard as a rock on the surface. Suddenly, the bagel Nathaniel's been eating falls into my hand. “Peter!” he yells, waving from his harness in the shopping cart. “Peter! Hey, Peter!” I look up to find Peter Eberhardt walking down the produce aisle, holding a bag of chips and a bottle of Chardonnay. Peter, whom I have not s een since the day I had my restraining order against Caleb vacated. There i s so much I want to say to him-to ask him, now that I am not in the office to find out myself-but the judge has specifically prohibited me from speaki ng to my own colleagues as a condition of bail.

Nathaniel, of course, doesn't know that. He just understands that Peter-a man who keeps Charms lollipops on his desk, who can do the best impression of a duck sneezing, whom he hasn't seen in weeks-is suddenly standing six feet away. “Peter,” Nathaniel calls again, and holds out his arms. Peter thinks twice. I can see it in his face. But then again, he adores Nathaniel. All the reason in the world cannot stand up to my son's smile. Peter lays his bag of chips and bottle of wine on top of a display of Red Delicious apples and gives Nathaniel a bear hug. “Listen to you!” he crows. “That voice is back to a hundred percent working order, isn't it?”

Nathaniel giggles when Peter opens up his mouth to check inside. “Does the volume work too?” he asks, pretending to twist a knob on Nathaniel's belly, so that he laughs louder and louder.

Then Peter turns to me. “He sounds great, Nina.” Four words, but I know what he is really saying: You did the right thing.

“Thanks.”

We look at each other, measuring what can and cannot be said. And because we are so busy making a commodity of our friendship, I never notice another grocery cart approaching. It pings against the rear of mine gently, just loud enough to make me look up, so that I can see Quentin Brown smiling beside a sea of navel oranges. “Well, well,” he says. “Aren't things ripe here?” He pulls a cell phone out of his breast pocket and dials. “Get a squad car down here now. I'm making an arrest.”

“You don't understand,” I insist, as he puts away his phone.

“What's so difficult to grasp? You're in blatant violation of your bail agreement, Ms. Frost. Is this or is this not a colleague from the district attorney's of fice?”

“For Christ's sake, Quentin,” Peter interjects. “I was talking to the kid. He called me over.”

Quentin grabs my arm. “I took a chance on you, and you made me look like a fool.”

“Mommy?” Nathaniel's voice rises to me like steam.

“It's okay, sweetie.” I turn to the assistant attorney general and speak through my teeth. “I will come with you,” I say in an undertone. “But please have the decency to do this without traumatizing my child any more.”

“I didn't speak to her,” Peter yells. “You can't do this.” When Quentin turns, his eyes go as dark as plums. “I believe, Mr. Eberhardt, that the exact words you didn't speak were: 'He sounds great, Nina.' Nina . As in the name of the woman you weren't talking to. And frankly, even if you were stupid enough to approach Ms. Frost, it was her responsibility to take her cart and walk away from you.”

“Peter, it's all right.” I talk fast, because I can hear the sirens outside the store already. “Get Nathaniel home to Caleb, will you?” Then two policemen come running into the aisle, their hands on the butts of their guns. Nathaniel's eyes go wide at the show, until he realizes what they are doing. “Mommy!” he screams, as Quentin orders me to be handcuffed. I face Nathaniel, smiling so hard my face may break. “It's fine. See? I'm fine.” My hair falls out of its clip as my hands are pulled behind me. "Peter?

Take him now."

“Come on, bud,” Peter soothes, pulling Nathaniel out of the cart. His shoes get caught on the metal rungs, and Nathaniel starts fighting in earnest. His arms reach out to me and he starts crying so violently he begins to hiccup.

“Mommeeeee!”

I am marched past the gaping shoppers, past the slack-jawed stock-boys, past the cashiers who pause in midair with their electronic scanners. The whole way, I can hear my son. His shrieks follow me through the parking lot, to the squad car. The lights are spinning on its roof. Once, long before all this, Nathaniel pointed to a cruiser in pursuit, and called it a zooming holiday.

“I'm sorry, Nina,” one of the policemen says as he ducks me inside. Through the window I can see Quentin Brown, arms crossed. Orange juice, I think. Roast beef and sliced American cheese. Asparagus, Ritz crackers, milk. Va nilla yogurt. This is my litany the whole way back to jail: the contents of my abandoned shopping cart, slowly going bad, until some kind soul has the inclination to put them back where they belong.

Caleb opens the door to find his son sobbing in Peter Eberhardt's arms. “What happened to Nina?” he immediately asks, and reaches for Nathaniel.

“The guy's an asshole,” Peter says desperately. “He's doing this to leave his mark on the town. He's-”

“Peter, where's my wife?”

The other man winces. “Back in jail. She violated her bail agreement, and the assistant attorney general had her arrested.”

For a moment, Nathaniel feels like a lead weight. Caleb staggers under the responsibility of bearing him, then finds his footing. Nathaniel is still crying, more quietly now, a river that runs down the back of his shirt. Caleb makes small circles on the child's spine. “Back up. Tell me what happened.” Caleb picks out select words: grocery, produce, Quentin Brown. But he can barely hear Peter over the roar in his own head, one single phrase: Nina, what have you done now? “Nathaniel called me over,” Peter explains. “I was so psyched to hear him talking again, I couldn't just ignore him.” Caleb shakes his head. “You . . . you were the one who approached her?” Peter is a foot shorter than Caleb and feels every inch of it at that moment . He takes a step backward. “I never would have gotten her in trouble, Caleb, you know that.”

Caleb pictures his son screaming, his wife being sandwiched between policemen, a barrage of fruit spilled on the floor in this fray. He knows it is not Peter's fault, not entirely. It takes two to have a conversation; Nina should have simply walked away.

But as Nina would tell him, she probably wasn't thinking at the time. Peter places a hand on Nathaniel's calf and rubs gently. It only sets the child off again; screams ricochet around the porch and peal off the thick bare branches of trees. “Jesus, Caleb, I'm sorry. It's ridiculous. We didn't do anything.”

Caleb turns so that Peter can see Nathaniel's back, heaving with the force of his fear. He touches the damp cap of his son's hair. “You didn't do anything?” Caleb challenges, and leaves Peter standing outside. I move stiffly as I'm led to the solitary cells again, but I cannot tell what's made me numb-my arrest, or the simple cold. The furnace at the jail has broken, and the correctional officers are all wearing heavy coats. Inmates usually clad in shorts or underwear have put on sweaters; having none, I sit shivering in my cell after the door is locked behind me.

“Honey.”

I close my eyes, turn in to the wall. Tonight, I don't feel like dealing with Adrienne. Tonight I have to find a way to understand that Quentin Brown has screwed me. Getting released on bail the first time was a miracle; good fortune rarely strikes twice in the same spot.

I wonder if Nathaniel is all right. I wonder if Fisher has spoken to Caleb. This time, being booked, I chose my attorney as my one phone call. It was the coward's way out.

Caleb will say this is my fault. That is, if he's still speaking to me.

“Honey, your teeth are chattering so hard you're gonna give yourself a root canal. Here.” Something swishes near the bars; I turn to see Adrienne tossing me a sweater. “It's angora. Don't be stretching it out.” With jerky movements, I tug on the sweater, which I couldn't stretch in my wildest imaginings, Adrienne being six inches and two cup sizes larger than me. I am still shaking, but at least now I know it has nothing to do with the cold.

As the guards call lights out, I try to think of heat. I remember how Mason, when he was a puppy, would lie on my feet with his soft belly hot against my bare toes. And the beach in St. Thomas, where Caleb buried me up to my neck in the hot sand on our honeymoon. Pajamas, pulled off Nathaniel's body in the early morning, still warm and smelling of sleep.

Across the corridor Adrienne chews Wintergreen Life Savers. They give off green sparks in the near dark, as if she has learned how to make her own lightning.

Even in the muffled silence of jail, I can hear Nathaniel screaming for me as I am being handcuffed. Nathaniel, who had been doing so well-edging toward normal-what will this do to him? Will he wait for me at a window, even when I don't come home? Will he sleep next to Caleb, to chase away nightmares?

I rerun my actions at the grocery store like the loop of a security cam-era's video-what I did, what I should have done. I might have appointed myself to be Nathaniel's protector, but today I did not do a crackerjack job of it. I assumed that talking to Peter was harmless . . . and instead that one action might have set Nathaniel back by leaps and bounds.

A few feet away, in Adrienne's cell, sparks dance like fireflies. Things aren't always what they seem.

For example, I have always believed I know what is best for Nathaniel. But what if it turns out I've been wrong?

“I put in some hot chocolate to go with your whipped cream,” Caleb says, a lame joke, as he sets the mug down on Nathaniel's nightstand. Nathaniel doesn't even turn to him. He faces the wall, wrapped like a cocoon, his eyes so red from crying that he does not look like himself.

Caleb pulls off his shoes and gets right onto Nathaniel's bed, then wraps his arms tight around the boy. “Nathaniel, it's okay.”

He feels that tiny head shake once. Coming up on an elbow, Caleb gently turns his son onto his back. He grins, trying so hard to pretend that this is entirely ordinary, that Nathaniel's whole world has not become a snow globe, waved intermittently every time things begin to settle. "What do you say?

You want some of this cocoa?"

Nathaniel sits up slowly. He brings his hands out from underneath the covers and curls them into his body. Then he raises his palm, fingers outstretched, and sets his thumb on his chin. Want Mommy.

Caleb's whole body goes still. Nathaniel hasn't been very forthcoming since Peter brought him home, except for the crying. He stopped sobbing sometime between when Caleb bathed him and got him into his pajamas. But surely he can talk, if he wants to. “Nathaniel, can you tell me what you want?” That hand sign, again. And a third time.

“Can you say it, buddy? I know you want Mommy. Say it for me.” Nathaniel's eyes shine, and the tears spill over. Caleb grabs the boy's hand.

“Say it,” he begs. “Please, Nathaniel.”

But Nathaniel doesn't utter a word.

“Okay,” Caleb murmurs, releasing Nathaniel's hand into his lap. “It's okay.” He smiles as best he can, and gets off the bed. “I'm going to be right back. In the meantime, you can start on that hot chocolate, all right?” In his own bedroom, Caleb picks up the phone. Dials a number from a card in his wallet. Pages Dr. Robichaud, the child psychiatrist. Then he hangs up, balls his hand into a fist, and punches a hole in the wall.

Nathaniel knows this is all his fault. Peter said it wasn't, but he was lying, the way grown-ups do in the middle of the night to make you stop thinking about something awful living under the bed. They'd taken the bagel out of the store without letting the machine ring up its numbers; they'd driven to his house without his car seat; even just now, his dad had brought cocoa to the bedroom when no food was ever allowed upstairs. His mother was gone, all the rules were getting broken, and it was because of Nathaniel. He had seen Peter and said hi, which turned out to be a bad thing. A very, very bad thing.

This is what Nathaniel knows: He talked, and the bad man grabbed his mother's arm. He talked, and the police came. He talked, and his mother got taken away.

So he will never talk again.

By Saturday morning, they have fixed the heat. They've fixed it so well that it is nearly eighty degrees inside the jail. When I am brought to the conference room to meet Fisher, I'm wearing a camisole and scrub pants, and sweating. Fisher, of course, looks perfectly cool, even in his suit and tie. “The earliest I can even get to a judge for a revocation hearing is Monday,” he says.

“I need to see my son.”

Fisher's face remains impassive. He is just as angry as I would be, in his shoes-I have just complicated my case irreparably. “Visiting hours are from ten to twelve today.”

“Call Caleb. Please, Fisher. Please, do whatever you have to do to make him bring Nathaniel down here.” I sink into the chair across from him. “He is five years old, and he saw me being taken away by the police. Now he has to see that I'm all right, even in here.”

Fisher promises nothing. “I don't have to tell you that your bail is going to be revoked. Think about what you want me to say to the judge, Nina, because you don't have any chances left.”

I wait until he meets my eye. “Will you call home for me?”

“Will you admit that I'm in charge?”

For a long moment, neither of us blinks, but I break first. I stare at my lap until I hear Fisher close the door behind him.

Adrienne knows I'm anxious as visiting hours come to an end-nearly noon, and still I have not been called to see anyone. She lies on her stomach, painti ng her nails fluorescent orange. In honor of hunting season, she said. As th e correctional officer walks past for his quarter-hour check, I stand up. “A re you sure no one's come yet?”

He shakes his head, moves on. Adrienne blows on her fingers to dry the polish . “I got extra,” she says, holding up the bottle. “You want me to roll it across?”

“I don't have any nails. I bite mine.”

“Now, that is a travesty. Some of us just don't have the sense to make the most of what God gives us.”

I laugh. “You're one to talk.”

“In my case, honey, when it came to passing out the right stuff, God was having a senior moment.” She sits down on her lower bunk and takes off her tennis shoes. Last night, she did her toenails, tiny American flags. “Well, fuck me,” Adrienne says. “I smudged.”

The clock has not moved. Not even a second, I'd swear it.

“Tell me about your son,” Adrienne says when she sees me looking down the hallway again. “I always wanted to have me one of them. ”

“I would have figured you'd want a girl.”

“Honey, us ladies, we're high maintenance. A boy, you know exactly what you're getting.”

I try to think of the best way to describe Nathaniel. It is like trying to hold the ocean in a paper cup. How do I explain a boy who eats his food color by color; who wakes me in the middle of the night with a burning need to know why we breathe oxygen instead of water; who took apart a microcassette recorder to find his voice, trapped inside? I know my son so well, I surprise myself-there are too many words to choose from.

“Sometimes when I hold his hand,” I answer slowly, finally, “it's like it doesn't fit anymore. I mean, he's only five, you know? But I can feel what's coming. Sometimes his palm's just a little too wide, or his fingers are too strong.” Glancing at Adrienne, I shrug. “Each time I do it, I think this may be the last time I hold his hand. That next time, he may be holding mine.” She smiles softly at me. “Honey, he ain't coming today.” It is 12:46 P.M., and I have to turn away, because Adrienne is right. The CO wakes me up in the late afternoon. “Come on,” he mutters, and slides open the door of my cell. I scramble upright, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. He leads me down a hallway to a part of the jail I have not yet visited . A row of small rooms, mini-prisons, are on my left. The guard opens one and guides me inside.

It is no bigger than a broom closet. Inside, a stool faces a Plexiglas window. A telephone receiver is mounted to the wall at its side. And on the other side of the glass, in a twin of a room, sits Caleb.

“Oh!” The word comes on a cry, and I lurch for the telephone, picking it up and holding it to my ear. “Caleb,” I say, knowing he can see my face, read my words. “Please, please, pick up the phone.” I pantomime over and over. But his face is chiseled and hard; his arms crossed tight on his chest. He will not give me this one thing.

Defeated, I sink onto the stool and rest my forehead against the Plexiglas. Caleb bends down to pick something up, and I realize that Nathaniel has been there all along, beneath the counter where I could not see him. He kneels on the stool, eyes wide and wary. He hesitantly touches the glass, as if he needs to know that I am not a trick of the light.

At the beach once, we found a hermit crab. I turned it over so that Nathaniel could see its jointed legs scrambling. Put him on your palm, I said, and he'll crawl, Nathaniel had held out his hand, but every time I went to set the crab on it, he jerked away. He wanted to touch it, and he was terrified to touch it, in equal proportions.

So I wave. I smile. I fill my little cubicle with the sound of his name. As I did with Caleb, I pick up the telephone receiver. “You too,” I mouth, and I do it again, so Nathaniel can see how. But he shakes his head, and instead raises his hand to his chin. Mommy, he signs.

The receiver falls out of my hand, a snake that strikes the wall beside it. I do not even need to look at Caleb for verification; just like that, I know. So with tears running down my face, I hold up my right hand, the l-L-Y combination that means I love you. I catch my breath as Nathaniel raises one small fist, unfurls the fingers like signal flags to match mine. Then, a peace sign, the number two handshape. I love you, too.

By now, Nathaniel is crying. Caleb says something to him that I cannot hear, and he shakes his head. Behind them, the guard opens the door. Oh, God, I am losing him.

I rap on the glass to get his attention. Push my face up against it, then point to Nathaniel and nod. He does what I've asked, turning his cheek so that it touches the transparent wall.

I lean close, kiss the barrier between us, and pretend it isn't there. Even after Caleb's carried him from the visiting room, I sit with my temple pressed to the glass, convincing myself I can still feel Nathaniel on the other side. It didn't happen just that once. Two Sundays afterward, when Nathaniel's family went to Mass, the priest came into the little room where Miss Fiore was reading everyone a story about a guy with a slingshot who took down a giant. “I need a volunteer,” he said, and even though all the hands went up, he looked right at Nathaniel.

“You know,” he said in the office, “Esme missed you.”

“She did?”

“Oh, absolutely. She's been saying your name for days now.” Nathaniel laughed. “She has not.”

“Listen.” He cupped his ear, leaned in to the cat on the couch. “There you go.”

Nathaniel listened, but only heard a faint mew.

“Maybe you have to get closer,” the priest said. “Climb up here.” For just a moment, Nathaniel hesitated, remembered. His mother had told him about going off alone with strangers. But this wasn't really a stranger, was it? He sat down in the priest's lap, and pressed his ear right against the belly of the cat. “That's a good boy.”

The man shifted his legs, the way Nathaniel's father sometimes did when he was sitting on his knee and his foot fell asleep. “I could move,” Nathaniel suggested.

“No, no.” The priest's hand slipped down Nathaniel's back, over his bottom, to rest in his own lap. “This is fine.”

But then Nathaniel felt his shirt being untucked. Felt the long fingers of the priest, hot and damp, against his spine. Nathaniel did not know how to tell him no. His head was filled with a memory: a fly caught in the car one day when they were driving, which kept slamming itself into the windows in a desperate effort to get out. “Father?” Nathaniel whispered.

“I'm just blessing you,” he replied. “A special helper deserves that. I want God to know that every time He sees you.” His fingers stilled. “You do want that, don't you?”

A blessing was a good thing, and for God to keep an extra eye on him-well, it was what his mother and father would want, Nathaniel was sure of it. He turned his attention back to the lazy cat, and that was when he heard it-just a puff of breath-Esme, or maybe not Esme, sighing his name. The second time I am called out by a correctional officer is Sunday afternoon. He takes me upstairs to the conference rooms, where inmates meet privately with their attorneys. Maybe Fisher has come to see how I am holding up. Maybe he wants to discuss tomorrow's hearing.

But to my surprise, when the door is unlocked, Patrick is waiting inside. Spread out on the conference table are six containers of take-out Chinese food. “I got everything you like,” he says. “General Tso's chicken, vegetable lo mein, beef with broccoli, Lake Tung Ting shrimp, and steamed dumplings. Oh, and that crap that tastes like rubber.”

“Bean curd.” I lift my chin a notch, challenging him. “I thought you didn't want to talk to me.”

“I don't. I want to eat with you.”

“Are you sure? Think of all the things I could say while your mouth is full, before you have a chance to-”

“Nina.” Patrick's blue eyes seem faded, weary. “Shut up.” But even as he scolds me, he holds out his hand. It rests on the table, extended, an offering more tantalizing than anything else before me. I sit across from him and grab on. Immediately, Patrick squeezes, and that's my undoing. I lay my cheek on the cold, scarred table, and Patrick strokes my hair. “I rigged your fortune cookie,” he confesses. “It says you'll be acquitted.”

“What does yours say?”

“That you'll be acquitted.” Patrick smiles. “I didn't know which one you'd pick.”

My eyes drift shut as I let down my guard. “It's okay,” Patrick tells me, and I believe him. I place his palm against my burning face, as if shame is so mething he might carry in the cup of his hand, fling someplace far away. When you call someone on the prison pay phone, they know it. Every thirty seconds a voice gets on the line, informing the person on the other end that this transmission is taking place from the Alfred County Jail. I use the fifty cents Patrick gave me that afternoon, and make the call on my way to the shower. “Listen,” I say, the minute I reach Fisher at his home number. “You wanted me to tell you what to say on Monday morning.”

“Nina?” In the background I hear the laughter of a woman. The sound of glasses, or china, in a sink.

“I need to talk to you.”

“You've caught us in the middle of dinner.”

“Well, for God's sake, Fisher.” I turn my back as a line of men straggles in from the outside courtyard. “Why don't I just call back then when it's more convenient for you, because I'm sure I'll have another opportunity, in, oh, three or four days.”

I hear the distant noise growing more faint; the click of a door. “All right. What is it?”

“Nathaniel isn't speaking. You need to get me out of here, because he's falling apart.”

“He isn't speaking? Again?”

“Caleb brought him yesterday. And . . . he's signing.” Fisher considers this. “If we get Caleb down here to testify, and Nathaniel's psychiatrist-”

“You'll have to subpoena him.”

“The psychiatrist?”

“Caleb.”

If this surprises him, he doesn't admit it. “Nina, the fact is, you messed up. I 'm going to try to get you out. I still think it's unlikely. But if you want me to give it a shot, you're going to have to sit tight for a week.”

“A week?” My voice rises. “Fisher, this is my son we're talking about. Do you know how much worse Nathaniel might get in a week?”

“I'm counting on it.”

A voice cuts in. This call is being made from the Alfred County Jail. If you wish to continue, please deposit another twenty-five cents.

By the time I tell Fisher to go screw himself, the line has already been disconnected.

Adrienne and I are given a half hour together outside in the exercise court yard. We walk the perimeter, and then when we get cold, we stand with our backs to the wind beneath the high brick wall. When the CO goes inside, Adrienne smokes cigarettes that she makes by burning down orange peels she collects from the cafeteria trash, and rolling the ash in onion-skin pages torn from Jane Eyre, a book her Aunt Lu sent for her birthday. She has already ripped through page 298. I told her to ask for Vanity Fair next year. I sit cross-legged on the dead grass. Adrienne kneels behind me, smoking, her hands in my hair. When she gets out, she wants to be a cosmetologist. Her nail makes a part from my temple to the nape of my neck. “No pigtails,” I instruct.

“Don't insult me.” She makes another part, parallel to the first, and begins to braid in tight rows. “You've got fine hair.”

“Thank you.”

“It wasn't a compliment, honey. Look at this . . . slips right out of my fingers.”

She pulls and tugs, and several times I have to wince. If only it were that easy to tighten up the tangles inside my head, too. Her glowing cigarette, smoked down to within an inch, sails over my shoulder and lands on the basket ball court. “There,” Adrienne says. “Ain't you the bomb.” Of course, I can't see. I touch my hands to the knobs and ridges the braids have made on my scalp, and then, just because I am feeling mean-spirited, begin to unravel all Adrienne's hard work. She shrugs, then sits down next to me. “Did you always want to be a lawyer?”

“No.” Who does, after all? What kid considers being an attorney a glamorous vocation? “I wanted to be the man at the circus who tames the lions.”

“Oh, don't I know it. Those sequined costumes were something.” For me, it hadn't been about the outfits. I'd loved the way Gunther Gebel-Williams could walk into a cage full of beasts and make them think they were house cats. In this, I realize, my actual profession has not fallen that far off the mark. “How about you?”

“My daddy wanted me to be the center for the Chicago Bulls. Me, I was angling for Vegas showgirl.”

“Ah.” I draw up my knees, wrap my arms around them. “What does your daddy think now?”

“He ain't doing much thinking, I imagine, six feet under.”

“I'm sorry.”

Adrienne glances up. “Don't be.”

But she has retreated somewhere else, and to my surprise, I find I want her back. The game that Peter Eberhardt and I used to play swims into my mind, and I turn to Adrienne. “Best soap opera,” I challenge.

“What?”

“Just play along with me. Give your opinion.”

“The Young and the Restless,” Adrienne replies. “Which, by the way, those fool boys in Minimum don't even have the good sense to listen to on their TV at one p.m.”

“Worst crayon color?”

“Burnt sienna. What is up with that, anyway? They might as well call it Vomit.” Adrienne grins, a flash of white in her face. “Best jeans?”

“Levi's 501s. Ugliest CO?”

“Oh, the one who comes on after midnight that needs to bleach her moustache. You ever see the size of her ass? Hello, honey, let me introduce you to Miss Jenny Craig.”

Then we are both laughing, lying back on the cold ground and feeling winter seep into us by osmosis. When we finally catch our breath, there is a hollow in my chest, a sinking feeling that here, of all places, I should not be capable of joy. “Best place to be?” Adrienne asks after a moment.

On the other side of this wall. In my bed, at home. Anywhere with Nathaniel .

“Before,” I answer, because I know she'll understand. In one of Biddeford's coffee shops, Quentin sits on a stool too small for a gnome. One sip from his mug, and hot chocolate burns the roof of his mouth.

“Holy shit,” he mutters, holding a napkin to his mouth, just as Tanya walks in the door in her nurse's outfit-scrubs, printed with tiny teddy bears.

“Just shut up, Quentin,” she says, sliding onto the stool beside him. “I'm not in the mood to hear you make fun of my uniform.”

“I wasn't.” He gestures to the mug, then just gives up the battle. “What can I get you?”

He orders Tanya a decaf mochaccino. “You like it, then?” he asks.

“Coffee?”

“Nursing.”

He had met Tanya at the University of Maine when she was a student, too. What's this, he'd asked at the end of their first date, trailing his fingers over her collarbone. A clavicle, she said. And this? His hand had run down the xylophone of her spine. The coccyx. He'd spread his fingers over the curve of her hip. This is the part of you I like best, he said. Her head had fallen back, her eyes drifting shut as he bared the skin and kissed her there. Ilium, she'd whispered.

Nine months later, there had been Gideon. They were married, a mistake, six days before he was born. They stayed married for less than a year. Since then Quentin had supported his son financially, if not emotionally.

“I must hate it, if I've stuck with it that long,” Tanya says, and it takes Quentin a moment to realize that she is only answering his question. Something must have crossed his face, because she touches her hand to his. “I'm sorry, that was rude. And here you were just being polite.”

Her coffee arrives. She blows on it before taking a sip. “Saw your name in the paper,” Tanya says. “They got you down here for that priest's murder.” Quentin shrugs. “Pretty simple case, actually.”

“Well, sure, if you look at the news.” But Tanya shakes her head, all the same.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“That the world isn't black and white, but you never did learn that.” He raises his brows. “I didn't learn it? Who threw whom out?”

“Who found whom screwing that girl who looked like a mouse?”

“There were mitigating circumstances,” Quentin says. “I was drunk.” He hesitates, then adds, “And she looked more like a rabbit, really.” Tanya rolls her eyes. “Quentin, it's been sixteen and a half years and you're still being a lawyer about it.”

“Well, what do you expect?”

“For you to be a man,” Tanya replies simply. “For you to admit that even the Great and Powerful Brown is capable of making a mistake once or twice a century.” She pushes away her mug, although she isn't even half-finished.

“I've always wondered if you're so good at what you do because it takes the heat off you. You know, if making everyone else walk the straight and narrow makes you righteous by association.” She fishes in her purse and slaps five dollars on the counter. “Think about that when you're prosecuting that poor woman.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Can you even imagine what she was feeling, Quentin?” Tanya asks, her head tipped to the side. “Or is that kind of connection to a child beyond you?” He stands when she does. “Gideon wants nothing to do with me.” Tanya buttons her coat, already halfway to the door. “I always said he got your intelligence,” she says, and then, once again, she slips right through his grasp.

By Thursday, Caleb has established a routine. He gets Nathaniel up, feeds him breakfast, and takes him for a walk with the dog. They drive to whatever site Caleb might be working at that morning, and while he builds walls Nathaniel sits in the bed of the truck and plays with a shoe-box full of Legos . They eat lunch together, peanut butter and banana sandwiches or Thermoses of chicken soup, and soda that he's packed in the cooler. And then they go to Dr. Robichaud's office, where the psychiatrist tries, unsuccessfully, to get Nathaniel to speak again.

It is a ballet, really-a story they are crafting without words, but comprehensible to anyone who sees Caleb and his silent son moving slowly through their days. To his surprise, this is even beginning to feel like normal. He likes the quiet, because when there are no words to be had, you can't tangle yourself up in the wrong ones. And if Nathaniel isn't talking, at least he isn't crying anymore.

Caleb keeps blinders on, moving from one task to the next, getting Nathaniel fed and clothed and tucked in, and therefore only has a few moments each day to let his mind wander. Usually, this is when he is lying in bed, with the space beside him where Nina used to be. And even when he tries to keep himself from thinking it, the truth fills his mouth, bitter as a lemon: Life is easier, without her here.

On Thursday, Fisher brings me the discovery to read. This consists of 124 eyewitness accounts that describe my murder of Father Szyszynski, Patrick's report on the molestation, my own incoherent statement to Evan Chao, and the autopsy report.

I read Patrick's file first, feeling like a beauty queen poring over her scrap book. Here is the explanation for everything else that sits in a stack at my side. Next, I read the statements of all the people who were in the courtroom the day of the murder. Of course, I save the best for last-the autopsy report, which I hold as reverently as if it were the Dead Sea Scrolls. First I look at the pictures. I stare at them so hard that when I close my eyes I can still see the ragged edge where the priest's face was simply gone now. I can envision the creamy color of his brain. His heart weighed 350 grams, or so says Dr. Vern Potter, coroner.

“Dissection of the coronary arteries,” I read aloud, “reveals narrowing of the lumen by atherosclerotic plaque. The most significant narrowing is in the left anterior descending coronary, where the lumen is narrowed by about 80 percent of the cross-sectional area.”

Lumen. I repeat this word, and the others that are all that are left of this monster: no evidence of thrombus; the gallbladder serosa is smooth and glistening; the bladder is slightly trabeculated.

The stomach contains partly digested bacon and a cinnamon roll. Powder burns from the gun form a corona around the small hole in the rear of his head, where the bullet entered. There is a zone of necrosis around the bullet tract. Only 816 grams of his brain were left intact. There were contusions of the cerebellar tonsils bilaterally. Cause of death: Guns hot wound to head. Manner of death: Homicide.

This language is foreign, and I am suddenly, miraculously fluent. I touch my fingers to the autopsy report. Then I remember the twisted face of his mother, at the funeral.

Attached to this file is another one, with the name of a local physician's of fice stamped on its side. This must be Father Szyszynski's medical history. It is a thick file, far more than fifty years of routine checkups, but I don't bother to crack it open. Why should I? I have done what all those ordinary flus and hacking coughs and aches and cramps could not.

I killed him.

“This is for you,” the paralegal says, handing Quentin a fax. He looks up, takes the pages, and then stares down at them, confused. The lab report has Szyszynski's name on it; but has nothing to do with his case. Then he realizes: It is from the previous case, the closed case-the one involving the defendant's son. He glances at it, shrugging at the results, which are no great surprise. “It's not mine,” Quentin says.

The paralegal blinks at him. “So what am I supposed to do with it?” He starts to hand it back to the woman, then puts it on the edge of his desk instead. “I 'll take care of it,” he answers, and buries himself in his work again until she leaves his office.

There are a thousand places Caleb would rather be-in a prisoner-of-war's hovel, for example; or standing in an open field during a tornado. But he had to be present today, the subpoena said so. He stands in the courtroom cafeteria in his one jacket and threadbare tie, holding a cup of coffee so hot it is burning his palm, and tries to pretend that his hands aren't shaking with nerves.

Fisher Carrington is not such a bad guy, he thinks. At least, he's not nearly the demon that Nina has made him out to be. “Relax, Caleb,” the attorney says. “This will be over before you know it.” They make their way to the exit. Court will convene in five minutes; even now, they might be bringing Nina in.

“All you have to do is answer the questions we've already gone over, and then Mr. Brown will ask a few of his own. No one's expecting you to do anything but tell the truth. Okay?”

Caleb nods, tries to take a sip of the fire that is his coffee. He doesn't even like coffee. He wonders what Nathaniel is doing with Monica, downstairs in the playroom. He tries to distract himself by picturing an intricate brick pattern he created for a former insurance CEO's patio. But reality crouches like a tiger in the corner of his mind: In minutes, he is going to be a witness. In minutes, dozens of reporters and curious citizens and a judge will be hanging on the words of a man who much prefers silence. “Fisher,” he begins, then takes a deep breath. “They can't ask me anything, you know, that she told me . . . can they?”

“Anything Nina told you?”

“About . . . about what she did.”

Fisher stares at Caleb. “She talked to you about it?”

“Yeah. Before she--”

“Caleb,” the lawyer interrupts smoothly, “don't tell me, and I'll make sure you don't have to tell anyone else.”

He disappears through a doorway before Caleb can even measure the strength of his relief.

As Peter takes the stand for Quentin Brown at my bail revocation hearing, he shoots me a look of apology. He can't lie, but he doesn't want to be the one responsible for landing me in jail. To make this easier on him, I try not to catch his eye. I concentrate instead on Patrick, sitting somewhere behind me, so close I can smell the soap he uses. And on Brown, who seems too big to be pacing this tiny courtroom.

Fisher puts his hand on my leg, which has been jiggling nervously without my even noticing. “Stop,” he mouths.

“Did you see Nina Frost that afternoon?” Quentin asks.

“No,” Peter says. “I didn't see her.”

Quentin raises his brows in absolute disbelief. “Did you walk up to her?”

“Well, I was coming down the produce aisle, and her cart happened to be placed along the path I was taking. Her son was sitting in it. He's the one I approached.”

“Did Ms. Frost walk up to the cart as well?”

“Yes, but she was moving closer to her son. Not to me.”

“Just answer the questions as I ask them.”

“Look, she was standing next to me, but she didn't speak to me,” Peter says.

“Did you speak to her, Mr. Eberhardt?”

“No.” Peter turns to the judge. “I was talking to Nathaniel.” Quentin touches a stack of papers on the prosecutor's table. “You have access to the information in these files?”

“As you know, Mr. Brown, I'm not working on her case. You are.”

“But I'm working in her former office, the one right next to yours, aren't I?”

“Yes.”

“And,” Quentin says, “there aren't any locks on those doors, are there?”

“No.”

“So I guess you think she approached you so that she could squeeze the Charmin?”

Peter narrows his eyes. “She wasn't trying to get into trouble, and neither was I.”

“And now you're trying to help her out of all that trouble, aren't you?” Before he can answer, Quentin turns over the witness to the defense. Fisher gets up, buttoning his jacket. I feel a line of sweat break out on my spine.

“Who spoke first, Mr. Eberhardt?” he asks.

“Nathaniel.”

“What did he say?”

Peter looks at the railing. He knows by now, too, that Nathaniel has gone mute again. “My name.”

“If you didn't want Nina to get into trouble, why didn't you just turn around and walk away? ”

“Because Nathaniel wanted me. And after . . . after the abuse, he stopped talking for a while. This was the first time I'd heard him speak since all that happened. I couldn't just do an about-face and walk away.”

“Was it at that exact moment that Mr. Brown rounded the corner and saw you?”

“Yes.”

Fisher clasps his hands behind his back. “Did you ever speak to Nina about her case?”

“No.”

“Did you give her any inside information about her case?”

“No.”

“Did she ask you for any?”

“No.”

“Are you working on Nina's case at all?”

Peter shakes his head. “I will always be her friend. But I understand my job, and my duties as an officer of this court. And the last thing I'd want to do is involve myself in this case.”

“Thank you, Mr. Eberhardt.”

Fisher settles into place beside me at the defense table, as Quentin Brown glances up at the judge. “Your Honor, the state rests.” That makes one of us, I think.

Caleb's gaze is drawn to her, and he is shocked. His wife, the one who always looks crisp and fresh and coordinated, sits in bright orange scrubs. Her hair is a cloud about her head; her eyes are shadowed with circles. There is a cut on the back of her hand and one of her shoelaces has come untied. Caleb has the unlikely urge to kneel before her, to double-knot it, to bury his head in her lap.

You can hate someone, he realizes, and be crazy about her at the same time. Fisher catches his eye, pulling Caleb back to this responsibility. If he screws up, Nina may not be allowed to come home. Then again, Fisher has told him that even if he is flawless on the stand, she may still be locked up in jail pending trial. He clears his throat and imagines himself in an ocean of language, trying to keep his head above water.

“When did Nathaniel start speaking again, after you found out about the abuse?”

"About three weeks ago. The night Detective Ducharme came to talk to him."

“Had his verbal ability increased since that night?”

“Yes,” Caleb answers. “He was pretty much back to normal.”

“How much time was his mother spending with him?”

“More than usual.”

“How did Nathaniel seem to you?”

Caleb thinks for a moment. “Happier,” he says.

Fisher moves, so that he is standing behind Nina. “What changed after the incident at the grocery store?”

“He was hysterical. He was crying so hard he couldn't breathe, and he wouldn't talk at all.“ Caleb looks into Nina's eyes, hands her this phrase like a gift. ”He kept making the sign for Mommy.”

She makes a small sound, like a kitten. It renders him speechless; he has to ask Fisher to repeat his next question. “Has he spoken at all in the past week?”

“No,” Caleb replies.

“Have you taken Nathaniel to see his mother?”

“Once. It was very . . . hard on him.”

“How do you mean?”

“He didn't want to leave her,” Caleb admits. “I had to physically drag him away when the time was up.”

“How is your son sleeping at night?”

“He won't, unless I take him into bed with me.”

Fisher nods gravely. “Do you think, Mr. Frost, that he needs his mother back?”

Quentin Brown stands immediately. “Objection!”

“This is a bail hearing, I'll allow it,” the judge replies. “Mr. Frost?” Caleb sees answers swimming in front of him. There are so many, which is the one he should choose? He opens his mouth, then closes it to start over. At that moment he notices Nina. Her eyes are bright on his, feverish, and he tries to remember why this seems so familiar. Then it comes to him: this is the way she looked weeks ago when she was trying to convince a mute Nathaniel that all he had to do was speak from the heart; that any word was better than none. “We both need her back,” Caleb says, the right thing after all.

Halfway through Dr. Robichaud's testimony, I realize that this is the trial we would have had to convict the priest, had I not killed him. The information being presented focuses on the molestation of Nathaniel, and the consequences. The psychiatrist walks the court through her introduction to Nathaniel, his sexual abuse evaluation, his therapy sessions, his use of sign language. “Did Nathaniel ever reach a point where he could talk again?” Fisher asks.

“Yes, after he verbally disclosed the name of his abuser to Detective Ducharme.”

“Since then, as far as you know, has he been talking normally?” The psychiatrist nods. “More and more so.”

“Did you see him this past week, Doctor?”

“Yes. His father called me, very upset, on Friday night. Nathaniel had stopped speaking again. When I saw him on Monday morning, he'd regressed considerably. He's withdrawn and uncommunicative. I couldn't even get him to sign.”

“In your expert opinion, is the separation from his mother causing Nathaniel psychological damage?”

“No question,” Dr. Robichaud says. “In fact, the longer it goes on, the more permanent the damage might be.”

As she gets down from the stand, Brown gets up to do his closing. He starts by pointing at me. “This woman has a blatant disregard for rules, and clearly, this isn't the first time. What she should have done the moment she saw Peter Eberhardt was turn around and walk the other way. But the fact is, she didn't.“ He turns to the judge. ”Your Honor, you were the one who imposed the condition that Nina Frost not have contact with members of the district attorney's office, because you were concerned about treating her differently than other defendants. But if you let her go without sanction, you'll be doing just that.”

Even on edge, as I am, I realize that Quentin's made a tactical mistake. You can make suggestions to a jury . . . but you never, ever tell the judge what to do.

Fisher rises. “Your Honor, what Mr. Brown saw in the produce department was nothing more than sour grapes. The reality of the matter is that no information was exchanged. In fact, there's no evidence that information was even sought.”

He puts his hands on my shoulders. I have seen him do this with other clients; in my office, we used to call it his Grandfather Stance. “This was an unfortunate misunderstanding,” Fisher continues, “but that's all it is. Nothing more, nothing less. And if, as a result, you keep Nina Frost from her child, you may wind up sacrificing that child. Certainly after what everyone's been through, that's the last thing this court would like to see happen.“ The judge lifts his head and looks at me. ”I'm not going to keep her away fr om her son,“ he rules. ”However, I'm also not going to give her the opportunity to violate the rules of this court again. I release Ms. Frost on the condition that she be on home confinement. She'll wear an electronic bracelet, and will be subject to all the rules of probation and parole with regards to electronic monitoring. Ms. Frost.“ He waits for me to nod. ”You are not to leave the house, except to meet with your attorney or to come to court. For those times, and only those times, the bracelet will be reprogrammed accordingly. And God help me, if I have to patrol your street myself to make sure you're adhering to these provisions, I will.”

My new wrist cuff works through telephone lines. If I move 150 feet away fro m my house, the bracelet makes an alarm go off. A probation officer may visi t me at any time, demand a sample of my blood or urine to make sure I have n ot had any drugs or alcohol. I opt to wear my scrubs home, and ask the deput y sheriff to instruct that my old clothes be given, a gift, to Adrienne. The y'll be short and tight-in other words, a perfect fit for her.

“You have nine lives,” Fisher murmurs as we walk out of the parole office, where my cuff has been computer-programmed.

“Seven left,” I sigh.

“Let's hope we don't have to use them all.”

“Fisher.” I stop walking as we reach the staircase. "I just wanted to tell you ... I couldn't have done that any better."

He laughs. “Nina, I think you'd actually choke if you had to say the word thanks.”

We walk side by side upstairs, toward the lobby. Fisher, a gentleman to the last, pushes open the heavy fire door of the stairwell and holds it while I step through.

The immediate burst of light as the cameras explode renders me blind, and it takes a moment for the world to come back to me. When it does, I realize that in addition to the reporters, Patrick and Caleb and Monica are waiting. And then, emerging from a spot behind his father's big body, I see my son.

She is wearing funny orange pajamas and her hair looks like a swallow's nest Nathaniel once found behind the soda bottles in the garage, but her face is his mother's and her voice, when it says his name, is his mother's too. Her smile is a hook in him; he can feel the catch in his throat as he swallows it and lets himself be reeled across the space between them. Mommy. Nathaniel's arms rise up from his sides. He stumbles over a wire, and someone's foot, and then he is running.

She falls to her knees and that only makes the tug stronger. Nathaniel's so close that he can see she is crying, and this isn't even very clear because he is crying too. He feels the hook coming free, drawing out the silence that has swelled in his belly for a week now, and the moment before he reaches her embrace it bursts from his lips in a rusty, trebled joy. “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” Nathaniel shouts, so loud that it drowns out everything but the drum of his mother's heart beneath his ear.

He's gotten bigger in a week. I heft Nathaniel into my arms, smiling like a fool, as the cameras capture every move. Fisher has corralled the reporters, is even now preaching to them. I bury my face in Nathaniel's sweet neck, matching my memory with what is real.

Suddenly Caleb stands beside us. His face is as inscrutable as it was the last time we were alone, on opposite sides of a glass visitation booth at jail. Although his testimony helped free me, I know my husband. He did what was expected, but it was not necessarily something he wanted to do. “Caleb,” I begin, flustered. “I ... I don't know what to say.”

To my surprise, he offers an olive branch: a crooked smile. “Well, that's a first. No wonder so many reporters are around.” Caleb's grin slides more firmly into place; and at the same time, he anchors his arm around my shoulders, guides me one step closer to home.

200 These are the jokes I know. What's in the middle of a jellyfish? A jellybutton.

Why didn't the skeleton cross the road? It didn't have the guts. Why did the cookie go to the hospital? It felt crumby.

What do lizards put on their kitchen floors? Reptiles.

What do you call a blind dinosaur? An l-don't-think-he-saurus. There is one more:

Knock knock.

Who's there?

Sadie.

Sadie who?

Sadie magic word, Nathaniel and then you'll be allowed to go. When he told it to me, I didn't laugh.