nd just like that, I have fallen back into my former life. The three of us sit around the breakfast table, like any other family. With his finger, Nathaniel traces the letters in the headline of the morning paper. “M,” he says quietly. “0, M . . .” Over my coffee cup, I look at the photograph. There I am, holding Nathaniel, Caleb at my side. Fisher, somehow, has managed to get his face in the picture too. In the distance, a few steps behind, is Patrick; I recognize him only by his shoes. Across the top, in screaming black letters: mommy.

Caleb takes Nathaniel's empty cereal bowl away as he runs off into the playroom, where he has set up two armies of plastic dinosaurs for a Jurassic war. I glance at the paper. “I'm the poster child for bad parenting,” I say.

“Beats being the local Maine murderess.” He nods to the table. “What's int he envelope?”

The manila mailer is the interoffice kind, tied shut with red floss. I found it stuffed between the Local and Sports sections of the paper. I flip it over, but there is no return address, no marking of any kind.

Inside is a report from the state lab, the kind of chart I have seen before. A table with results in eight columns, each a different location on human DNA . And two rows of numbers that are identical at every single spot. Conclusions: The DNA profile detected on the underpants is consistent with the DNA profile of Szyszynski. As a result, he cannot be eliminated as a possible contributor of the genetic material detected in this stain. The chances of randomly selecting an unrelated individual who matches the genetic material found in the underwear are greater than one in six billion, which is approximately the world population.

Or in English: Father Szyszynski's semen was found on my son's underwear .

Caleb peers over my shoulder. “What's that?”

“Absolution,” I sigh.

Caleb takes the paper from my hands, and I point to the first row of numbers. “This shows the DNA from Szyszynski's blood sample. And the line below it shows the DNA from the stain on the underpants.”

“The numbers are the same.”

“Right. DNA is the same all over your body. That's why, if the cops arrest a rapist, they draw blood-can you imagine how ridiculous it would be to ask the guy to give a semen sample? The idea is, if you can match the suspect's blood DNA to evidence, you're almost guaranteed a conviction.” I look up at him. “It means that he did it, Caleb. He was the one. And . . .” My voice trails off.

“And what?”

“And I did the right thing,” I finish.

Caleb puts the paper facedown on the table and gets up.

“What?” I challenge.

He shakes his head slowly. "Nina, you didn't do the right thing. You said it yourself. If you match the DNA in the suspect's blood to the evidence, you're guaranteed a conviction. So if you'd waited, he would have gotten his punishment."

“And Nathaniel would still have had to sit in that courtroom, reliving every minute of what happened to him, because that lab report would mean nothing without his testimony.” To my embarrassment, tears rise in my eyes. “I thought Nathaniel had been through enough without that.”

“I know what you thought,” Caleb says softly. “That's the problem. What about the things Nathaniel's had to deal with because of what you did? I'm not saying you did the wrong thing. I'm not even saying it wasn't something I'd thought of doing, myself. But even if it was the just thing to do ... or the fitting thing . . . Nina, it still wasn't the right thing.”

He puts on his boots and opens the kitchen door, leaving me alone with the lab results. I rest my head on my hand and take a deep breath. Caleb's wrong, he has to be wrong, because if he isn't, then my thoughts veer away from this as the manila envelope draws my eye. Who left this for me, cloak-and-dagger? Someone on the prosecution's side would have fielded it from the lab. Maybe Peter dropped it off, or a sympathetic paralegal who thought it might go to motive for an insanity defense. At any rate, it is a document I'm not supposed to have.

Something, therefore, I can't share with Fisher.

I pick up the phone and call him. “Nina,” he says. “Did you see the morning paper?”

“Hard to miss. Hey, Fisher, did you ever see the DNA results on the priest?”

“You mean the underwear sample? No.” He pauses. “It's a closed case, now, of course. It's possible somebody told the lab not to bother.” Not likely. The staff in the DA's office would have been far too busy to see to a detail like that. “You know, I'd really like to see the report. If it did co me back.”

“It doesn't really have any bearing on your case-”

“Fisher,” I say firmly, “I'm asking you politely. Have your paralegal call Quentin Brown to fax the report over. I need to see it.”

He sighs. “All right. I'll get back to you.”

I place the receiver back in its cradle, and sit down at the table. Outside, Caleb splits wood, relieving his frustration with each heavy blow of the ax. Last night, feeling his way under the covers with one warm hand, he'd brushed the plastic lip of my electronic monitoring bracelet. That was all, and then he'd rolled onto one side away from me.

Picking up my coffee, I read the twin lines on the lab report again. Caleb is mistaken, that's all there is to it. All these letters and numbers, they are pro of, in black and white, that I am a hero.

Quentin gives the lab report another cursory glance and then puts it on a corner of his desk. No surprises there; everyone knows why she killed the priest. The point is, none of this matters anymore. The trial at hand isn't about sexual abuse, but murder.

The secretary, a harried, faded blonde named Rhonda or Wanda or something like that, sticks her head in the door. “Does no one knock in this building?” Quentin mutters, scowling.

“You take the lab report on Szyszynski?” she asks.

“It's right here. Why?”

“Defense attorney just called; he wants a copy faxed over to his office yesterday.”

Quentin hands the papers to the secretary. “What's the rush?”

“Who knows.”

It makes no sense to Quentin; Fisher Carrington must realize that the information will not make or break his case. But then again, it doesn't matter at all for the prosecution-Nina Frost is facing a conviction, he's certain, and no lab report about a dead man is going to change that. By the time the secretary has closed the door behind herself, Quentin has put Carrington's request out of his mind.

Marcella Wentworth hates snow. She had enough of it, growing up in Maine, and then working there for nearly a decade. She hates waking up and knowing you have to shovel your way to your car; she hates the sensation of skis beneath her feet; she hates the uncontrollable feel of wheels spinning out on black ice. The happiest day of Marcella's life, in fact, was the day she quit her job at the Maine State Lab, moved to Virginia, and threw her Sorrel boots into a public trash bin at a highway McDonald's.

She has worked for three years now at CellCore, a private lab. Marcella has a year-round tan and only one medium-weight winter coat. But at her workstation she keeps a postcard Nina Frost, a district attorney, sent her last Christmas-a cartoon depicting the unmistakable mitten shape of her birth state, sporting googly eyes and a jester's hat. Once a Mainiac, always a Mainiac, it reads.

Marcella is looking at the postcard, and thinking that there may already be a dusting on the ground up there by now, when Nina Frost calls.

“You're not going to believe this,” Marcella says, “but I was just thinking about you.”

“I need your help,” Nina answers. All business-but then, that has always been Nina. Once or twice since Marcella left the state lab, Nina called to consult on a case, just for the purpose of verification. “I've got a DNA test I need checked.”

Marcella glances at the overwhelming stack of files piling her in-box. “No problem. What's the story?”

“Child molestation. There's a known blood sample and then semen on a pair of underwear. I'm not an expert, but the results looks pretty cut and dried.”

“Ah. I'm guessing they don't jive, and you think the state lab screwed up?”

“Actually, they do jive. I just need to be absolutely certain.”

“Guess you really don't want this one to walk,” Marcella muses. There is a hesitation. “He's dead,” Nina says. “I shot him.” Caleb has always liked chopping wood. He likes the Herculean moment of hefting the ax, of swinging it down like a man measuring his strength at a carnival game. He likes the sound of a log being broken apart, a searing crack, and then the hollow plink of two halves falling to opposite sides. He likes the rhythm, which erases thought and memory.

Maybe by the time he has run out of wood to split, he will feel ready to go back inside and face his wife.

Nina's single-mindedness has always been attractive-especially to a man who, in so many matters, is naturally hesitant. But now the flaw has been magnified to the point of being grotesque. She simply cannot let go. Once, Caleb had been hired to build a brick wall in a town park. As he'd worked, he'd gotten used to the homeless man who lived beneath the birthday pavilion. His name was Coalspot, or so Caleb had been told. He was schizophrenic but harmless. Sometimes, Coalspot would sit on the park bench next to Caleb as he worked. He spent hours unlacing his shoe, taking it off, scraping at his heel, and then putting his shoe back on. “Can you see it?” the man asked Caleb. “Can you see the hole where the poison's leaking?” One day a social worker arrived to take Coalspot to a shelter, but he wouldn't go. He insisted he would infect everyone else; the poison was contagious. After three hours, the woman had reached the end of her rope. “We try to help them,” she sighed to Caleb, “and this is what we get.” So Caleb sat down beside Coalspot. He took off his own work boot and sock, pointed to his heel. “You see?” he said. “Everyone already has one.” After that, the homeless man went off, easy as a kitten. It didn't matter th ere was no poisonous hole-just at that moment, Coalspot truly believed there was one. And that for a second, Caleb had told the man he was right. Nina is like that, now. She has redefined her actions so that they make sense to her, if not to anyone else. To say that she killed a man in order to protect Nathaniel? Well, whatever trauma he might suffer as a witness couldn't be nearly as bad as watching his mother get handcuffed and carted off to jail. Caleb knows that Nina is looking for vindication, but he can't do what he did with Coalspot-look her in eye and tell her that yes, he understands. He can't look her in the eye, period.

He wonders if the reason he's putting up a wall between them is so that, when she is sentenced, it is easier to let her go.

Caleb takes another log and sets it on end on the chopping block. As the ax comes down, the wood cleaves into two neat pieces, and sitting in the center is the truth. What Nina has done doesn't make Caleb feel morally superior, by default. It makes him a coward, because he wasn't the one brave enough to cross the line from thought to deed.

There are parts of it Nathaniel can't remember-like what he said when Nathaniel first shook his head no; or which one of them unbuttoned his jeans. What he can still think of, sometimes even when he is trying his hardest not to, is how the air felt cold when his pants came off, and how hot his hand was after that. How it hurt, it hurt so bad, even though he had said it wouldn't. How Nathaniel had held Esme so tight she cried; how in the mirror of her gold eyes he saw a little boy who no longer was him.

It will make Nina happy.

Those are Marcella's first thoughts when she reads the DNA results, and sees that the semen stain and the priest's blood are indistinguishable from each other. No scientist will ever say it quite this way in testimony, but the numbers-and the stats-speak for themselves: This is the perp, no question. She picks up the phone to tell Nina so, tucking it under her chin so that she can rubber-band the medical files that came attached to the lab report. Marcella hasn't bothered to scan these; it is pretty clear from what Nina said that the priest died as a result of the gunshot wound. But still, Nina has asked Marcella for a thorough review. She sighs, then puts back the receiver and opens the thick folder.

Two hours later, she finishes reading. And realizes that in spite of her best intentions to stay away, she'll be heading back to Maine.

Here is what I have learned in a week: A prison, no matter what shape and size, is still a prison. I find myself staring out windows along with the dog, itching to be on the other side of the glass. I would give a fortune to do the most mundane of errands: run to the bank, take the car to Jiffy Lube, rake leaves.

Nathaniel has gone back to school. This is Dr. Robichaud's suggestion, a step toward normalcy. Still, I can't help but wonder if Caleb had some small part in this; if he really doesn't like the thought of leaving me alone with my son.

One morning, before I could think twice, I walked halfway down the driveway to pick up the newspaper before I remembered the electronic bracelet. Caleb found me on the porch, sobbing, waiting for the sirens I was certain would come. But through some miracle, the alarm did not go off. I spent six seconds in the fresh air, and no one was the wiser.

To occupy myself, sometimes I cook. I have made penne alia rigata, coq au vin, potstickers. I choose dishes from foreign places, anywhere but here. Today, though, I am cleaning the house. I have already emptied the coat closet and the kitchen pantry, restocked their items in order of frequency of use. Up in the bedroom, I've tossed out shoes I forgot I ever bought, and have aligned my suits in a rainbow, from palest pink to deepest plum to chocolate. I am just weeding through Caleb's dresser when he comes in, stripping off a filthy shirt. “Do you know,” I say, “that in the hall closet is a brand-new pair of cleats fives sizes bigger than Nathaniel's foot?”

“Got them at a garage sale. Nathaniel'll grow into them.” After all this, doesn't he understand that the future doesn't necessarily follow in a straight, unbroken line?

“What are you doing?”

“Your drawers.”

“I like my drawers.” Caleb takes a torn shirt I've put aside and stuffs it back in all wrinkled. “Why don't you take a nap? Read, or something?”

“That would be a waste of time.” I find three socks, all without mates.

“Why is just taking time a waste of it?” Caleb asks, shrugging into another shirt. He grabs the socks I've segregated and puts them into his underwear drawer again.

“Caleb. You're ruining it.”

“How? It was fine to start with!” He jams his shirt into the waist of his jeans, tightens his belt again. “I like my socks the way they are,” Caleb says firmly. For a moment he looks as if he is going to add to that, but then shakes his head and runs down the stairs. Shortly afterward, I see him through the window, walking in the bright, cold sun.

I open the drawer and remove the orphan socks. Then the torn shirt. It will take him weeks to notice the changes, and one day he will thank me.

“Oh, my God,” I cry, glancing out the window at the unfamiliar car that pulls up to the curb. A woman gets out-pixie-small, with a dark cap of hair and her arms wrapped tight against the cold.

“What?” Caleb runs into the room at my exclamation. “What's the matter?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing!” I throw open the door and smile widely at Marcella. “I can't believe you're here!”

“Surprise,” she says, and hugs me. “How are you doing?” She tries not to look, but I see it-the way her eyes dart down to try and find my electronic bracelet.

“I'm . . . well, I'm great right now. I certainly never expected you to bring me my report in person.”

Marcella shrugs. “I figured you might enjoy the company. And I hadn't been back home for a while. I missed it.”

“Liar,” I laugh, pulling her into the house, where Caleb and Nathaniel are watching with curiosity. “This is Marcella Wentworth. She used to work at the state lab, before she bailed on us to join the private sector.” I'm positively beaming. It's not that Marcella and I are so very close; it's just that these days, I don't get to see that many people. Patrick comes, from time to time. And there's my family, of course. But most of my friends are colleagues, and after the revocation hearing, they're keeping their distance.

“You up here on business or pleasure?” Caleb asks.

Marcella glances at me, unsure of what she should say.

“I asked Marcella to take a look at the DNA test.”

Caleb's smile fades just the slightest bit, so that only if you know him as well as I do would you even catch the dimming. “You know what? Why don't I take Nathaniel out, so that you two can catch up?”

After they leave, I lead Marcella into the kitchen. We talk about the temperature in Virginia at this time of year, and when we had our first frost. I make us iced tea. Then, when I can stand it no longer, I sit down across from her. “It's good news, isn't it? The DNA, it's a match?”

“Nina, did you notice anything when you read the medical file?”

“I didn't bother, actually.”

Marcella draws a circle on the table with her finger. “Father Szyszynski had chronic myeloid leukemia.”

“Good,” I say flatly. “I hope he was suffering. I hope he puked his insides out every time he got chemotherapy.”

“He wasn't getting chemo. He had a bone marrow transplant about seven year s ago. His leukemia was in remission. For all intents and purposes, he was cured.”

I stiffen a little. “Is this your way of telling me I ought to feel guilty for killing a man who was a cancer survivor?”

“No. It's . . . well, there's something about the treatment of leukemia that factors into DNA analysis. Basically, to cure it, you need to get new blood. And the way that's done is via bone marrow transplant, since bone marrow is what makes blood. After a few months, your old bone marrow has been replaced completely by the donor's bone marrow. Your old blood is gone, and the leukemia with it.” Marcella looks up at me. “You follow?”

“So far.”

“Your body can use this new blood, because it's healthy. But it's not your blood, and at the DNA level, it doesn't look like your blood used to. Your skin cells, your saliva, your semen-the DNA in those will be what you were born with, but the DNA in your new blood comes from your donor.“ Marcella puts her hand on top of mine. ”Nina, the lab results were accurate. The DNA in Father Szyszynski's blood sample matched the semen in your son's underwear. But the DNA in Father Szyszynski's blood isn't really his.”

“No,” I say. “No, this isn't the way it works. I was just explaining it the other day to Caleb. You can get DNA from any cell in your body. That's why you can use a blood sample to match a semen sample.”

“Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, yes. But this is a very, very specific exception.” She shakes her head. “I'm sorry, Nina.” My head swings up. “You mean . . . he's still alive?” She doesn't have to answer.

I have killed the wrong man.

After Marcella leaves, I pace like a lion in a cage of my own making. My hands are shaking; I can't seem to get warm. What have I done? I killed a man who was innocent. A priest. A person who came to comfort me when my world cracked apart; who loved children, Nathaniel included. I killed a man who fought cancer and won, who deserved a long life. I committed murder and I can no longer even justify my actions to myself.

I have always believed there is a special place in Hell for the worst ones-the serial killers, the rapists who target kids, the sociopaths who would just as soon lie as cut your throat for the ten dollars in your wallet. And even when I have not secured convictions for them, I tell myself that eventually, they will get what's coming to them.

So will I.

And the reason I know this is because even though I cannot find the strength to stand up; even though I want to scratch at myself until this part of me has been cut away in ribbons, there is another part of me that is thinking: He is still out there.

I pick up the phone to call Fisher. But then I hang it up. He needs to hear this; he could very well find out by himself. But I don't know how it will play in my trial, yet. It could make the prosecution more sympathetic, since their victim is a true victim. Then again, an insanity defense is an insanity defense. It doesn't matter if I killed Father Szyszynski or the judge or every spectator in that courtroom-if I were insane at the time, I still wouldn't be guilty. In fact, this might make me look crazier.

I sit down at the kitchen table and bury my face in my hands. The doorbell rings and suddenly Patrick is in the kitchen, too big for it, frantic from the message I've left on his beeper. “What?” he demands, absorbing in a single glance my position, and the quiet of the household. “Did something happen to Nathaniel?”

It is such a loaded question, that I can't help it-I start to laugh. I laugh until my stomach cramps, until I cannot catch my breath, until tears stream from my eyes and I realize I am sobbing. Patrick's hands are on my shoulders, my forearms, my waist, as if the thing that has broken inside me might be as simple as a bone. I wipe my nose on the back of my sleeve and force myself to meet his gaze. “Patrick,” I whisper, “I screwed up. Father Szyszynski ... he didn't ... he wasn't-”

He calms me down and makes me tell him everything. When I finish, he stare s at me for a full thirty seconds before he speaks. “You're kidding,” Patr ick says. “You shot the wrong guy?”

He doesn't wait for an answer, just gets up and starts to pace. “Nina, wait a second. Things get screwed up in labs; it's happened before.” I grab onto this lifeline. “Maybe that's it. Some medical mistake.”

“But we had an ID before we ever had the semen evidence.” Patrick shakes his head. “Why would Nathaniel have said his name?” Time can stop, I know that now. It is possible to feel one's heart cease beating, to sense the blood hover in one's veins. And to have the awful, overwhelming sense that one is trapped in this moment, and there is just no way out of it. “Tell me again.” My words spill like stones. “Tell me what he told you.”

Patrick turns to me. “Father Glen,” he replies. “Right?” Nathaniel remembers feeling dirty, so dirty that he thought he could take a thousand showers and still need to clean himself again. And the thing of it was, the dirty part of him was under his skin; he would have to rub himself raw before it was gone.

It burned down there, and even Esme wouldn't come near him. She purred and then hopped onto the big wooden desk, staring. This is your fault, she was saying. Nathaniel tried to get his pants, but his hands were like clubs, unable to pick up anything. His underwear, when he finally managed to grab it, was all wet, which made no sense because Nathaniel hadn't had an accident, he just knew it. But the priest had been looking at his underpants, holding them. He'd liked the baseball mitts. Nathaniel didn't want to wear them again, ever.

“We can fix that,” the priest said, in a voice soft as a pillow, and he disappeared for a moment. Nathaniel counted to thirty-five, and then did it again, because that was as high as he could go. He wanted to leave. He wanted to hide under the desk or in the file cabinet. But he needed underpants. He couldn't get dressed without them, they came first. That was what his mom said when he forgot sometimes, and she made him go upstairs to put them on. The priest came back with a baby pair, not like his dad's, which looked like shorts. He'd gotten these, Nathaniel was sure, from the big box that held all the greasy coats and smelly sneakers people had left behind in the church. How could you leave without your sneakers, and never notice? Nathaniel always had wanted to know. For that matter, how could you forget your underpants?

These were clean and had Spiderman on them. They were too tight, but Nathaniel didn't care. “Let me take the other pair,” the priest said. “I'll wash them and give them back.”

Nathaniel shook his head. He pulled on his sweatpants and tucked the boxers into the kangaroo part of his sweatshirt, turning the icky side so that he didn't have to touch it. He felt the priest pet his hair and he went perfectly still, like granite, with the same thick, straight feelings inside.

“Do you need me to walk you back?”

Nathaniel didn't answer. He waited until the priest had picked up Esme and left; then he walked down the hall to the boiler room. It was creepy inside-no light switch, and cobwebs, and once even the skeleton of a mouse that had died. No one ever went in there, which is why Nathaniel did, and stuffed the bad underwear way behind the big machine that hummed and belched heat.

When Nathaniel went back to his class, Father Glen was still reading the Bible story. Nathaniel sat down, tried to listen. He paid careful attention, even when he felt someone's eyes on him. When he looked up, the other priest was standing in the hallway, holding Esme and smiling. With his free hand he raised a finger to his lips. Shh. Don't tell. That was the moment Nathaniel lost all his words.

The day my son stopped speaking, we had gone to church. Afterward, there was a fellowship coffee-what Caleb liked to call Bible Bribery, a promise of doughnuts in return for your presence at Mass. Nathaniel moved around me as if I were a maypole, turning this way and that as he waited for Father Szyszynski to call the children together to read.

This coffee was a celebration, of sorts-two priests who had come to study at St. Anne's for some sort of Catholic edification were going back to their own congregations. A banner blew from the base of the scarred table, wishing them well. Since we were not regular churchgoers, I had not really noticed the priests doing whatever it was they were supposed to be doing. Once or twice I'd seen one from behind and made the assumption it was Father Szyszynski, only to have the man turn around and prove me wrong. My son was angry because they had run out of powdered sugar doughnuts. “Nathaniel,” I said, “stop pulling on me.”

I'd tugged him off my waist, smiling apologetically at the couple that Caleb was speaking to; acquaintances we had not seen in months. They had no c hildren, although they were our ages, and I imagine that Caleb liked talking to them for the same reason I did-there was that amazing What if permeating the conversation, as if Todd and Margaret were a funhouse mirror in which Caleb and I could see who else we might have become, had I never conceived. Todd was talking about their upcoming trip to Greece; how they were chartering a boat to take them from island to island.

Nathaniel, for reasons I could not fathom, sank his teeth into my hand. I jumped, more shocked than hurt, and grabbed Nathaniel by the wrist. I was caught in that awful limbo of public discipline-a moment when a child has done something truly punishable but escapes without penalty because it isn't politically correct to give him the quick smack on his behind that he deserves. “Don't you ever do that again,” I said through my teeth, trying for a smile. “Do you hear me?”

Then I noticed all the other kids hurrying down the stairs after Father Szyszynski, a Pied Piper. “Go,” I urged. “You don't want to miss the story.”

Nathaniel buried his face underneath my sweater, his head swelling my belly again, a mock pregnancy. “Come on. All your friends are going.” I had to peel his arms from around me, push him in the right direction. Twice he looked back, and twice I had to nod, encouraging him to get a move on. “I'm sorry,” I said to Margaret, smiling. “You were talking about Corsica?”

Until now, I did not remember that one of the other priests, the taller one who carried a cat as if it were part of his clerical attire, hurried down the steps after the children. That he caught up to Nathaniel and put his hand on his shoulder with the comfort of someone who had done it before. Nathaniel said his name.

A memory bursts and stings my eyes: What's the opposite of left?

White.

What's the opposite of white?

Bwack.

I remember the priest at Father Szyszynski's funeral who had stared through my veil as he handed me the Host, as if my features were familiar. And I remember the sentences printed carefully on a banner beneath the coffee table on that last day, before Nathaniel stopped speaking.

PEACE BE WITH YOU, FATHER O'TOOLE. PEACE BE WITH YOU, FATHER GWYNNE.

Tell me what he told you, I'd asked Patrick. Father Glen.

Maybe that is what Patrick heard. But that isn't how Nathaniel would have said it.

“He wasn't saying Father Glen,” Nina murmurs to Patrick. “He was saying Father Gwynne.”

“Yeah, but you know how Nathaniel talks. His L's always come out wrong.”

“Not this time,” Nina sighs. “This time he was saying it right. Gwen. Gwynn e. They're so close.”

“Who the hell is Gwynne?”

Nina rises, her hands splayed through her hair. “He's the one, Patrick. He's the one who hurt Nathaniel and he's still, he could still be doing this to a hundred other boys, and-” She wilts, stumbling against the wall. Patrick steadies her with one hand, and he is startled to feel her shaking so hard. His first instinct is to reach for her. His second, smarter response is to let her take a step away.

She slides down the side of the refrigerator until she is sitting on the floor. “He's the bone marrow donor. He has to be.”

“Does Fisher know about this yet?” She shakes her head. “Caleb?” In that moment, he thinks of a story he read long ago in school, about the start of the Trojan War. Paris was given a choice to be the richest man in the world, the smartest man in the world, or the chance to love another man's wife. Patrick, fool that he is, would make the same mistake. For with her hair in knots, her eyes red and swollen, her sorrow cracked open in her lap, Nina is every bit as beautiful to him now as Helen was back then. She lifts her face to his. “Patrick . . . what am I going to do? ” It shocks him into a response. “You,” Patrick says clearly, “are not going to do anything. You are going to sit in this house because you're on trial for a man's murder.” When she opens her mouth to argue, Patrick holds up his hand. “You've already been locked up once, and look what happened to Nathaniel. What do you think's going to happen to him if you walk out that door for more vigilante justice, Nina? The only way you can keep him safe is to stay with him. Let me ...” He hesitates, knowing that on the edge of this cliff, the only way out is to retreat, or to jump. “Let me take care of it.” She knows exactly what he has just vowed. It means going against his department, going against his own code of ethics. It means turning his back on the system, like Nina has. And it means facing the consequences. Like Nina. He sees the wonder in her face, and the spark that lets him know how tempted she is to take him up on his offer. “And risk losing your job? Going to jail?” she says. “I can't let you do something that stupid.” What makes you think I haven't already? Patrick doesn't say the words aloud, but he doesn't have to. He crouches down and puts his hand on Nina's knee. Her hand comes up to cover his. And he sees it in her eyes: She knows how he feels about her, she has always known. But this is the first time she has come close to admitting it.

“Patrick,” she says quietly, “I think I've already ruined the lives of enough people I love.”

When the door bursts open and Nathaniel tumbles into the kitchen on a whirl of cold air, Patrick comes to his feet. The boy smells of popcorn and is carrying a stuffed frog inside his winter coat. “Guess what,” he says. “Daddy took me to the arcade.”

“You're a lucky guy,” Patrick answers, and even to his own ears, his voice sounds weak. Caleb comes in, then, and closes the door behind him. He looks from Patrick to Nina, and smiles uncomfortably. “I thought you were visiting with Marcella.”

“She had to go. She was meeting someone else. As she was leaving, Patrick stopped by.”

“Oh.” Caleb rubs the back of his neck. “So . . . what did she say?”

“Say?”

“About the DNA.”

Before Patrick's very eyes, Nina changes. She flashes a polished smile at her husband. “It's a match,” she lies. “A perfect match.” From the moment I step outside, the world is magic. Air cold enough to make my nostrils stick together; a sun that trembles like a cold yolk; a sky so wide and blue that I cannot keep it all in my eyes. Inside smells different from outside, but you don't notice until one of them is taken away from you. I am on my way to Fisher's office, so my electronic bracelet has been deactivated. Being outside is so glorious that it almost supersedes the secret I am hiding. As I slow for a stoplight I see the Salvation Army man swinging his bell, his bucket swaying gently. This is the season of charity; surely there will be some left for me.

Patrick's offer swims through my mind like smoke, making it difficult to see clearly. He is the most moral, upstanding man I know-he would not have of fered lightly to become my one-man posse. Of course, I cannot let him do this. But I also can't stop hoping that maybe he will ignore me and do it any way. And immediately, I hate myself for even thinking such a thing. I tell myself, too, that I don't want Patrick to go after Gwynne for another reason, although it is one I will admit only in the darkest corners of the night: Because I want to be the one. Because this was my son, my grievance, my justice to mete out.

When did I become this person-a woman who has the capacity to commit murder, to want to murder again, to get what she wants without caring who she destroys in the process? Was this always a part of me, buried, waiting? Maybe there is a seed of malfeasance even in the most honest of people-like Patrick-that requires a certain combination of circumstances to bloom. In most of us, then, it lies dormant forever. But for others, it blossoms. And once it does, it takes over like loosestrife, choking out rational thought, killing compassion.

So much for Christmas spirit.

Fisher's office is decorated for the holidays too. Swaths of garland drape the fireplace; there is mistletoe hanging square over the secretary's desk. Beside the coffee urn sits a jug of hot mulled cider. While I wait for my attorney to retrieve me, I run my hand over the leather cushion of the couch, simply for the novelty of touching something other than the old sage chenille sofa in my living room at home.

What Patrick said about labs making mistakes has stayed with me. I will not tell Fisher about the bone marrow transplant, not until I know for sure that Marcella's explanation is right. There is no reason to believe that Quentin Brown will dig up this obscure glitch about DNA; so there is no reason to trouble Fisher yet with information he might never need to know.

“Nina.” Fisher strides toward me, frowning. “You're losing weight.”

“It's called prisoner-of-war chic.” I fall into step beside him, measuring the dimensions of this hall and that alcove, simply because they are unfamiliar to me. In his office, I stare out the window, where the fingers of bare branches rap a tattoo against the glass.

Fisher catches the direction of my gaze. “Would you like to go outside?” he asks quietly.

It is freezing, nearly zero. But I am not in the habit of handing back gifts. “I would love that.”

So we walk in the parking lot behind the law offices, the wind kicking up small tornadoes of brown leaves. Fisher holds a stack of papers in his gloved hands. “We've gotten the state's psychiatric evaluation back. You didn't quite answer his questions directly, did you?”

“Oh, come on. Do you know the role of a judge in the courtroom? For God's sake.”

A small grin plays over Fisher's mouth. “All the same, he found you competent and sane at the time of the offense.”

I stop walking. What about now? Is it crazy to want to finish the job once you've found out you didn't succeed the first time? Or is that the sanest thing in the world?

“Don't worry. I think we can chew this guy up and rip his report to shreds-but I also would like a forensic shrink to say you were insane then, and aren't now. The last thing I want is a jury thinking you're still a threat.” But I am. I imagine shooting Father Gwynne, getting it right this time. Then I turn to Fisher, my face perfectly blank. “Who do you want to use?”

“How about Sidwell Mackay?”

“We joke about him in the office,” I say. “Any prosecutor can get through him in five minutes flat.”

“Peter Casanoff?”

I shake my head. “Pompous windbag.”

Together we turn our backs to the wind, trying to make a very logical decision about whom we can find to call me insane. Maybe this will not be so difficult after all. What rational woman still sees the wrong man's blood on her hands every time she looks down, but spends an hour in the shower imagining how she might kill the right man?

“All right,” Fisher suggests. “How about O'Brien, from Portland?”

“I've called him a couple of times. He seems all right, maybe a little squirmy.”

Fisher nods in agreement. “He's going to come off like an academic, and I think that's what you need, Nina.”

I offer him my most complacent smile. “Well, Fisher. You're the boss!” He gives me a guarded look, then hands over the psychiatric report. “This is the one the state sent. You need to remember what you told him before you go see O'Brien.”

So defense attorneys do ask their clients to memorize what they said to the state psychiatrist.

“We've got Judge Neal coming down, by the way.”

I cringe. “Oh, you've got to be kidding.”

“Why?”

“He's supposed to be incredibly gullible.”

“How lucky for you, then, that you're a defendant,” Fisher says dryly. “Speaking of which ... I don't believe we're going to put you on the stand.”

“I wouldn't expect you to, after two psychiatrists testify.” But I am thinking, I cannot take the stand now, not knowing what I know.

Fisher stops walking and faces me. “Before you start telling me how you think your defense ought to be handled, Nina, I want to remind you you're looking at insanity from a prosecutor's perspective, and I-”

“You know, Fisher,” I interrupt, glancing at my watch, “I can't really talk about this today.”

“Is the coach turning into a pumpkin?”

“I'm sorry. I just can't.” My eyes slide away from his.

“You can't put it off forever. Your trial will start in January, and I'll be go ne over the holidays with my family.”

“Let me get examined first,” I bargain. “Then we can sit down.” Fisher nods. I think of O'Brien, of whether I can convince him of my insanity. I wonder if, by then, it will be an act.

For the first time in a decade, Quentin takes a long lunch. No one will not ice at the DA's office; they barely tolerate his presence, and in his absence, probably dance on the top of his desk. He checks the directions he's do wnloaded from the computer and swings his car into the parking lot of the h igh school. Teens sausaged into North Face jackets give him cursory glances as he passes. Quentin walks right through the middle of a hackeysack game without breaking stride, and continues around the back of the school. There is a shoddy football stadium, an equally shoddy track, and a basketball court. Gideon is doing an admirable job of guarding some pansy-ass center six inches shorter than him. Quentin puts his hands into the pockets of his overcoat and watches his son steal the ball and shoot an effortless three-pointer.

The last time his son had picked up the phone to get in touch, he'd been calling from jail, busted for possession. And although it cost Quentin plenty of snide comments about nepotism, he'd gotten Gideon's sentence transmuted to a rehab facility. That hadn't been good enough for Gideon, though, who'd wanted to be released scot-free. “You're no use as a father,” he'd told Quentin. “I should have known you'd be no use as a lawyer, either.” Now, a year later, Gideon high-fives another player and then turns around to see Quentin watching. “Shit, man,” he mutters. “Time.” The other kids fall to the sidelines, sucking on water bottles and shrugging off layers of clothes. Gideon approaches, arms crossed. “You come here to make me piss in some cup?”

Shrugging, Quentin says, “No, I came to see you. To talk.”

“I got nothing to say to you.”

“That's surprising,” Quentin responds, “since I have sixteen years' worth.”

“Then what's another day?” Gideon turns back toward the game. “I'm busy.”

“I'm sorry.”

The words make the boy pause. “Yeah, right,” he murmurs. He storms back to the basketball court, grabbing the ball and spinning it in the air-to impress Quentin, maybe? “Let's go, let's go!” he calls, and the others rally around him. Quentin walks off. “Who was that, man?” he hears one of the boys ask Gideon. And Gideon's response, when he thinks Quentin is too far away to hear: “Some guy who needed directions.”

From the window of the doctor's office at Dana-Farber, Patrick can see the ragtag edge of Boston. Olivia Bessette, the oncologist listed on Father Szyszynski's medical reports, has turned out to be considerably younger than Patrick expected-not much older than Patrick himself. She sits with her hands folded, her curly hair pulled into a sensible bun, one rubber-soled white clog tapping lightly on the floor. “Leukemia only affects the blood cells,” she explains, “and chronic myeloid leukemia tends to have an onset in patients in their forties and fifties-although I've had some cases with patients in their twenties.”

Patrick wonders how you sit on the edge of a hospital bed and tell someone they are not going to live. It is not that different, he imagines, from knocking on a door in the middle of the night and informing a parent that his son has been killed in a drunk driving accident. “What happens to the blood cells?” he asks.

“Blood cells are all programmed to die, just like we are. They start out at a baby stage, then grow up to be a little more functional, and by the time they get spit out of the bone marrow they are adult cells. By then, white cells should be able to fight infection on your behalf, red blood cells should be able to carry oxygen, and platelets should be able to clot your blood. But if you have leukemia, your cells never mature . . . and they never die. So you wind up with a proliferation of white cells that don't work, and that overrun all your other cells.”

Patrick is not really going against Nina's wishes, being here. All he's doing is clarifying what they know-not taking it a step farther. He secured this appointment on a ruse, pretending that he is working on behalf of the assis tant attorney general. Mr. Brown, Patrick explained, has the burden of proof. Which means they need to be a hundred percent sure that Father Szyszynski didn't drop dead of leukemia the moment that his assailant pulled out a gun. Could Dr. Bessette, his former oncologist, offer any opinions?

“What does a bone marrow transplant do?” Patrick asks.

“Wonders, if it works. There are six proteins on all of our cells, human leukocyte antigens, or HLA. They help our bodies recognize you as you, and me as me. When you're looking for a bone marrow donor, you're hoping for all six of these proteins to match yours. In most cases, this means siblings, half-siblings, maybe a cousin-relatives seem to have the lowest instance of rejection.”

“Rejection?” Patrick asks.

“Yes. In essence, you're trying to convince your body that the donor cells are actually yours, because you have the same six proteins on them. If you can't do that, your immune system will reject the bone marrow transplant, which leads to Graft Versus Host disease.”

“Like a heart transplant.”

“Exactly. Except this isn't an organ. Bone marrow is harvested from the pelvis, because it's the big bones in your body that make blood. Basically, we put the donor to sleep and then stick needles into his hips about 150 times on each side, suctioning out the early cells.”

He winces, and the doctor smiles a little. “It is painful. Being a bone marrow donor is a very selfless thing.”

Yeah, this guy was a fucking altruist, Patrick thinks.

“Meanwhile, the patient with leukemia has been taking immunosup-pressants. The week before the transplant, he's given enough chemotherapy to kill all the blood cells in his body. It's timed this way, so that his bone marrow is empty.”

“You can live like that?”

“You're at huge risk for infection. The patient still has his own living blood cells . . . he's just not making any new ones. Then he gets the donor marrow, through a simple IV. It takes about two hours, and we don't know how, but the cells manage to find their way to the bone marrow in his own body and start growing. After about a month, his bone marrow has been entirely replaced by his donor's.”

“And his blood cells would have the donor's six proteins, that HLA stuff?” Patrick asks.

“That's right.”

“How about the donor's DNA?”

Dr. Bessette nods. “Yes. In all respects, his blood is really someone else's. He's just fooling his body into believing it's truly his.“ Patrick leans forward. ”But if it takes-if the cancer goes into remission-does the patient's body start making his own blood again?”

"No. If it did, we'd consider it a rejection of the graft, and the leukemia would return. We want the patient to keep producing his donor's blood forever.

“She taps the file on her desk. ”In Glen Szyszynski's case, five years after the transplant, he was given a clean bill of health. His new bone marrow was working quite well, and the chance of a recurrence of leukemia was less than ten percent.“ Dr. Bessette nods. ”I think the prosecution can safely say that however the priest died, it wasn't of leukemia."

Patrick smiles at her. “Guess it felt good to have a success story.”

"It always does. Father Szyszynski was lucky to have found a perfect match."

“A perfect match?”

“That's what we call it when a donor's HLA corresponds to all six of the patient's HLA.”

Patrick takes a quick breath. “Especially when they're not related.”

“Oh,” Dr. Bessette says. “But that wasn't the case here. Father Szyszynski and his donor were half-brothers.”

Francesca Martine came to the Maine State Lab by way of New Hampshire, where she'd been working as a DNA scientist until something better came along. That something turned out not to be the ballistics expert who broke her heart. She moved north, nursing her wounds, and discovered what she'd always known-safety came in gels and Petri dishes, and numbers never hurt you.

That said, numbers also couldn't explain the visceral reaction she has the minute she first meets Quentin Brown. On the phone, she imagined him like all the other state drones-harried and underpaid, with skin a sickly shade of gray. But from the moment he walks into her lab, she cannot take her eyes off him. He is striking, certainly, with his excessive height and his maho gany complexion, but Frankie knows that isn't the attraction. She feels a pull between them, magnetism honed by the common experience of being different. She is not black, but she's often been the only woman in the room with an IQ of 220.

Unfortunately, if she wants Quentin Brown to study her closely, she'll have to assume the shape of a forensic lab report. “What was it that made you look at this twice?” Frankie asks.

He narrows his eyes. “How come you're asking?”

“Curiosity. It's pretty esoteric stuff for the prosecution.” Quentin hesitates, as if wondering whether to confide in her. Oh, come on, Frankie thinks. Loosen up. “The defense asked to take a look at it, specifically. Immediately. And it didn't seem to merit that kind of request. I don't see how the DNA results here make a difference for us or for them.” Frankie crosses her arms. “The reason they were interested isn't because of the lab report I issued. It's because of what's in the medical files.”

“I'm not following you.”

“You know the way the DNA report says that the chances of randomly selecting an unrelated individual who matches this genetic material are one in six billion?”

Quentin nods.

“Well,” Frankie explains, “you just found the one.” It costs approximately two thousand dollars of taxpayer money to exhume a body. “No,” Ted Poulin says flatly. As the attorney general of Maine, and Quentin's boss, that ought to be that. But Quentin isn't going to give up withou t a fight, not this time.

He grips the receiver of the phone. “The DNA scientist at the state lab says we can do the test on tooth pulp.”

“Quentin, it doesn't matter for the prosecution. She killed him. Period.”

“She killed a guy who molested her son. I have to change him from a sexual predator into a victim, Ted, and this is the way to do it.” There is a long silence on the other end. Quentin runs his fingertips along t e grain of wood on Nina Frost's desk. He does this over and over, as if he is rubbing an amulet.

“There's no family to fight it?”

“The mother gave consent already.”

Ted sighs. “The publicity is going to be outrageous.” Leaning back in his chair, Quentin grins. “Let me take care of it,” he offers. Fisher storms into the district attorney's office, uncharacteristically flu stered. He has been there before, of course, but who knows where the hell they've ensconced Quentin Brown while he's prosecuting Nina's case. He has just opened up his mouth to ask the secretary when Brown himself walks out of the small kitchen area, carrying a cup of coffee. “Mr. Carrington,” he says pleasantly. “Looking for me?”

Fisher withdraws the paperwork he's received that morning from his breast pocket. The Motion to Exhume. “What is this?”

Quentin shrugs. “You must know. You're the one who asked for the DNA records to be rushed over, after all.”

Fisher has no idea why, in fact. The DNA records were rushed over at Nina's behest, but he'll be damned if he lets Brown know this. “What are you trying to do, counselor?”

“A simple test that proves the priest your client killed wasn't the same guy who abused her kid.”

Fisher steels his gaze. “I'll see you in court tomorrow morning,” he says, and by the time he gets into his car to drive to Nina's home, he has begun to understand how an ordinary human might become frustrated enough to kill.

“Fisher!” I say, and I'm actually delighted to see the man. This amazes me-either I have truly bedded down with the Enemy, or I've been under house arrest too long. I throw open the door to let him in, and realize that he is furious. “You knew,” he says, his voice calm and that much more frightening for all its control. He hands me a motion filed by the assistant attorney general.

My insides begin to quiver; I feel absolutely sick. With tremendous effort I swallow and meet Fisher's eye-better to come clean eventually, than to not co me clean at all. “I didn't know if I should tell you. I didn't know if the in formation was going to be important to my case.”

“That's my job!” Fisher explodes. “You are paying me for a reason, Nina, and it's because you know on some level, although apparently not a conscious one, that I am qualified to get you acquitted. In fact, I'm more qualified to do that than any other attorney in Maine . . . including you.” I look away. At heart, I am a prosecutor, and prosecutors don't tell defense attorneys everything. They dance around each other, but the prosecutor is a lways the one who leads, leaving the other lawyer to find his footing. Always.

“I don't trust you,” I say finally.

Fisher fields this like a blow. “Well, then. We're even.” We stare at each other, two great dogs with their teeth bared. Fisher turns away, angry, and in that moment I see my face in the reflection of the window. The truth is, I'm not a prosecutor anymore. I'm not capable of defending myself. I'm not sure I even want to.

“Fisher,” I call out when he is halfway out the door. “How badly will this hurt me?”

“I don't know, Nina. It doesn't make you look any less crazy, but it's also going to strip you of public sympathy. You're not a hero anymore, killing a pedophile. You're a hothead who knocked off an innocent man-spriest, no less.” He shakes his head. “You're the prime example of why we have laws in the first place.”

In his eyes, I see what's coming-the fact that I am no longer a mother doing what she had to for her child, but simply a reckless woman who thought she knew better than anyone else. I wonder if camera flashes feel different on your skin when they capture you as a criminal, instead of a victim. I wonder if parents who once fathomed my actions-even if they disagreed with them-will look at me now and cross the street, just in case faulty judgment is contagious.

Fisher exhales heavily. “I can't keep them from exhuming the body.”

“I know.”

“And if you keep hiding informtion from me, it will hurt you, because I wo n't know how to work with it.”

I duck my head. “I understand.”

He raises his hand in farewell. I stand on the porch and watch him go, hugging myself against the wind. When his car heads down the street, its exhaust freezes, a sigh caught in the cold. With a deep breath I turn to find Caleb standing not three feet behind me. “Nina,” he says, “what was that?” Pushing past him, I shake my head, but he grabs my arm and will not let me go. “You lied to me. Lied to me!”

“Caleb, you don't understand-”

He grasps my shoulders and shakes me once, hard. “What is it I don't understand? That you killed an innocent man? Jesus, Nina, when is it going to hit you?”

Once, Nathaniel asked me how the snow disappears. It is like that in Maineinstead of melting over time, it takes one warm day for drifts that are thigh-high in the morning to evaporate by the time the sun goes down. Together we went to the library to learn the answer-sublimation, the process by which something solid vanishes into thin air.

With Caleb's hands holding me up, I fall apart. I let out everything I have been afraid to set free for the past week. Father Szyszynski's voice fills my head; his face swims in front of me. “I know,” I sob. “Oh, Caleb, I know. I thought I could do this. I thought I could take care of it. But I made a mistake.” I fold myself into the wall of his chest, waiting for his arms to come around me.

They don't.

Caleb takes a step back, shoves his hands in his pockets. His eyes are red-rimmed, haunted. “What's the mistake, Nina? That you killed a man?” he asks hoarsely. “Or that you didn't?”

“It's a shame, is what it is,” the church secretary says. Myra Lester shakes her head, then hands Patrick the cup of tea she's made him. “Christmas Mass just around the corner, and us without a chaplain.”

Patrick knows that the best road to information is not always the one that's paved and straightforward, but the one that cuts around back and is most often forgotten as an access route. He also knows, from his long-lapsed days of growing up Catholic, that the collective memory-and gossip mill-most often is the church secretary. So he offers his most concerned expression, the one that always got him a pinch on the cheek from his elderly aunts. “The congregation must be devastated.”

“Between the rumors flying around about Father Szyszynski, and the way he was killed-well, it's most un-Christian, that's all I have to say about it.” She sniffs, then settles her considerable bottom on a wing chair in the rectory office.

He would like to have assumed a different persona, now-a newcomer to Biddeford, for example, checking out the parish-but he has already been seen in his capacity as a detective, during the sexual abuse investigation. “Myra,” Patrick says, then looks up at her and smiles. “I'm sorry. I meant Mrs. Lester, of course.”

Her cheeks flame, and she titters. “Oh, no, you feel free to call me whatever you like, Detective.”

“Well, Myra, I've been trying to get in touch with the priests that were visiting St. Anne's shortly before Father Szyszynski's death.”

“Oh, yes, they were lovely. Just lovely! That Father O'Toole, he had the most scrumptious Southern accent. Like peach schnapps, that's what I thought of every time he spoke. . . . Or was that Father Gwynne?”

“The prosecution's hounding me. I don't suppose you'd have any idea where I could find them?”

“They've gone back to their own congregations, of course.”

“Is there a record of that? A forwarding address, maybe?” Myra frowns, and a small pattern of lines in the shape of a spider appears on her forehead. “I'm sure there must be. Nothing in this church goes on without me knowing the details.” She walks toward all the ledgers and logs stacked behind her desk. Flipping through the pages of a leather-bound book, she finds an entry and smacks it with the flat of her hand . “It's right here. Fathers Brendan O'Toole, from St. Dennis's, in Harwich, Massachusetts, and Arthur Gwynne, due to depart this afternoon as per the See of Portland.' Myra scratches her hair with the eraser of a pencil. ”I supp ose the other priest could have come from Harwich, too, but that wouldn't explain the peach schnapps."

“Maybe he moved as a child,” Patrick suggests. “What's the Sea of Portland ?”

“See, S-E-E. It's the governing diocese hereabouts in Maine, of course.” She lifts her face to Patrick's. “They're the ones who sent the priests to us in the first place.”

Midnight, in a graveyard, with an unearthed casket-Patrick can think of a thousand places he'd rather be. But he stands beside the two sweating men who have hauled the coffin from the ground and set it beside Father Szyszynski's resting place, like an altar in the moonlight. He has promised to be Nina's eyes, Nina's legs. And if necessary, Nina's hands.

They are all wearing Hazmat suits-Patrick and Evan Chao, Fisher Carrington and Quentin Brown, Frankie Martine, and the medical examiner, Vern Potter. In the black circle beyond their flashlights, an owl screams. Vern jumps a foot. “Holy sweet Jesus. Any minute now I keep expecting the zombies to get up from behind the tombstones. Couldn't we have done this in broad daylight?”

“I'll take zombies over the press any day,” Evan Chao mutters. “Get it over with, Vern.”

“Hokey-dokey.” The medical examiner takes a crowbar and pries open Father Szyszynski's casket. The foul air that puffs from its insides has Patrick gagging. Fisher Carrington turns away and holds a handkerchief to his face mask. Quentin walks off briskly to vomit behind a tree.

The priest does not look all that different. Half of his face is still missing. His arms lie at his sides. His skin, gray and wrinkled, has not yet decomposed. “Open wide,” Vern murmurs, and he ratchets down the jaw, reaches inside, and pulls out a molar with a pair of tooth pliers.

“Get me a couple wisdom teeth, too,” Frankie says. “And hair.” Evan nods to Patrick, calling him aside. “You believe this?” he asks.

“Nope.”

“Maybe the bastard's just getting what he deserves.” Patrick is stunned for a moment, until he remembers: There is no reason to believe Evan would know what Patrick knows-that Father Szyszynski was innocent. “Maybe,” he manages.

A few minutes later, Vern hands a jar and an envelope to Frankie. Quentin hurries away with her, Fisher close behind. The ME closes the casket and turns to the grave diggers. “You can put him back now,” he instructs, then turns to Patrick. “On your way out?”

“In a sec.” Patrick watches Vern go, then turns to the grave, where the two big men have dropped the coffin again and are starting to shovel dirt over it again. He waits until they are finished, because he thinks someone should. By the time Patrick gets to the Biddeford District Court, he wonders whether Father Arthur Gwynne ever existed at all. He's driven from the graveyard, where the body was being exhumed, to the Catholic See in Portland . . . where he was told by the chancellor that their records only showed Father O'Toole coming to visit Biddeford. If Father Gwynne was at the church too, it might have been a personal connection to the Biddeford chaplain that brought him there. Which, of course, is exactly what Patrick needs to confirm. The probate clerk hands him a copy of the priest's Last Will and Testament, which became a public record a month ago, when it was filed with the court. The document is simple to a fault. Father Szyszynski left fifty percent of his estate to his mother. And the rest to the executor of his will: Arthur Gwynne, of Belle Chasse, Louisiana.

Enamel is the strongest material naturally found in the human body, which makes it a bitch to crack open. To this end, Frankie soaks the extracted molar in liquid nitrogen for about five minutes, because frozen, it is more likely to shatter. “Hey, Quentin,” she says, grinning at the attorney, waiting impatiently. “Can you break a dollar?” He fishes in his pockets, but shakes his head. “Sorry.” “No problem.” She takes a buck from her wallet and floats it in the liquid nitrogen, then pulls it out, smashes it on the counter, and laughs. “I can.”

He sighs. “Is this why it takes so long to get results from the state lab?”

“Hey, I'm letting you cut in line, aren't I?” Frankie removes the tooth from its bath and sets it in a sterile mortar and pestle. She grinds at it, pounding harder and harder, but the tooth will not crack.

“Mortar and pestle?” Quentin asks.

“We used to use the ME's skull saw, but we had to get a new blade every time. Plus, the cutting edge gets too hot, and denatures the DNA.” She glances at him over her protective goggles. “You don't want me to screw up, do you ?“ Another whack, but the tooth remains intact. ”Oh, for God's sake.“ Frankie plucks a second tooth out of the liquid nitrogen. ”Come with me. I want to get this over with.”

She double-bags the tooth in Ziplocs and leads Quentin to the stairwell, all the way to the basement garage of the laboratory. “Stand back,” she says, and then squats, setting the bag on the floor. Taking a hammer out of the pocket of her lab coat, Frankie begins to pound, her own jaw aching in sympathy. The tooth shatters on the fourth try, its pieces splintering into the plastic bag.

“Now what?” Quentin asks.

The pulp is brownish, slight . . . but most definitely there. “Now,” she says, “you wait.”

Quentin, who is unused to staying up in graveyards all night and then driving to the lab in Augusta, falls asleep on a bank of chairs in the lobby. When he feels a cool hand on the back of his neck, he startles awake, sitting up so quickly he is momentarily dizzy. Frankie stands before him, holding out a report. “And?” he asks.

“The tooth pulp was chimeric.”

“English?”

Frankie sits down beside him. “The reason we test tooth pulp is because it has blood cells in it ... but also tissue cells. For you and me and most people, the DNA in both of those cells will be the same. But if someone gets a bone marrow transplant, they're going to show a mixture of two DNA profiles in their tooth pulp. The first profile will be the DNA they were born with, and that'll be in the tissue cells. The second profile will be the DNA that came from their marrow donor, and will be in the blood cells. In this sample, the suspect's tooth pulp yielded a mixture.“ Quentin frowns at the numbers on the page. ”So-“ ”So here's your proof,“ Frankie says. ”Somebody else perved that kid.”

After Fisher calls me with the news, I go right into the bathroom and throw up. Again, and again, until there is nothing left in my stomach but the guilt. The truth is, a man was killed by my own hand, a man who deserved no punishment. What does this make me?

I want to shower until I don't feel dirty; I want to strip off my own skin. But the horror is at the heart of me. Cut a gut feeling, watch yourself bleed to death.

Like I watched him.

In the hallway, I brush past Caleb, who has not been speaking to me anyway. There are no more words between us, each one has a charge on it, an ion that might attach to either him or to me and push us farther apart. In my bed room, I kick off my shoes and crawl fully dressed under the covers. I pull them up over my head; breathe in the same cocoon. If you pass out, and there's still no air, what will happen?

I can't get warm. This is where I will stay, because now any of my decisions may be suspect. Better to do nothing at all, than to take another risk that might change the world.

It's an instinct, Patrick realizes-to want to hurt someone as badly as they've hurt you. There were moments in his career in the military police that his arrests became violent, blood running over his hands that felt like a balm at the time. Now, he understands that the theory can go one step further: It's an instinct to want to hurt someone as badly as they've hurt someone you care about. This is the only explanation he can offer for sitting on a 757 en route from Dallas-Fort Worth to New Orleans.

The question isn't what he would do for Nina. “Anything,” Patrick would answer, without hesitation. She had expressly warned him away from hunting down Arthur Gwynne, and all of Patrick's actions up to this point could be classified as information-seeking, but even he could not couch the truth, now: He had no reason to fly to Louisiana, if not to meet this man face-to-face.

Even now, he cannot tell himself what is going to happen. He has spent his life guided by principle and rules-in the Navy, as a cop, as an unrequited lover. But rules only work when everyone plays by them. What happens when someone doesn't, and the fallout bleeds right into his life? What's stronger-the need to uphold the law, or the motive to turn one's back on it?

It has been shattering for Patrick to realize that the criminal mind is not all that far away from that of a rational man. It comes down, really, to the power of a craving. Addicts will sell their own bodies for another gram of coke. Arsonists will put their own lives in danger to feel something go up in flames around them. Patrick has always believed, as an officer of the law, he is above this driving need. But what if your obsession has nothing to do with drugs or thrills or money? What if what you want most in the world is to recapture the way life was a week, a month, a year ago-and you are willing to do whatever it takes?

This was Nina's error; she wrongly equated stopping time with turning it backward. And he couldn't even blame her, because he'd made the same mistake, every time he was in her company.

The question Patrick knew he should be asking was not what he would do for Nina . . . but what he wouldn't.

The flight attendant pushes the beverage cart like a baby carriage, braking beside Patrick's row. “What can I get for you?” she asks. Her smile reminds him of Nathaniel's Halloween mask from last year.

“Tomato juice. No ice.”

The man sitting beside Patrick folds his newspaper. “Tomato juice and vodka,“ he says, grinning through his thick Texan drawl. ”Yes, ice.“ They both take a sip of their drinks as the flight attendant moves on. The man glances down at his newspaper and shakes his head. ”Ought to fry the sumbitch,” he mutters.

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, it's this murder case. Y'all must have heard about it ... there's some fool who wants an eleventh hour pardon from death row because she's found Jesus. Truth is, the governor's afraid to give her the cocktail because she's a woman.”

Patrick has always been in favor of capital punishment. But he hears himself say, “Seems reasonable.”

“Guess you're one of those Yankee left-wingers,” the man scoffs. “Me, I think it don't matter if you've got a pecker or not. You shoot someone in the back of the head at a convenience store, you pay the price. You know?” He shrugs, then finishes his drink. “You flying out on business or pleasure?”

“Business.”

“Me, too. I'm in sales. Hav-A-Heart traps,” he confides, as if this is privileged information.

“I'm a lawyer with the ACLU,” Patrick lies. “I'm flying down to plead that woman's case to the governor.”

The salesman goes red in the face. “Well. I didn't mean no disrespect-”

“Like hell you didn't.”

He folds his newspaper again, and stuffs it into the seat pocket in front of him. “Even you bleeding hearts can't save them all.”

“One,” Patrick answers. “That's all I'm hoping for.” There is a woman wearing my clothes and my skin and my smell but it isn't me. Sin is like ink, it bleeds into a person, coloring, making you someone other than you used to be. And it's indelible. Try as much as you want, you cannot get yourself back.

Words can't pull me back from the edge. Neither can daylight. This isn't some thing to get over, it is an atmosphere I need to learn to breathe. Grow gills for transgression, take it into my lungs with every gasp.

It is a startling thing. I wonder who this person is, going through the motions of my life. I want to take her hand.

And then I want to push her, hard, off a cliff.

Patrick finds himself peeling off layers of clothing as he walks through the streets of Belle Chasse, Louisiana, past wrought-iron gates and ivy-trellised courtyards. Christmas looks wrong in this climate; the decorations seem to be sweating in the humid heat. He wonders how a Louisiana boy like Glen Szyszynski ever survived so far north.

But he already knows the answer. Growing up among Cajuns and the Creoles wasn't all that far a stretch from tending to the Acadians in his parish. The proof of that rests in his breast pocket, public records copied by a clerk at the Louisiana Vital Records Registry in New Orleans. Arthur Gwynne, born 10/23/43 to Cecilia Marquette Gwynne and her husband, Alexander Gwynne. Four years later, the marriage of Cecelia Marquette Gwynne, widowed, to Teodor Szyszynski. And in 1951, the birth of Glen. Half-brothers.

Szyszynski's will was last revised in 1994; it is entirely possible that Arthur Gwynne is no longer a member of the Belle Chasse community. But it is a starting point. Priests don't go unnoticed in a predominantly Catholic town; if Gwynne had any contact at all with his neighbors, Patrick knows he can pick up a paper trail and track his whereabouts from there. To this end, there is another clue in his pocket, one ripped from the rear of a phone book. Churches. The largest one is Our Lady of Mercy.

He doesn't let himself think what he will do with the information, once he gets it.

Patrick turns the corner, and the cathedral comes into view. He jogs up the stone steps and enters the nave. Immediately in front of him is a pool of Holy Water. Flickering candles cast waves on the walls, and the reflection from a stained-glass window bleeds a brilliant puddle on the mosaic floor. Above the altar, a cypress carving of Jesus on the cross looms like an omen. It smells of Catholicism: beeswax and starch and darkness and peace, all of which bring Patrick back to his youth. He finds himself unconsciously making the sign of the cross as he slides into a pew at the rear of the building. Four women nod their heads in prayer, their faith settling softly around them, like the skirts of Confederate belles. Another sobs quietly into her hands while a priest comforts her in whispers. Patrick waits patiently, running his hands along the bright, polished wood and whistling under his breath. Suddenly the hair stands up on the back of his neck. Walking along the lip of the pew behind him is a cat. Its tail strokes Patrick on the nape again, and he lets out his breath in a rush. “You scared the hell out of me,” he murmurs, and then glances at the carving of Jesus. “The heck,” he amends. The cat blinks at him, then leaps with grace into the arms of the priest who has come up beside Patrick. “You know better,” the priest scolds. It takes Patrick a moment to realize the cleric is speaking to his kitten. “E xcuse me. I'm trying to locate a Father Arthur Gwynne.”

“Well.” The man smiles. “You found me.”

Every time Nathaniel tries to see his mother, she's sleeping. Even when it's light outside; even when it's time for Franklin on Nickelodeon. Leave her alone, his father says. It's what she wants. But Nathaniel doesn't think that's what his mother wants at all. He thinks about how sometimes in the middle of the night he wakes up dreaming of spiders under his skin and screams that don't go away, and the only thing that keeps him from running out of the room is how dark it is and how far it seems from his bed to the door.

“We have to do something,” Nathaniel tells his father, after it has been three days, and his mother is still asleep.

But his father's face squeezes up at the top, like it does when Nathaniel is yelling too loud while he's having his hair washed and the sound bounces around the bathroom. “There's nothing we can do,” he tells Nathaniel. It's not true. Nathaniel knows this. So when his father goes outside to put the trash cans at the end of the driveway (Two minutes, Nathaniel. . . you can sit here and be good for two minutes, can't you?) Nathaniel waits until he can no longer hear the scratch-drag on the gravel and then bolts upstairs to his bedroom. He overturns his garbage can to use as a stool and takes what he needs from his dresser. He twists the knob to his parents' room quietly, tiptoes inside as if the floor is made of cotton.

It takes two tries to turn on the reading lamp near his mother's side of the bed, and then Nathaniel crawls on top of the covers. His mother isn't there at all, just the great swollen shape under the blankets that doesn't even move when he calls her name. He pokes at it, frowns. Then he pulls away the sheet.

The Thing That Isn't His Mother moans and squints in the sudden light. Her hair is wild and matted, like the brown sheep at the petting zoo. Her eyes look like they've fallen too deep in her face, and grooves run the length of her mouth. She smells of sadness. She blinks once at Nathaniel, as if he might be something she remembers but can't quite fish to the front of her mind. Then she pulls the blankets over her head again and rolls away from him.

“Mommy?” Nathaniel whispers, because this place cries for quiet. “Mommy, I know what you need.”

Nathaniel has been thinking about it, and he remembers what it felt like to be stuck in a dark, dark place and not be able to explain it. And he also remembers what she did, back then, for him. So he takes the sign-language binder he got from Dr. Robichaud and slips it under the blankets, into his mother's hands.

He holds his breath while her hands trace the edges and rifle through the pages. There is a sound Nathaniel has never heard before-like the world opening up at the start of an earthquake, or maybe a heart breaking-and the binder slips from beneath the sheets, cracking open onto the floor. Suddenly the comforter rises like the hinged jaw of a white whale and he finds himself swallowed whole.

Then he is in the spot where he put the sign-language book, smack in the middle of her arms. She holds him so tight there is no room for words between them, spoken or signed. And it doesn't matter one bit, because Nathaniel understands exactly what his mother is telling him.

Christ, I think, wincing. Turn off the lights.

But Fisher starts laying out papers and briefs on the blankets, as if it is every day that he conducts meetings with a client too exhausted to leave her bedroom. Then again, what do I know? Maybe he does.

“Go away,” I moan.

“Bottom line: He had a bone marrow transplant,” Fisher says briskly. “You shot the wrong priest. So we need to figure out how to use that to our best advantage and get you off.” Before he remembers to check himself, his eyes meet mine, and he cannot hide it: the shock and, yes, distaste of seeing me like this. Unwashed, undressed, uncaring.

Yes, look, Fisher, I think. Now you don't have to pretend I'm crazy. I roll onto my side, and some of the papers flutter off the edge of the bed.

“You don't have to play this game with me, Nina,” Fisher sighs. “You hired me so that you won't go to jail, and goddammit, you're not going to jail.“ He pauses, as if he is about to tell me something important, but what he says doesn't matter at all. ”I've already filed the paperwork requesting a jury, but you know, we can waive it at the last minute.“ His eyes take in my nightgown, my tangled hair. ”It might be easier to convince one person that . . . that you were insane.”

I pull the covers over my head.

“We got the report back from O'Brien. You did a nice job, Nina. I'll leave it for you to look over ...”

In the dark under here, I begin to hum, so that I can't hear him.

“Well.”

I stick my fingers in my ears.

“I don't think there's anything else.” I feel a commotion to my left as he gathers his files. “I'll be in touch after Christmas.” He begins to walk away from me, his expensive shoes striking the carpet like rumors.

I have killed a man; I have killed a man. This has become a part of me, like the color of my eyes or the birthmark on my right shoulder blade. I have killed a man, and nothing I do can take that away.

I pull the covers down from my face just as he reaches the door. “Fisher,” I say, the first word I've spoken in days.

He turns, smiles.

“I'm taking the stand.”

That smile vanishes. “No you're not.”

“I am.”

He approaches the bed again. “If you take the stand, Brown is going to rip you to shreds. If you take the stand, even I can't help you.” I stare at him, unblinking, for a lifetime. “So?” I say.

“Someone wants to talk to you,” Caleb announces, and he drops the portable phone on the bed. When I don't bother to reach for it, Caleb seems to think twice. “It's Patrick,” he adds.

Once, on a trip to the beach, I let Nathaniel bury me in the sand. It took so long that the hills enclosing my legs-the spot where he'd started-had dried and hardened. The weight of the beach pressed down on my chest, and I remember feeling claustrophobic as his small hands built a dune around me. When I finally did move, I was a Titan, rising from the earth with enough leashed power to topple gods.

Now, I watch my hand crawl across the covers toward the phone, and I cannot stop it. As it turns out, there is one thing strong enough to seduce me away from my careful paralysis and self-pity-the possibility of action. And even though I have looked the consequences right in their yellow-wolf eyes, it turns out I am still addicted. Hello, my name is Nina, and I need to know where he is.

“Patrick?” I press the receiver to my ear.

“I found him. Nina, he's in Louisiana. A town called Belle Chasse. He's a priest.”

All my breath leaves my lungs in a rush. “You arrested him.” There is a hesitation. “No.”

As I sit up, the covers fall away. “Did you . . .”I cannot finish. There is a part of me hoping so hard that he will tell me something horrible, something I desperately want to hear. And there is another part of me hoping that whatever I have turned into has not poisoned him too.

“I talked to the guy. But I couldn't let him know I was onto him, or that I was even from Maine. You remember going through this at the beginning, with Nathaniel-tip off a molester and he's going to run, and we'll never get a confession. Gwynne's even more cagey, because he knows his half-brother was killed due to an allegation of child sexual abuse that he committed himself.” Patrick hesitates. “So instead I said I was getting married and looking for a church for the ceremony. It was the first thing that came to mind.” Tears spring to my eyes. He was within Patrick's grasp, and still nothing has happened. “Arrest him. For God's sake, Patrick, get off this phone and run back there-”

“Nina, stop. I'm not a cop in Louisiana. The crime didn't happen here. I need an arrest warrant in Maine before I can get a fugitive charge lodged against Gwynne in Louisiana, and even then, he might fight extradition.” He hesitates. “And what do you imagine my boss will say when he finds out I'm using my shield to dig up information about a case that I haven't even been assigned to?”

“But Patrick . . . you found him.”

“I know. And he's going to be punished.” There is a silence. "Just not today."

He asks me if I am all right, and I lie to him. How can I be all right?

I am back where I started. Except now, after I am tried for the murder of an innocent man, Nathaniel will be embroiled in another trial. While I sit in jail, he'll have to face his abuser, drag back the nightmare. Nathaniel will suffer; he will hurt.

Patrick says good-bye, and I hang up the phone. I stare at the receiver in my hand for a minute, rub the edge of the smooth plastic.

The first time, I had much more to lose.

“What are you doing?”

My head pops through the turtleneck to find Caleb standing in the bedroom.

“What does it look like I'm doing?” I button my jeans. Stuff my feet into my clogs.

“Patrick got you out of bed,” he says, and there is a note in his voice that strikes off-chord.

“Patrick gave me information that got me out of bed,” I correct. I try to move around Caleb, but he blocks my exit. “Please. I have to go somewhere.”

“Nina, you're not going anywhere. The bracelet.”

I look at my husband's face. There are lines on his brow I cannot remember seeing; with no small shock I realize I have put them there.

I owe him this.

So I put my hand on his arm, lead him to the bed, have him sit beside me on the edge. “Patrick found the name of the bone marrow donor. He's the priest that came to visit St. Anne's this October. The one with the cat. His name is Arthur Gwynne, and he works at a church in Belle Chasse, Louisiana.” Caleb's face goes pale. “Why . . . why are you telling me this?” Because the first time, I acted alone, when I should have at least told you my plans. Because when they ask you in court, you will not have to testify. “Because,” I say, “it's not finished yet.”

He reels back. “Nina. No.” I get up, but he catches my wrist, pulls me up close to his face. My arm, twisted, hurts. “What are you gonna do? Break your house arrest to go kill another priest? One life sentence isn't enough for you? ”

“They have the death penalty in Louisiana,” I shoot back. My response is a guillotine, severing us. Caleb releases me so quickly I stumble and fall onto the floor. “Is that what you want?” he asks quietly. “ Are you that selfish?”

“Selfish?” By now I am crying, hard. “I'm doing this for our son.”

“You're doing this for yourself, Nina. If you were thinking of Nathaniel, even a little, you'd concentrate on being his mother. You'd get out of bed and get on with your life and let the legal system deal with Gwynne.”

“The legal system. You want me to wait for the courts to get around to charging this bastard? While he rapes ten, twenty other children? And then wait some more while the governors of our states fight over who gets the honor of holding his trial? And then wait again while Nathaniel testifies against the son of a bitch? And watch Gwynne get a sentence that ends before our son even stops having nightmares about what was done to him?” I draw in a long, shaky breath. “There's your legal system, Caleb. Is it worth waiting for?”

When he doesn't answer, I get to my feet. “I'm already going to prison for killing a man. I don't have a life anymore. But Nathaniel can.”

“You want your son to grow up without you?” Caleb's voice breaks. “Let me save you the trouble.”

Standing abruptly, he leaves the bedroom, calling Nathaniel's name. “Hey, buddy,” I hear him say. “We're going on an adventure.” My hands and feet go numb. But I manage to get to Nathaniel's bedroom, and find Caleb haphazardly stuffing clothes into a Batman knapsack. "What . . . what are you doing?"

“What does it look like I'm doing?” Caleb replies, an echo of my own earlier words.

Nathaniel jumps up and down on his bed. His hair flies to the sides like silk. “You can't take him away from me.”

Caleb zips shut the bag. “Why not? You were willing to take yourself away from him.” He turns to Nathaniel, forces a smile. “You ready?” he asks, and Nathaniel leaps into his outstretched arm.

“Bye, Mommy!” he crows. “We're on an adventure!”

“I know.” Smiling is hard, with this knot in my throat. “I heard.” Caleb carries him past me. There is the thunder of footsteps on the stairs, and the definitive slam of a door. The engine of Caleb's truck, revving and reversing down the driveway. Then it is so quiet I can hear my own misgivings, small susurrations in the air around me. I sink onto Nathaniel's bed, into sheets that smell of crayons and gingerbread. The fact of the matter is, I cannot leave this house. The moment I do, police cars will come screaming up behind me. I will be arrested before I ever board a plane.

Caleb has succeeded; he's stopped me from doing what I so badly want to. Because he knows if I do walk out that door now, I won't go after Arthur Gwynne at all. I'll be searching for my son.

Three days later Caleb has not called me. I have tried every hotel and motel in the area, but if he is staying at one, it's not under his own name. It's Christmas Eve, though, and surely they will come back. Caleb is a big one for having holiday traditions, and to this end I have wrapped all of Nathaniel's Christmas presents-ones I've stored in the attic all year. From the dwindling supply of food in the refrigerator I have cooked a chicken and made celery soup; I have set the table with our fancy wedding china.

I have cleaned up, too, because I want Caleb to notice that the moment he walks through the door. Maybe if he sees a difference on the outside, he will understand that I'm different within, too. My hair is coiled into a French twist, and I'm wearing black velvet pants and a red blouse. In my ears are the present Nathaniel gave me last Christmas-little snowman earrings made from Sculpy clay.

And yet, this is all just a surface glaze. My eyes are ringed with circles-I have not slept since they left, as if this is some kind of cosmic punishment for dozing away the days when we were all together. I walk the halls at night, trying to find the spots in the carpet that have been worn down by Nathaniel's running feet. I stare at old photographs. I haunt my own home. We have no tree, because I wasn't able to go out to chop one down. It's a tradition for us to walk our property the Saturday before Christmas and pick one out as a family. But then, we have not been much of a family this holiday season.

By four P.M. I've lit candles and put on a Christmas CD. I sit with my hands folded in my lap and wait.

It's something I'm working on.

At four-thirty, it begins to snow. I rearrange all of Nathaniel's presents in size order. I wonder if there will be enough of an accumulation for him to sled down the back hill on the Flexible Flyer that stands propped against the wall, festooned with a bow.

Ten minutes later, I hear the heavy chug of a truck coming down the driveway. I leap to my feet, take one last nervous look around, and throw open the door with a bright smile. The UPS man, weary and dusted with snowflakes, stands on my porch with a package. “Nina Frost?” he asks in a monotone. I take the parcel as he wishes me a Merry Christmas. Inside, on the couch, I tear it open. A leather-bound desk calendar for the year 2002, stamped on the inner cover with the name of Fisher's law office. HAPPY HOLIDAYS fr om Carrington, Whitcomb, Horoby, and Platt, Esqs. “This will come in so handy,” I say aloud, “after I'm sentenced.”

When the stars shyly push through the night sky, I turn off the stereo. I look out the window, watch the driveway get erased by snow.

Even before Patrick got his divorce, he'd sign up to work on Christmas. Sometimes, he even does double shifts. The calls most often bring him to the homes of the elderly, reporting a strange bump or a suspicious car that's disappeared by the time Patrick arrives. What these people want is the company on a night when no one else is alone.

“Merry Christmas,” he says, backing away from the home of Maisie Jenkins, eighty-two years old, a recent widow.

“God bless,” she calls back, and goes into a home as empty as the one that Patrick is about to return to.

He could go visit Nina, but surely Caleb has brought Nathaniel back for the night. No, Patrick wouldn't interrupt that. Instead he gets into his car and drives down the slick streets of Biddeford. Christmas lights glitter like jewels on porches, inside windows, as if the world has been strewn with an embarrassment of riches. Cruising slowly, he imagines children asleep. What the hell are sugar plums, anyway?

Suddenly, a bright blur barrels across the range of Patrick's headlights, and he brakes hard. He steers into the skid and avoids hitting the person who's run across the road. Getting out of the car, he rushes to the side of the fallen man. “Sir,” Patrick asks, “are you all right?” The man rolls over. He is dressed in a Santa suit, and alcohol fumes rise from his phony cotton beard. “St. Nick, to you, boyo. Get it straight.” Patrick helps him sit up. “Did you hurt anything?”

“Lay off.” Santa struggles away from him. “I could sue you.”

“For not hitting you? I doubt it.”

“Reckless operation of a vehicle. You're probably drunk.” At that, Patrick laughs. “As opposed to you?”

“I haven't had a drop!”

“Okay, Santa.” Patrick hauls him to his feet. “You got somewhere to call home?”

“I gotta get my sleigh.”

“Sure you do.” With a bracing arm, he steers the man toward his cruiser.

“The reindeer, they chew up the shingles if I leave them too long.”

“Of course.”

“I'm not getting in there. I'm not finished yet, you know.” Patrick opens the rear door. “I'll take the chance, Pop. Go on. I'll take you down to a nice warm bunk to sleep this off.”

Santa shakes his head. “My old lady'll kill me.”

“Mrs. Claus will get over it.”

His smile fades as he looks at Patrick. “C'mon, officer. Cut me a little slack. You know what it's like to go home to a woman you love, who just wishes you'd stay the hell away?”

Patrick ducks him into the car, with maybe a little too much force. No, he doesn't know what it's like. He can't get past the first part of that sentence: You know what it's like to go home to a woman you love?

By the time he gets to the station, Santa is unconscious, and has to be hauled into the building by Patrick and the desk officer. Patrick punches out on the clock, gets into his own truck. But instead of driving home, he heads in the opposite direction, past Nina's house. Just to make sure everything's all right. It is something he has not done with regularity since the year he returned to Biddeford, when Nina and Caleb were already married. He would drive by on the graveyard shift and see all the lights out, save the one in their bedroom. An extra dose of security, or so he told himself back then.

Years later, he still doesn't believe it.

It is supposed to be a big deal, Nathaniel knows. Not only does he get to stay up extra late on Christmas Eve, but he can open as many presents as he wants, which is all of them. And they're staying in a real live old castle, in a whole new country called Canada.

Their room at this castle-hotel has a fireplace in it, and a bird that looks real but is dead. Stuffed, that's what his father called it, and maybe it did look like it had eaten too much, although Nathaniel doesn't think you can die from that. There are two huge beds and the kinds of pillows that squinch when you lie on them, instead of popping right back.

Everyone talks a different language, one Nathaniel doesn't understand, and that makes him think of his mother.

He has opened a remote-control truck, a stuffed kangaroo, a helicopter. Matchbox cars in so many colors it makes him dizzy. Two computer games and a tiny pinball machine he can hold in his hand. The room is littered with wrapping paper, which his father is busy feeding into the mouth of the fire.

“That's some haul,” he muses, smiling at Nathaniel. His father has been letting Nathaniel call the shots. To that end, they got to play at a fort the whole day, and ride up and down a cable car, the fun something, Nathaniel forgets. They went to a restaurant with a big moose he admounted outside and Nathaniel got to order five desserts. They went back to the room and opened their presents, saving their stockings for tomorrow. They have done everything Nathaniel has asked, which never happens when he is at home.

“So,” his father says. “What's next?”

But all Nathaniel wants to do is make it the way it used to be. The doorbell rings at eleven, and it's a Christmas tree. Then Patrick's face pokes through the branches, from behind the enormous balsam. “Hi,” he says. My face feels rubbery, this smile strange upon it. “Hi.”

“I brought you a tree.”

“I noticed.” Stepping back, I let him into the house. He props the tree against the wall, needles raining down around our feet. “Caleb's truck isn't here.”

“Neither's Caleb. Or Nathaniel.”

Patrick's eyes darken. “Oh, Nina. Christ, I'm sorry.”

“Don't be.” I give him my best grin. “I have a tree now. And someone to help me eat Christmas Eve dinner.”

“Why, Miz Maurier, I'd be delighted.” At the same moment, we realize Patrick's mistake-calling me by my maiden name, the name by which he first knew me. But neither one of us bothers to make the correction.

“Come on in. I'll get the food out of the fridge.”

“In a second.” He runs out to his car, and returns with several Wal-Mart shopping bags. Some are tied with ribbons. “Merry Christmas.” An afterthought, he leans forward and kisses me on the cheek.

“You smell like bourbon.”

“That would be Santa,” Patrick says. “I had the unparalleled pleasure of sticking St. Nick in a cell to sleep off a good drunk.” As he talks, he starts unpacking the bags. Cracker Jacks, Cheetos, Chex Mix. Nonalcoholic champagne. “There wasn't much open,” he apologizes.

Picking up the fake champagne, I turn it over in my hands. “Not even gonna let me get trashed, huh?”

“Not if it gets you busted.” Patrick meets my gaze. “You know the rules, Nina.”

And because he has always known what is right for me, I follow him into the living room, where we set up the tree in the empty stand. We light a fire, and then hang ornaments from boxes I keep tucked in the attic. “I remember this one,” Patrick says, pulling out a delicate glass teardrop with a figurine inside. “There used to be two.”

“And then you sat on one.”

“I thought your mother was going to kill me.”

“I think she would have, but you were already bleeding-” Patrick bursts out laughing. “And you kept pointing at me, and saying, 'He's cut on the butt.'” He hangs the teardrop on the tree, at chest level. “I'll have you know, there's still a scar.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Wanna see?”

He is joking, his eyes sparkling. But all the same, I have to pretend I am busy with something else.

When we are finished, we sit down on the couch and eat cold chicken and Chex Mix. Our shoulders brush, and I remember how we used to fall asleep on the floating dock in the town swimming pond, the sun beating down on our faces and chests and heating our skin to the same exact temperature. Patrick puts the other Wal-Mart bags beneath the tree. “You have to promise me you'll wait till the morning to open them.”

It strikes me then; he is going.

“But the snow . . .”

He shrugs. “Four-wheel drive. I'll be fine.”

I twirl my glass, so that the fake champagne swirls inside. “Please,” I say, that's all. It was bad enough, before. Now that Patrick's been here, his voice filling the living room, his body spanning the space beside mine, it will seem that much emptier when he leaves.

“It's already tomorrow.” Patrick points to the clock: 12:14 A.M. “Merry Christmas.” He pushes one of the plastic bags into my lap.

“But I haven't gotten you anything.” I do not say what I am thinking: that in all the years since Patrick has returned to Biddeford, he has not given me a Christmas gift. He brings presents for Nathaniel, but there is an unspoken agreement between us-anything more would be tightrope-walking on a line of propriety.

“Just open it.”

Inside the first Wal-Mart bag is a pup tent. Inside the second, a flashlight and a brand-new game of Clue. A smile darts across Patrick's face. “Now's your chance to beat me, not that you can.”

Delighted, I grin right back. “I'm going to whip you.” We pull the tent out of its protective pouch and erect it in front of the Christmas tree. There is barely room enough for two, and yet we both crawl inside. “Tents have gotten smaller, I think.”

“No, we've gotten bigger.” Patrick sets up the game board between our crossed legs. “I'm even going to let you go first.”

“You're a prince among men,” I say, and we start to play. Each roll of the die reverses a year, until it is easy to imagine that the snow outside is a field of Queen Anne's lace; that this tournament is life-or-death; that the world is no larger than Patrick and me and a backyard campsite. Our knees bump hard and our laughter fills the tiny vinyl pyramid. The winking strand on the Christmas tree, out there, might be lightning bugs. The flames behind us, a bonfire. Patrick takes me back, and that is the best present I could ever receive.

He wins, by the way. It is Miss Scarlett, in the library, with the wrench.

“I demand a rematch,” I announce.

Patrick has to catch his breath; he's laughing that hard. “How many years did you go to college?”

“Shut up, Patrick, and start over.”

"No way. I'm quitting while I'm ahead. By-what is it?-three hundred games?"

I grab for his game piece, but he holds it out of my reach. “You're such a pain in the ass,” I say.

“And you're a sore loser.” He jerks his hand higher, and in an effort to reach it, I knock the board sideways and overturn the tent as well. We go down in a tumble of vinyl and Clue cards and land on our sides, cramped and tangled. “Next time I buy you a tent,” Patrick says, smiling, “I'm springing for the next size up.”

My hand falls onto his cheek, and he goes absolutely still. His pale eyes fix on mine, a dare. “Patrick,” I whisper. “Merry Christmas.” And I kiss him. Almost as quickly he jerks away from me. I can't even look at him, now. I cannot believe that I have done this. But then his hand curves around my jaw, and he kisses me back as if he is pouring his soul into me. We bump teeth and noses, we scratch and we scrape, and through this we do not break apart. The ASL sign for friends: two index fingers, locked at the first knuckles. Somehow we fall out of the tent. The fire is hot on the right side of my face, and Patrick's fingers are wrapped in my hair. This is bad, I know this is bad, but there is a place in me for him. It feels like he was first, before anyone else. And I think, not for the first time, that what is immoral is not always wrong.

Drawing back on my elbows, I stare down at him. “Why did you get divorced?”

“Why do you think?” he answers softly.

I unbutton my blouse and then, blushing, pull it together again. Patrick covers my hands with his own and slides the sheer sleeves down. Then he pulls off his shirt, and I touch my fingers lightly to his chest, traveling a landscape that is not Caleb.

“Don't let him in,” Patrick begs, because he has always been able to think my thoughts. I kiss across his nipples, down the arrow of black hair that disappears beneath his trousers. My hands work at the belt, until I am holding him in my hands. Shifting lower, I rake him into my mouth.

In an instant he has yanked me up by the hair, crushed me to his chest. His heart is beating so fast, a summons. “Sorry,” he breaths into my shoulder. “ Too much. All of you, it's too much.”

After a moment, he tastes his way down me. I try not to think of my soft belly, my stretch marks, my flaws. These are the things you do not have to worry about, in a marriage. “I'm not . . . you know.”

“You're not what?” His words are a puff of breath between my legs.

“Patrick.” I yank at his hair. But his finger slides inside, and I am falling. He rises over me, holds me close, fits. We move as if we have been doing this forever. Then Patrick rears back, pulls out, and comes between us. It binds us, skin to skin, a viscous guilt.

“I couldn't-”

“I know.” I touch my fingers to his lips.

“Nina.” His eyes drift shut. “I love you.”

“I know that too.” That is all I can allow myself to say, now. I touch the slope of his shoulders, the line of his spine. I try to commit this to memory.

“Nina.” Patrick hides a grin in the hollow of my neck. “I'm still better at Clue.”

He falls asleep in my embrace, and I watch him. That's when I tell him what I cannot manage to tell anyone else. I make a fist, the letter S, and move it in a circle over his heart. It is the truest way I know to say I'm sorry. Patrick wakes up when the sun is a live wire at the line of the horizon. He to uches his hand to Nina's shoulder, and then to his own chest, just to make sure this is real. He lies back, stares into the glowing coals of the fireplace, and tries to wish away morning.

But it will come, and with it, all the explanations. And in spite of the fact that he knows Nina better than she knows herself, he is not sure which excuse she will choose. She has made a living out of judging people's misdeeds. Yet no matter what argument she uses, it will all sound the same to him: This should not have happened; this was a mistake.

There is only one thing Patrick wants to hear on her lips, and that is his own name.

Anything else-well, it would just chip away at this, and Patrick wants to hold the night intact. So he gently slides his arm out from beneath the sweet weight of Nina's head. He kisses her temple, he breathes deeply of her. He lets go of her, before she has a chance to let go of him.

The tent, standing upright, is the first thing I see. The second is the absence of Patrick. Sometime during that incredible, deep sleep, he left me. It is probably better this way.

By the time I've cleaned up our feast from the previous night and showered, I have nearly convinced myself that this is true. But I cannot imagine seeing Patrick again without picturing him leaning over me, his black hair brushing my face. And I don't think that the peace inside me, spread like honey in my blood, can be chalked up to Christmas.

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.

But have I? Does Fate ever play by the rules? There is a gulf as wide as an ocean between should and want, and I am drowning in it.

The doorbell rings, and I jump up from the couch, hurriedly wiping my eyes. Patrick, maybe back with coffee, or bagels. If he makes the choice to return, I'm absolved of blame. Even if it was what I was wishing for all along. But when I open the door, Caleb is standing on the porch, with Nathaniel in front of him. My son's smile is brighter than the dazzle of snow on the driveway, and for one panicked moment I peer over Caleb's shoulder to see whether the tracks made by Patrick's police cruiser have been covered over by the storm. Can you smell transgression, like a perfume deep in the skin? “Mommy!” Nathaniel shouts.

I lift him high, revel in the straight weight of him. My heart beats like a hummingbird in my throat. “Caleb.”

He will not look at me. “I'm not staying.”

This is a mercy visit, then. In minutes, Nathaniel will be gone. I hug him closer.

“Merry Christmas, Nina,” Caleb says. “I'll pick him up tomorrow.” He nods at me, then walks off the porch. Nathaniel chatters, his excitement wrappi ng us tighter as the truck pulls away. I study the footprints Caleb has left in the snowy driveway as if they are clues, the unlikely proof of a ghost that comes and goes.

III Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.

-Frangois, Due de La Rochefoucauld 254 Today in school Miss Lydia gave us a special snack.

First, we had a piece of lettuce with a raisin on it. This was an egg. Then we had a string cheese caterpillar.

Next came a chrysalis, a grape.

The last part was a piece of cinnamon bread, cookie-cuttered into the body of a butterfly.

After, we went outside and set free the monarchs that had been born in our classroom. One landed on my wrist. It looked different now, but I just knew this was the same caterpillar I found a week before and gave to Miss Lydia. Then it flew into the sun.

Sometimes things change so fast it makes my throat hurt from the inside out.