Thank you, Kitty, for your patience and impressive memory. Thank you, Martha, for putting up with me. And noticing things that don't work before they go too far. Thank you, everyone who wrote in house advice, especially Jael Lyn. It would have been a very weird house without help. Also, thank you Katherin, for all the help with geography, botany, and tourists.

Warning: animal injury

This story is a sequel to: On the Way Home

Late May 2008

Norma is wearing jeans and a dayglow green tee shirt. It is the first time I've ever seen her without a nurse's uniform. She leans out of the school bus, clinging to the door frame, and then hops, hen-like, to the edge of the ditch. She waves broadly.

I look around. "Anybody not ready?"

There is a chorus of "ready"s and I turn on my cell phone. 9.1.1. It is answered on the first ring.

"Morning, Bobbie. Everything quiet?"

"We're good to go."

"I am panicking and elderly. The only information you have is that there is a school bus in a ditch and two crumpled cars somewhere on Wenatachee Road."

"Got it," she says. "Start the clock."

I hit 'off' and write down "8:53:30" on my clipboard. "You sure you don't mind taking the bus?" Norma asks. "It's all claustrophobic and weird, with the floor tilted like that."

"No problem."

As I get on, one of the kids yells, "Hey, Deputy! Who's your tailor?" I am also wearing a green tee shirt. They are all high school kids--Future Farmers of America doing an official community service--and this passes as high comedy.

We talk about the girls varsity basketball team until we hear sirens in the distance. A silence falls over the kids, until one says, "Wow. I'm a little nervous."

"Stage fright," I say. "After all, this is your big break into show business." They hastily swallow their mirth: the first car has arrived. I turn on the digital videocam.

Dave comes charging onto the bus at 8:56:17. For once he doesn't slip me a smile--theoretically, I am not even really here. But he does come as close to the back of the bus (where I am) as he can before starting on the kids. Their information is on index cards, since, obviously, examining them would not tell anyone anything about their pretend injuries. Different rescue personnel get different cards (this was Norma's idea) to reflect the differences in their ability to assess.

Jim is next onto the bus, followed by Eddie, whom Jim is still keeping an eye on. Jim starts at the front, and almost immediately says, "Does anybody know first aid?"

There is a short pause, and then a girl across the aisle says, "Well. Um. I do. But--"

"Fine. Get over here."

"I can't." Abashed, she holds up an index card. "I'm unconscious."

The bus driver, who is pretending to be dead, starts to laugh.

"Right." Jim turns to the next kid. "You! Are you conscious?"

"Yeah."

"Grab her arm here and don't let go. You are applying direct pressure. Don't move."

The drill officially ends at 1:17, but everyone who doesn't have to be on duty elsewhere meets in the back of the hospital cafeteria for the initial performance review. That lasts two hours. Then the disaster committee meets for another hour. Later, when we have written up our reports and summarized the comments we will meet again to compile our recommendations.

When I finally make it back to the Sheriff's Office, Dave Couch slaps me on the shoulder and says, "Great disaster, Blair. Loved the bus. Where'd you get it?" Bless his heart. He isn't very subtle sometimes.

"The suspension's shot. It was on its way to the junkyard anyway."

Without looking up from her computer, Lorain calls, "Great outfit."

"Really? Because Jim was thinking of making dayglow green the new uniform." Like a zombie, I head to my desk to sort out what goes home with me, what gets filed. There was nothing to eat all day but coffee and donuts. I actually ate two of the donuts--they sit in my stomach like lead and threaten to make a repeat appearance.

"Sandburg?" Jim pokes his head out of the office long enough to call for me and then disappears again.

I follow him in. "Do you want a report?"

"How bad is it?" He hands me a bottle of sparkling mineral water.

"Response time was pretty good. Norma says triage took too long to set up. And transport was chaos. Part of that was this department."

"Yeah. No kidding."

"It wasn't all us. The EMTs were giving conflicting instructions."

"Don't spare us."

"No, I know that."

"But it's going to have to wait. Get your stuff, we need to go."

"Where?"

"The house. The logs arrived today."

"No, that was tomorrow." The water bottle wobbles. I couldn't have the date wrong, I couldn't.

"It was supposed to be tomorrow. They were early. I haven't been out to take a look yet."

The truck wheels have smushed the gravel in the drive every which way, and cut deep ruts in the ground where they wandered off the side. The logs are stacked up in four large piles, haphazardly arranged around the house bench. I take a deep breath and dig in the accordion folder for our copy of the invoice. "Is our assembly supervisor still coming tomorrow?"

"As of this afternoon when I called him."

"I don't believe this. I just don't believe this. They just show up and dump stuff with nobody here to meet them! I mean, what if some of it's not here?"

Jim looks me over. "You need to calm down. You've been way too tense lately."

"I have not."

"You chewed Sherri out for five minutes yesterday over a bowl of potpourri."

"Well, Jim, it's a police station, not a Victorian living room. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a professional environment."

"You're usually not quite so... what's the word I'm looking for here, Chief? 'Impolite'? 'Harsh'? 'Abusive'?"

"Jim, it wasn't like I--"

"You made her cry."

"The nasty stuff was giving me a headache. God knows what prolonged exposure would have done to you!"

Jim steps a little closer and says gently, "You need to calm down. Chill out. Take things as they come."

Right. Who taught him that, I wonder? "Oh, please--"

"Everything is under control."

"This is your idea of control?" I gesture wildly at four random-looking piles of logs. If they're not random, I certainly have no way to know.

"If there's been a mistake, we'll call them up and get it fixed," Jim says reasonably.

"Oh, sure, you say that! How do I read this, anyway? Jim, can you figure out--"

"Sandburg. Chill."

"Jim, we have no idea what's here. We didn't sign for this. This might not even be our order--"

"Panicking isn't going to help." He takes the page from my hand and sets it down on the nearest pile of logs. "If something's gone wrong, we can't handle it before tomorrow anyway."

"But, Jim--"

"And, if something went wrong, we will handle it tomorrow." He puts his hands firmly on my shoulders. "It will all work out. It's way too early in the process to get all agitated. Everything's going to be fine."

I look up at him. His eyes are calm and adoring and amused and tolerant. "Asshole," I whisper, my hands relaxing against his chest.

He smiles slightly and pulls me against him.

"You're doing this on purpose. You're taking advantage."

"Of what? You training yourself for a decade to be calm when you touch me?" He slides an arm around my waist.

"This is cheating."

A chuckle. "I didn't instill the habit, Chief." I lean into him, sighing. I actually do feel very calm now. A really good fake tends to kind of become the real thing, and early in our acquaintance I'd realized that I had to fake calm perfectly when I touched him because anything less was about the same as screaming hysterically in his ear. Bad idea when things were tight and Jim's senses were spiking. "I have to say, you did a pretty good job. Sometimes I could only tell you were upset by the smell."

"Jim--I wasn't trying to, to mislead you."

"I know," he says, sighing. "I always knew what you were feeling--when you were worried or upset or angry enough to rip my head off and feed it to me."

I laugh. "I've never been angry at you."

But he is still serious. "I remember, when I was blind you were absolutely livid," he says softly.

"Jim! I wasn't angry. Really. That wasn't your fault--"

He shakes his head. "No, you weren't angry at me for being careless, you were angry because I wouldn't check into the hospital and wouldn't take any leave time."

Oh. Well, yeah. 'Livid' pretty much described it. "Sorry. I tried, you know, not to take it out on you. I mean, I understood--"

He hugs me closer. It is late afternoon, and getting cooler. His arms feel warm and strong. "You didn't," he murmurs. "I could smell it on you and hear it in your voice and every once in a while you bitched to yourself in the bathroom about what a stubborn idiot I was, but I never once felt it in your hands. I never felt anything but--"

He stops, swallowing hard, and I manage a weak smile. "Well, I loved you a lot then."

He ruffles my hair. "More than you love me now?"

"Oh, much more. Familiarity breeds contempt, you know. Besides, you're getting old." I reach up to play with his bald spot.

He easily turns me and catches me in a head lock. "This would be a lot more convincing if you didn't smell like quite so much musk. If I didn't know better, I'd say you were completely in love with me. Absolutely besotted."

"I am not besotted." I squirm, looking for leverage. I could flip him forward, but he would crack his head on the logs, and that would be unkind. Which he knows.

"Let's christen the house."

"Um, it's not built yet."

"So?"

"What, here? Jim, we're in the open."

"Oooh. Somebody might sneak up on us. Yeah, wouldn't want that."

"Oh, sure. Right. You're going to keep watch. My big, strong sentinel who turns into this, this, this blind, deaf mole as soon as anybody starts licking the back of his knees."

"Anybody? Excuse me. Nobody but you licks my knees." He is laughing and blushing, and I slide free and haul him around to pin him against the pile of logs.

"Damn right."

"Well, ok then." We beam at each other for a moment, and then we get to work--counting the logs, not christening them. But thinking about christening them.

The company supervisor does show up on time the next morning. Ned. He is kind of earthy and over-macho and loud. Very earthy and over-macho and loud. I spend the whole first day we have him worried that Jim will get enticed into a pissing contest with this large alpha-male whose expertise we need. But Jim behaves himself.

It's like assembling a huge jigsaw puzzle. Besides Ned, we have two guys from town we hired to help. The prep for the site has already been done--lines for water and sewage, the hillside slightly cut to expand the bench and make room for the basement/garage, the foundation poured and tucked over the stemwall. I keep telling myself everything is under control, but frankly, I can't see it. I follow instructions and peer at the diagrams--but I can't envision where we're going. I can't see the forest for the trees. Or, the house for the logs, anyway.

We work long days, and in the evenings Jim goes in to spend a couple of hours at the department while I make dinner and work on my report for the disaster drill. By Thursday evening, we are both thoroughly filthy and tired, and about as sore as I have ever been (Jim is not admitting any pain), but the house is rising, and Jim is as happy as I have ever seen him.

That night, when Jim gets in from town, dinner has been ready for an hour and I am starting to worry. He pauses in his bee-line for the stove to plant a kiss on my head, and then dives ravenously at the pot of stew I've been keeping warm.

"Where've you been?"

"Meeting." He finds the rolls I wrapped in a towel and set aside, and manages to pick up three at once. "You remember Hetty Stewart?"

"Stewart? Yeah. She was the second lawn ornament robbery."

"She just bought a new bird bath and a two-foot high concrete goose." Jim is shoveling food in, wincing apologetically since I am still filling my plate. "She's putting them out tomorrow."

"Ah. Well. That shows a lot of faith in us. Since, you know, we haven't caught whoever took her flock of flamingos." I scowl. "What are we up to now, seven? Eight? Is there a lawn ornament left in Ithaca or Bickford?"

"She wants to be bait. She's going to dress the goose up as a--"

"She's gonna what?"

"Dress the goose up. Put clothes on it. She bought a cheerleader outfit."

I think about that. "She bought clothes for the cement goose?"

"Apparently that's what they're for. You dress them up for different occasions. She thought it would make good bait--portable, eye-catching, you know. A good target."

"Right. So she, what? Came in and suggested that the sheriff's department stake out her goose?"

I realize that I have nailed it exactly as Jim's eyes harden. "Sandburg, this has gone far enough. Some nut case or idiot teenager is making a laughing stock of my department and it is NOT going to go on."

"Well, no. No. Of course not," I say quickly.

"So we'll be staking out the Stewart house this weekend. Hopefully we'll get a bite fairly quickly and this won't drag out too long."

Well, that was possible. Hetty Stewart lived on the main road at the edge of Ithaca. Almost all the traffic going through town went right past her house. It wouldn't take the thief long to notice. According to the schedule, though, we would not finish the house until Saturday afternoon at the earliest. Damn. Short sleep Friday and Saturday then.

We go to bed early--not the cause for celebration that phrase implies. We're both exhausted and sore and looking towards sleep deprivation in the near future. But never mind; curled up in bed together, skin to skin, the tip of my nose brushing his chest is lovely and safe.

The next day we start on the second floor. I had thought it was all sailing over my head before, but it only gets more incomprehensible as things go on. I follow instructions and watch out for moving logs, all the while pressing bottled water on Jim and everybody else. I can wrap my mind around not dehydrating.

The day passes in a sweaty blur of unseasonably warm sunshine and aching shoulders. At five, when we send the guys home, the house looks surprisingly house-shaped--a bemusing development that takes me by surprise. Jim and I hurry home for a snack and a nap. By 11:30, we are making our way along a back alley-let in Ithaca, an overgrown path behind the half-dozen backyards of what can't even be called a residential district. There is no flashlight. I have one hand knotted in Jim's jacket, judging the ground by the movements of his body. He goes slow, so I don't trip or run into him.

Dark on darker. Branches scratch my face. Jim pulls me into the thicket of a big fir tree and we stand in silence for a few minutes. Jim is making sure nobody is looking around. He leads me out, into the lee of a house I don't recognize from the back.

I can't see a damn thing. I hear the car door open, but Hetty Stewart has obligingly turned the dome light off in her big Chevy, and climbing into the back seat is just a deeper dark. Jim's hands guide me. He is hunched with his back to the far door, his legs spread along the seat. He positions me in front of him, nudging me to slouch low on his chest. We are close, hiding here, and warm if the temperature drops tonight as it often does, but if we are seen outlined against the slightly lighter sky, the gig is off.

"Can you see?" I whisper.

"Just fine." His arm tightens around my waist. With the other hand he cracks the window, the better to hear. We discover a couple of worn throw pillows and a thermos of fresh coffee Hetty has left for us. I wonder if she has been seduced by the mystique of police work or if she is just feeling particularly civic minded. The coffee is good, though, so I don't speculate out loud.

So we wait, prepared to wait for a long time. The arm Jim has around me is warm and delightful, but we are on duty. We're both fairly tired, but again, that whole duty thing. Now and then we play a whispered round of twenty questions, to keep ourselves awake. The breeze coming in the cracked window smells cool and sweet.

The sky starts to lighten at quarter to five. Sighing, Jim nudges me towards the door, and we stumble out into the chill May morning. We are stiff. We are hungry. We are pissed at the idea of doing this again tonight.

There is time for breakfast at Mom's diner before heading back to the house site. Fortunately--very, very fortunately--it is a short day. We are done by two. We have exterior walls. We have interior walls. We have floors--sort of, if you are not too picky about what you mean by 'floor.' The roofer and floor guy and electrician are all scheduled for Monday. The plumber has been held up, which will make things awkward putting down the floor without the pipes in place, but I am assured we can 'work around' this. Except for that, things look pretty good, but I don't risk gloating.

After a nap and dinner, Jim and I are back in Hetty Stewart's car playing twenty questions. Around moon-rise, I notice Jim slipping a hand under my shirt. Even money he doesn't even realize he's doing it. I should stop him--this is not a habit we can afford on duty. I don't stop him, though. I'm just a puddle of mush where he is concerned.

It is another night of coming up with nothing. At five we head to the Sheriff's department--checking in and giving a report for our fruitless stakeout. Most of the lawn ornament jobs have been on weekends. But just in case, Jim tells the night supervisor to schedule someone else for a couple of days so we can get some rest.

Millie isn't thrilled. "I don't have the manpower, and frankly, Jimmy, I don't see the point."

"The point would be avoiding robberies."

"It's a petty crime. Whatever teenager or drunk is committing these little acts of vandalism will get bored and move on. In the meantime, I keep my guys watching the roads."

"Is that the kind of department we're running? We wait for the perps to get tired of making fools of us?"

Millie closes the file she is working on and plops it into her out box. "I don't see shifting our manpower for this. It's just about your pride--"

"And why isn't it about yours?"

Eddie, coming out of holding, casts a shocked glance at Jim and Millie and retreats. Apparently he has never seen them argue either. They go round and round on this for a while, while Eddie keeps his head down and I pretend to check over the two a.m. server back-up.

Millie gives in without giving up. Her parting shot is, "Yes, sir. I'll make arrangements in the schedule." Which means, I'll follow your orders--even when they're stupid--because you're in charge.

As we get back into the county car to head home, I ask, "What's the wasp under her hat?"

"I don't know, Sandburg. Am I her shrink?" I don't answer that, and at last Jim says, "They all happened on her watch. She thinks I'm stepping in because she hasn't handled it. Probably."

We spend most of the rest of Sunday sleeping. On Monday, Jim goes in early, and I stay at the house till noon, meeting workmen and getting them started on phase three of construction. So far things seem to be going pretty well, but I don't say that out loud. I don't want to jinx things. We alternate--one of us always goes to the site first thing in the morning for an hour, the other in the early afternoon. We manipulate the schedule, our-off time, and lunch in a complicated dance. Jim doesn't go out on patrol while I'm not there. There are enough meetings and paperwork for him to keep this from being too inconvenient. Usually, when Jim is out, I walk the streets of Ithaca with Shoemacher and Doris. Police presence and all that.

Thursday we switch to night shift, which means we can each spend half a day at the house, work, and still get enough sleep. We spend another night in that car, but nothing more interesting than a stray dog and a pair of necking high school kids wanders by.

By Friday, the roof is finished and the contractors have shifted to putting up walls in the bathroom--frame and drywall rather than logs. Jim does not go in the house when they're cutting drywall or handling fresh joint compound. I spend the morning helping hold the walls in place while they are nailgunned. The workmen don't quite know what to make of me--I think they have the idea that a cop, even off duty, should be a bit more intimidating than I am. But I am too profoundly pleased to be a convincing cop.

I hose off with well-water (the only running water we have until next week is the hose hook-up out back. Cold! Dear God!) and put on clean clothes before heading home for a proper shower. The big meal of the day is steak on the grill. Buffalo, and spinach salad--as badly as I want to spoil Jim, the impulse to get all controlling with his diet is at constant war with my impulse to get him, say, really expensive ice cream.

After a long nap, we are back in the car. "Tonight," Jim whispers. "Has to be. Friday night, the bars are open late, they've been fighting temptation for a week...." So we settle in, crouching low, waiting, glad that this old gas guzzler is so big.

Sure enough, at two-thirty we get our break. Jim squeezes my arm several seconds before a passing car turns off its lights and pulls over in front of the house. Jim holds his breath, listening. I hear car doors, but nothing else. Jim's hand on my arm keeps me still, although the suspense is burning in my blood. I can't see anything from here, I can't hear anything. From Jim's tension, I know that this is it, but....

His hand tightens on my shoulder. Now! I slide down onto the floor, getting out of the way so Jim can move. By touch, I find the door handle and tug, easing the door slowly open. The air moves behind me and I hear a slight rustle as Jim slinks out the other side.

Standing, at last I get my first view. Three shadows--fairly large, male, moving slowly--are clustered about a dozen yards away, right in the middle of the front yard. A sharp laugh from one of them, quickly stifled, and then, "My God, this is heavy!" and some more laughter.

"Sheriff's Department. Hold it right there." Jim's voice comes from ahead of me; he can see well enough to walk without falling down or making noise. I wait until the suspects have put the cement goose and the birdbath down and they are standing with their hands folded behind their heads, then I come carefully forward. I cover them while Jim reads them their rights. Teenagers, I realize. Not the biggest bust we've ever made. Hardly impressive enough to justify our elaborate set-up, but at least it is over.

Then, as Jim is patting down the third suspect, he shoves away and makes a run for it. Jim is suddenly between me and the kid, but I wasn't willing to shoot him anyway. I snap at the other two to get to their knees, and keep them still while Jim pounces on the runner. Jim is as silent and swift as an owl swooping down on a mouse, and when he rises, he has his prisoner firmly by the upper arm.

The kid is actually crying, murmuring, "Oh, God, I can't do this... My dad's going to kill me."

It is almost funny.

We walk them the four uneven blocks to the Sheriff's department. The erstwhile runner is cuffed, the other two carrying their haul. Eddie, on desk duty, cheers as we come in. He logs the concrete sculpture as evidence. We are all in high spirits for the booking. Well, not the perps, obviously. The crier, in particular, seems to get more and more distraught. His reason becomes apparent when we finally drag an ID out of him; he is Ronald Whitfield. His father is County Commissioner Whitfield.

I'd thought it was over.

They are all under age, so we call the parents. The first two are picked up fairly quickly by irate adults who sign them out with protests of ignorance and outrage. Finally only Whitfield is left. His father descends on the waiting area out front like a silent thunderhead. Commissioner Whitfield growls a polite greeting at Jim, ignores Eddie and me, and asks what the situation is.

"When it's not violent crime or substance abuse, we usually send juveniles home," Jim says. I didn't know it was an actual policy--I wouldn't even need both hands to count the juvies we'd had in the last year. Well, not counting the protesting high school students about a month ago.

Jim directs Whitfield to the holding cell at the back. "I'd like a word with the boy, if you don't mind?" Jim nods. The three of us wait at Eddie's desk, not talking, staring at the floor. Jim winces occasionally, no doubt hearing the reaming-out taking place in the cell. Whitfield is--sort of, technically, obliquely--our boss. He can't do anything to us, not really, but this situation is way weird for morale.

Fortunately, the wait lasts only a few minutes. Whitfield signs the forms and takes his son home in his custody. Ron looks like he would rather have stayed here.

"If I'd pulled shit like that, dad would have killed me," Jim says as we head out to do an abbreviated patrol before going home.

"You wouldn't have pulled shit like this," I say. "You were a boy scout, I'm sure."

"You'd be surprised," he says. "If I did do stupid stuff, I hope I had some kind of better reason, you know? Of course, there toward the end, pissing dad off looked like a pretty compelling reason."

"Think that's what's going on here?"

"Dunno. Whitfield is really a charmer."

We had already penciled ourselves in to work Saturday night, so we both have the next day off. We sleep late and head out to the house. The plumbing is done on the first floor, so we finish laying the floor in the bathroom and kitchen. The house looks more like a house every minute. I can imagine living here--our bed upstairs, our towels hanging in the bathroom, our sofa there by the window. The tile for the bathroom and kitchen floors arrived after we left yesterday. We open the boxes and make sure they contain the stuff we ordered. It goes well.

For a Saturday night, our shift is pretty quiet. One DWI, three speeding tickets. It's a long shift--straight through to Sunday morning. Another speeding ticket for an old lady late to church. Despite how dull things are, we are both exhausted when we get home. We grab a couple of omelets for a very late brunch and hit the shower. Jim goes first while I do the dishes. By the time I'm ready for bed, he's asleep.

Monday is windows and interior doors. The first window is a pain in the arse. So is the second and the third. The sizes are right. The directions are clearly written. And still, each one takes more than an hour and Jim and I both have our teeth clamped together to hold back the snippy gripes we're thinking of.

The fourth and fifth go slightly better. After lunch, I lose count completely. Before I know it the downstairs is finished and I am looking at my watch, surprised to see it is two-thirty.

I have to run. The last disaster drill meeting starts at three. The plumber is still there, so I don't hug Jim before I hurry out. I make it barely in time (and still dressed in work clothes) but my report is done, so all is well. The meeting runs two hours, and is tedious as hell (despite my commitment to paying attention and making a contribution). The only bright part is that Chief Anders, who runs the Bickford Police Department, isn't there. Anders always talks a lot without contributing anything really useful--his absence probably saved us a whole 'nother hour.

When I come out of the court house, I see Jim's car parked in front of the Sheriff's Department across the street. I check the schedule in my head. Is it Monday? Yes. Jim is supposed to be off today.

Wondering what's up, I head across the street instead of to my car. On the front steps, I run into Oksana coming out. "Hey, what's up?"

She steps back and leans against the short railing. "The great lawn ornament gang is desperate to cut a deal. They showed up this afternoon with some out of town lawyer looking to trade information for reduced charges."

"Are you kidding? Reduced from--what? Misdemeanor theft by unlawful taking? Criminal trespass?"

"I hadn't decided yet, frankly. It's Whitfield, of course. He doesn't want anything on the kid's record. Of course, the longer this goes on and the bigger deal it is, the worse it is for him. On the other hand, trying to use his influence here is more than his career is worth."

I think this is uncommonly astute of Oksana, who usually tried to only notice things that were absolutely necessary. "No kidding. So what happened?"

"I'm guessing he put the screws to the kids to make them save themselves. They've coughed up a tip that they say 'everybody knows' but which there's no proof for. Some guy in Bickford is apparently growing thousands of pot plants in his basement."

"You're kidding. Is it any good?"

"Don't know yet." She nods toward the building behind her. "Things are still up in the air."

"They're here? But Bickford isn't our territory."

"Anders doesn't have the men to handle this by himself. When we called him, he just came down."

"Right."

"Look, I've got to run to my office. I'll be back in about an hour."

The sheriff's department isn't any more crowded than usual, at least for a weekday, and people aren't louder or moving any faster. Somehow, though, I am put in mind of an anthill. It's been a quiet month. A major pot bust is a big deal.

Jim, Lorain Alwell, Millie, Joey Fanzelli, Chief Anders, and Pete McIntyre (known among our deputies as 'that Bickford cop with the brain') are all crowded into Jim's small office. "No," Joey is saying. "Not tonight."

Chief Anders rattles the papers in front of him impatiently. "We can get the warrant. That's not a problem."

"Hey, now slow down. We don't have anything yet--just the word of these kids." That's Jim. His eyes flick to mine for less than a second, then he continues. "I need something a little more solid than that before I commit manpower."

Joey folds his arms. "I know that neighborhood. There's kids living on both sides. You can't have them watching a--a raid!"

"Right!" Anders says nastily. "Must better they should live next to the druggie."

"The last time we had one of these, it was a zoo. There was a runner. We can't just--"

"Ten o'clock tomorrow," Jim says. "IF it pans out. By ten, the kids will be at school, folks will be at work. We should have a nice clear field. This guy Meriwether is listed as 'retired,' right? He'll be home."

"You can't keep secrets in a town this size! What if he gets wind of it and flees?"

"Deputy Couch is watching the house now. Nobody is going anywhere. Go ahead and get the warrant. Meanwhile, I'm going to look into it a little further. In the meantime, we should work out the game plan. Nate, how many people were you thinking we should deploy?" With that, Jim neatly reminds Chief Anders that it is his jurisdiction, and that the County Sheriff's Department isn't trying to step on his toes, despite being larger and much better equipped. And, ahem, not being run by a complete shit.

The meeting goes on for another hour and a half, slowed down (in my opinion) by Anders' tendencies to micromanage and nitpick. When the meeting finally ends, Jim collects me and we take a quick trip into Bickford in my little red truck. We are both in civvies. We grab a tepid and greasy dinner at the new Dairy Delight next to the bank, and then walk the short distance across town to the Really Ugly Furniture Store (this isn't the actual name, but I can never remember it as anything else), a route which leads us past the small frame house in question. I talk, idly, about furniture and food. Jim doesn't listen. His radar is up--listening for some hint, hoping for a scrap of scent that would support the statements Oksana collected. I pause just downwind from the house to tie my shoe. When I stand up, Jim's eyes have gone hard. Jackpot. Heh. Well, 'pot' anyway.

At nine fifty the next morning, the joint task force arrives in two cars and parks behind the Methodist church across the street and three doors down from Meriwether's place. We are quiet and organized and focused, except for Deputy Shoemacher, who whispers to me, "What I don't get is why this nutter didn't move to California. You just need a license there--it's been legal for almost two years!"

I snort softly as I check my weapon one last time. "Don't look at me--if they had a brain, they wouldn't be criminals."

We walk calmly down the street, meeting up with Eddie, who had the watch overnight. Jim, Lorain, our canine unit, and one of the Bickford cops go around the back. Chief Anders takes the front, with me, Eddie, and Pete (who has a brain). Everybody else takes up positions along the sides. A dozen people for a simple pot bust seems pretty top-heavy to me, but Jim and Anders are both being careful--Jim because we don't do this stuff a lot and there are houses within thirty feet on either side, and Anders, because he likes things as complicated and flashy as possible.

Anders strides confidently up to the front door. "Ready?" he says into his radio. Everybody checks in quickly. Anders pounds on the door and identifies himself in a stentorian voice. Nothing happens. "Ok, take it," he says softly into his radio. He motions to Pete, who kicks in the door. I hear the thump and crack from the back that says Jim's team is moving too.

The living room is dim--untidy and worn but not too horrible. It's empty. We scan it quickly and move on. The hall is darker still. Pete hits the lights. Jim's voice comes over the radio. "He's here and he's armed. Heads up, people."

Anders motions us to split up and check the bedrooms. We don't hurry. Careful. Thorough. We have the place surrounded--Meriwether isn't getting away. In the distance, I hear the hollow sound of boots on stairs--Jim's party is moving into the basement. My jaw tightens; there are too many people in this house moving too much for Jim to get a bead on the sounds of just one of them. This would have gone better with just the two of us going in, but it's Anders' town, Anders' operation. Never mind. We've all done this sort of thing before.

I hear Jim's shout just before I hear the shots. The first is large and loud: shotgun. It is followed almost simultaneously by the shorter, sharper crack of two police issue handguns. Then there is a moment of nothing before we all lose it and run.

I dive toward the back of the house. In the kitchen a door is open, with steps leading down into a basement, rare in Bickford. I make it down the stairs without falling, ahead of everyone else who came in the front door. The basement is brightly lit and full of plants. There is blood.

I see the body. A man in late middle-age, fallen awkwardly. There are two red stains--one at the forehead, the other in the chest. Perfect shots both of them, either of them good enough to be Jim. Pete McIntyre is crouched beside the body, talking softly into his radio.

Loraine is directly in front of me, puking on the floor. On the other side of her, Jim is kneeling beside something dark. He is snarling at Elliot Shoemacher as though he wants to shake him, but his hands are full. "Hold her still, damn it. Get it together, Deputy, right now." He is holding onto Doris, who is struggling and growling. There is blood on Jim's hands, matted in her fur, smeared on the floor.

I put away my gun and drop down beside them. Doris snaps at me. Shoemacher moves finally, takes her head in her hands. Jim tries to apply pressure to her chest and shoulders, but his hands don't seem large enough. She makes a squeaky cry and struggles in her handler's grasp. "Buckshot," Jim says. "He only got one barrel off. Pete, how long on that ambulance?"

"Five minutes. Bobbie got a hold of the vet in Ithaca. He's on his way in. He'll meet us at the hospital."

"Blair, I need your hand. Here." He tips his head back and raises his voice. "Eddie, take Loraine upstairs." Only then I hear more footsteps behind us. Anders is cursing softly. Under my hands Doris shivers.

Buckshot, Jim said. Doris's shoulder is bleeding in long streamers of torn fur. There is a small, leaking hole in her ear. Over my shoulder, I see the splintered door frame, the small holes in the drywall. It all looks chewed on. Aw, hell. Loraine, stumbling toward the stairs, has a tiny, bloody stain on the outer edge of her shoulder.

I close my eyes and try to hold my hands steady.

The EMTs come. The pair splits up, one going to the suspect--although he is clearly dead. The other squats beside us, looking and looking. "It's--it's a dog!" she squeaks.

Without moving his hands, Jim turns to her with burning eyes. "This is one of my deputies. As of right now, I am holding you personally responsible for her care. Do you understand?"

But she doesn't know how to find a pulse on a dog, can't get a blood pressure, has no idea what the normal temperature should be. The pressure bandage doesn't fit, and Jim has to help her bind the shallow wounds. Doris has stopped struggling. She pants and whimpers in Elliot's hands. Elliot looks close to tears.

She fights again when we try to move her to the stretcher. Jim sighs and scoops her up in his arms and carries her up the stairs. Slowly--Doris isn't small.

Outside is milling with more deputies and a small crowd of spectators. The part-time coroner is just arriving. Loraine is sitting on a faded folding chair, shaking; Eddie is holding a gauze pad against her shoulder. "Are you ok?" I whisper.

"It's just a crease," Eddie says. "She was really lucky."

But Loraine starts to cry. "K-killed him!"

Jim is there, suddenly, wiping the blood off his hands. He squats beside her, not touching her, but close. "Deputy, it was clean. You did good. If he'd had a second shot, somebody else would have gotten hurt."

She nods, trying to pull herself together. Jim scowls. "Eddie, take her in, get her looked at. I'll meet up with you later."

Jim's eyes are still on Loraine as Eddie leads her off. "What happened?" I ask.

"The hum from the growlights messed me up. I couldn't tell where Meriwether was. I would have taken it in the face if Doris hadn't ruined his shot. Shoemacher, too, he wasn't tucked in behind properly. But Doris knew where he was, when I didn't--" Jim jerks to silence. "Loraine and I returned fire. The head shot was hers." It appears he isn't going to say any more, but he looks up briskly and says, "They're ready to leave. Go in with Shoemacher and Doris. They're going to need somebody who can take charge. Go. I'll be in as soon as I can."

During the ride to the hospital I don't look at Elliot. I can't, because the whole way I can't help being relieved that it's his partner in trouble and not mine. Which is stupid and petty and not helpful at all. But part of me keeps repeating, 'Thank god it's not Jim this time.'

The ER staff are surprisingly cool about the whole dog thing. They have talked to the in-transit vet by cell phone, and they start an IV and give Doris a sedative. Elliot and I hold her still, although the fight seems to have gone out of her even before the drug starts to work. In a few more minutes, the vet arrives, and we are sent out to the waiting room. Elliot walks away from me and stands in the corner, apparently examining a potted plant.

Loraine comes out. Her shirt is cut away and a small, white bandage stands out on her shoulder. Eddie is following her, looking lost. I make myself walk up to them. "What happened?" I ask.

Woodenly, she tells me the same story Jim did. She finishes by whispering, "You know, I've never killed anyone before. I thought it would feel more... professional."

Crap. She's in shock. What did they let her walk out of the examining room for? "Eddie--you two came in one of the cars? Have you got a jacket? Go get it." Then I send them down to get some coffee. Keep her moving. Keep her talking. While they're gone, I step outside and get on my phone, trying to find her family. Loraine's a local girl. There will be someone for her.

Half an hour passes. There is no word on Doris, Loraine and Eddie don't come back. I pace.

Jim arrives. He squeezes my shoulder and then goes to Shoemacher. I pace some more. Joey Fanzelli and Dave Couch arrive. They sit in the hard, plastic seats and stare at the floor. Eddie comes back with Loraine. She looks less pale, less empty. I have Eddie take her home. He promises to stay with her until her mom gets there.

I pace. When I look up again, Elliot is sobbing in Jim's arms. I close my eyes. I pace. Elliot goes outside. Jim goes to the men's room, attempting to give me a reassuring look as he goes past.

The vet comes out. Suddenly Elliot is there, clinging to my arm, shaking. He isn't in any shape to take in anything complicated, so I try to follow what the vet is saying.

Doris is out of surgery. Only two of the pellets were in bad places, and they came out cleanly. She'll make it, but it's too soon to tell how complete the recovery will be. In the meantime, his office in Ithaca isn't set up for anything this complicated--it's a basic spay and neuter clinic. He has a buddy who runs a small animal hospital in Wenatchee. He'd like to move her there when he's sure she's stable. Elliot is shaking. Jim puts a hand on his shoulder and speaks for him, agreeing to everything, making arrangements.

He details Dave to keep an eye on Elliot and give him and Doris whatever they need. Then he collects Joey and me and takes us back to the department. Sherry descends on us at once, wanting to know how Doris is doing and where Loraine is. Jim reassures her, but he can't be as detailed as he'd like because Mr. Randall from the local paper is there. It is only two o'clock. It feels much, much later.

At four-thirty, Jim comes out of his office, looking unhappy. I start to get up, but he shakes his head and walks past me, around the front desk into the narrow waiting area out front. He only waits for a moment before Loraine, dressed in a clean uniform, comes in the door. They look at each other for a moment, and then Jim says, very softly, "My office, Deputy."

They are shut in, alone, for an hour and a half. I finish the report I am working on and start on the vehicle maintenance paperwork. Sadly, it is nearly up to date. I check the virus software. I am almost restless enough to start cleaning guns.

Jim's door opens. Loraine comes out, rigid and white, clearly Holding Herself Together. Damn. Soon after, Jim comes out. He raps once on my desk and heads out the door, expecting me to follow. I say good night to Billy Joe who has just come on for his shift and scamper after Jim.

Jim doesn't talk on the way home, but he doesn't suggest I drive, so it can't be too awful. I hope not, anyway. We eat dinner in front of the TV. Channel 5 covers the story, complete with video of Meriwether's house swathed in yellow tape. "I want a run," Jim says. So we run; a mile and a half out and then back. Not pushing. We get back and shower and Jim starts cleaning the kitchen. I keep waiting for him to talk, to say something, or to just sit down and hold me. But he doesn't, and at about eleven, I give up and head to bed.

It's past two before Jim joins me.

I wake early the next morning, unable to remember what day it is and whether we should be working. Let's see, Monday, Tuesday, today has to be Wednesday, and we are both off. A house day.

We take separate cars. Jim goes to the department first, to check on things. When he gets to the house at about ten, he hands me some coffee he picked up at Mom's. "Doris is doing better," he says. "Shoemacher can take her home in two or three days."

"That's good," I say, watching Jim carefully.

He turns away quickly and climbs the temporary steps up to the front door. "What are we doing today?"

"I'm caulking windows upstairs. You are assembling the chimney-thing for the pellet stove and then screwing on the switch plates."

So. I go upstairs and get to work and manage to lose myself in the physical art of it, paying attention to my caulk gun and my wet paper towel and my walls and not much else. The plumber and an assistant are there, finishing up the upstairs bathroom. The carpenters aren't--they took their truck out to pick up supplies. The morning passes quickly.

Eventually, my stomach prods me, and I pause to notice that I am hungry. I look down on my little red truck from the window. I have sandwiches in the cooler. I could get Jim and we could break for lunch, even though it is still a bit early. But even as I think it, I see Jim's foot sticking out from behind a tree on the other side of the truck. He's already outside then.

Trying not to worry--there are lots of reasons Jim might be sitting alone outside that aren't necessarily ominous--I wrap the caulking gun in a plastic bag and walk calmly downstairs. The sink in the kitchen works, but the water is turned off, so I have to wash at the hose again.

Jim doesn't seem to hear me coming. He is sitting behind an old fir tree on the other side of the driveway, his head back and his eyes closed. As I approach, he doesn't move. Damn. "Jim?"

"Hey," he says, very softly.

I squat close to him, not touching. "You ok?"

He starts to shake his head, stops sharply. "Little dizzy, Chief."

"Ok." I lay my hand on his shoulder. He doesn't flinch away, which is a good sign. "Do you know what's causing it?"

"They set tile in the downstairs bathroom yesterday evening. Or the caulking upstairs. I dunno." He turns his face away from me. "I'm sorry, Chief."

I rub his shoulder. "No, it's ok. You came outside. That was the right thing to do." He could have called me. I do not point this out. "It's ok."

"Please." Please make it stop. But I don't know what to do.

I make sure nobody can see us, and I take his hand. "Do you want me to take you home?"

"I think... it's better not to move."

"Ok, ok." I lay my hand against the back of his neck. No fever, but clammy. His pulse is fast, but not enough to scare me. I push up his sleeves, open his workshirt: no rash. "Pain?"

"No."

"Breathing ok?"

"Yeah."

"Photosensitive?"

"A little."

"Numbers?"

"Can't tell." He frowns, embarrassed. "When I try to concentrate, I get nauseous."

"Yeah. Ok. Could you drink some water?"

"Ok."

So I get him water. I sit with him, urging him to drink, reminding him to keep his breathing slow and even, holding his hand. After a while he squeezes my hand back. "It's easing off. You can go back to work, if you want." This is his way of asking to be alone, so I go, coming back every forty-five minutes or so to check on him. The second time, he is asleep. He sleeps most of the afternoon. I caulk. Now, though, it's hard to concentrate.

At 4:30 I give it up completely. I wash in cold water and change, just to be safe, and go one last time to squat beside Jim. "Hey. Wake up. It's time to go home."

He scowls at me through slitted eyes, and I nudge him gently. "Jim?"

"Yeah. Ok." He lets me take his arm and help him up. He's solid on his feet, but he doesn't argue when I take him to the passenger side of my little truck. "Chief, I'm--sorry. It stank. I should have turned right around."

His eyes are clear, his hands are steady, he's good. "Jim, if you're waiting to be reamed out for this, forget it. I knew accidents would happen."

Jim closes his eyes. I take the back roads slowly. I try to count back to the last big Sentinel Incident. Barely a month--the last one involved me and some poison ivy. They shouldn't come this frequently--but we're working on the house after all. Sooner or later he was bound to react to something. Wasn't he? Vertigo - that was, for Jim, a really minor symptom. All kinds of innocuous things made him dizzy--two brands of bottled water, oil based paint, artificially flavored vanilla coffee. Stuff that brought on multiple symptoms almost always included some vertigo. This was a common, mild reaction. So. This was probably nothing to worry about.

"You're awfully quiet."

"I'm not freaking."

"Going to kill me when we get home?"

"Oh, yeah. I'm just trying to decide if I'm going to shoot you or brain you with a rock."

"Not on the rug, ok?" He manages an almost-convincing smile.

I send him off to shower when we get home, and start dinner. Chicken broth from the freezer and rice become soup. Jim... Jim pretends to be fine, fakes an interest in dinner, gripes about not being able to go the house at all tomorrow. Watching him, I'm not sure if he's depressed or just not feeling well. Both, maybe. I can't tell.

He volunteers to do the dishes, and I make some calls--Shoemacher to get the latest word on Doris, Loraine to see how she's doing, Dave to get his opinion on things in general. Things are pretty much holding. Doris is doing better than expected, Loraine doesn't want to talk, Dave is depressed but not admitting it.

That night I wake up--completely awake, no transition, no fuzziness, and absolutely sure something is wrong. I reach out for Jim. He is rigid and shaking and I realize he is making a soft, frightening sound I can't identify.

Oh, God. He's sick, I think. We just did this, he can't be sick again, it's not fair. I struggle free from the sheets and move closer to him. Emergency room, again. Please, let him be ok. I should have been more careful. I feel guilty and angry and I hate the house.

His back is to me, and he doesn't answer when I call his name. I slide an arm around his waist and ease up so that I hover just above his face. Not sick, I realize suddenly. Crying. The funny shuddering is Jim fighting tears. "Aw, babe," I whisper, curling further around him. He buries his face in the pillow, gulping and fighting himself. "Let it go, Jim. Breathe."

For a moment I think he is going to flee me, then he begins to sob. He is saying something, but I don't know what. My name is in there somewhere, but nothing else is clear. All I can do is hold him. I am promising him over and over that it will be all right, that I'm right here. I have no idea if this is the right thing to say or even if he is hearing me.

Slowly he begins to calm, and as the storm passes I realize he is saying, "It's just a damn dog. God, Blair, why is it doing this to me?"

I get him to turn so that he is facing me. With one arm, I hold him close, with the other I reach over him to snare a tissue and begin to mop his face. I try to be reasonable. "Jim, it's what you said before. Just because she's a dog doesn't make her any less one of your people!" It occurs to me that if it had come to putting her down, Jim would have had to make the final decision. Shoemacher is her handler, but Jim is the Sheriff. I feel slightly ill.

"I've lost people before, Blair. People who died. Humans--" He ends in a funny squeak and begins to sob again.

I toss the damp tissue onto the floor and pull him close with both arms. "I know. I know."

"You don't. You don't. I'm talking about people here, not... and here I am, going crazy over some animal."

"You're not going crazy. Look, Jim. It's just. You have a lot of training in keeping it together when you lose somebody. When something terrible happens. It's been twenty years or more since you've been allowed to grieve, and this time--"

"What are you talking about? You've--you've seen me grieve!"

"No, Jim," I say sadly. "You don't grieve. You go back to work." He looks up, and I know that he can see me. "You never cried for Matty or Jack, there was too much to do, and you never... and I think, maybe, you never got a chance to grieve in Peru."

He shakes in my arms, but manages to argue a little. "I grieve. Danny. You were there, you saw, I--I cried for Danny."

"For four minutes, Jim," I whisper. "You stopped when we heard the sirens and then... you just got mad and went back to work." I stroke the hair at the back of his head, and he calms a little more. "I think this may be why this time it's so hard--your training doesn't include anything like Doris. She slipped in under that radar. Your relationship with her is different. And now--"

He lays a shaking hand against my mouth. "Not now. I can't. I just--"

"Ok. Never mind." It doesn't matter. I hold him, still petting his hair, until, like a child, he cries himself to sleep.

I wake early, hearing Jim in the kitchen. I almost never wake up alone in the morning. When I outsleep Jim he usually holds me until he gets bored and nuzzles me awake.

I resist the urge to rush out and check on him. If he were sick, he would tell me. If he needed me, he would have gotten me up. I shower and dress, and find, when I come to the kitchen, bacon and eggs and sliced melon. He presses my shoulder, reassuring and loving. Still more subdued than I would like.

I try to locate my internal calendar. Today has to be Thursday. According to the math in my head, Jim has enough comp time to spend a half day at the house, but I can't let him near it for a couple of days. The windows are done, but they are still setting tile. After that, they will be working on the back deck; that means cutting treated lumber, lots of toxic sawdust. Then, painting in the bathroom and kitchen. Latex paint, which isn't amazingly nasty, but still. Jim is badly stressed out. If his body is winding up toward twitchy and hyper-reactive, I don't know when it will be safe to let Jim near the house.

We pick up Jim's car, which we'd left at the house the night before, and go in to the department. Jim calls everyone into a meeting, the people going on shift and the people coming off. He talks about how, since he's been here, this is the first time anybody's been hurt badly enough to require hospitalization. He talks about how what's happened is traumatic and upsetting, and that it's ok to be upset and that we need to talk to each other. He says he's very proud of the way everybody handled the operation, and that he's sure we can bounce back from this.

It's a short speech, and what matters isn't so much what he says, but that he says it looking into his people's eyes. They are settled, a little, as the meeting breaks up. People go home or start work looking less brittle and tense. Millie, going off shift, meets with Jim briefly in his office with the door shut. Shoemacher comes in, late and harried-looking. I follow him into the little kitchenette across the hall from the holding cell.

"Hey, ah. How you doing?"

He is putting a Lassie lunch box into the minifridge. "Oh, I'm a wreck, Blair. Obviously. You know." He shuts the door a little too hard and straightens. "I might be able to take her home tomorrow."

"That's really good."

"Yeah." He looks away, and I move closer. "If she can't work, she'll be deprogrammed and turned into a house pet."

"We're not there yet," I say softly. "She may not have to be retired, and even if she is, you may not have to give her up." He gives me a black look. Somehow I'm missing the point here. "I know you're upset--"

"You do not understand, Blair!"

"I've had the same partner since 1995. I remember the first time he was badly hurt."

For a moment he looks at me. "She's not like us, Blair. She thinks she knows what we do, but she doesn't. So much of it's... play. She doesn't do her job for the pay or her ideals--everything she does is because she loves me. She was doing her job, but she never... she didn't have any idea--" He turns abruptly and charges out of the room.

Damn. I must be losing my touch.

When I come out, Jim is waiting by the door. He motions me to follow him, but before I get there, his head snaps up and he charges out without me. I catch up to him as he descends on Randall and Dave at Dave's car. "We've talked about you harassing my people."

"Sheriff! I was just--"

"You were just harassing one of my people." Jim starts to reach for him, but catches himself in time. "I'm gonna tell you just one more time, Randall. You bother my men again and I'll lock you up for interfering with an investigation."

Jim is way out of line, and Randall knows it. He also knows that there's nothing he can do about it here. He politely takes his leave and walks off. Jim watches him with narrow eyes, then picks up his radio. "Nobody talks to the press. Is that clear? I will suspend anybody who makes a statement."

He is icy and silent as we get into his county car. He is livid; I am a bit freaked out. I wait till we get to the edge of town before saying softly, "You know, it's a legitimate story. Randall's just doing his job."

"That is such bullshit! They don't care about a legitimate story, any more than they care about truth. All they want is a sensational story, something that'll sell: they don't give a damn whether it's true or not, and they don't give a damn who gets hurt."

"Jim--"

"Don't you defend them. Not you."

I shut up.

We go on in silence, on patrol. Just driving around, waiting for some disaster to happen.

Damn, damn.

It's a nice day. Warm, sunny, dry. School will be out in two or three weeks, and then both towns will be full of restless teenagers all day, but now it is still quiet.

"He's wrong, you know," Jim says suddenly. "Doris isn't any different from any of them. Not one of them has any idea... Millie maybe. The rest of them are just a bunch of kids. They're trying to save the world or something. Make a difference. Loraine wanted to have a career." We are stopped at the only traffic light in Bickford. He cannot focus on the road since we aren't going anywhere, but he looks out the window to avoid looking at me. "They don't have any idea what it's going to do to them. What they're going to have to do."

"Is this about Loraine? Or Doris?"

"It's about all of you."

"All of--excuse me, me?" The light changes and we go forward. "Me? You think--what? I'm some kid all of a sudden? That it's somehow escaped me, that I didn't notice what we do for a living?"

"Sandburg--"

"No. You know what? Just no. Yes, the work is hell, Jim. But it's worth it. What we do is worth it. And every single one of your people agrees with me."

"Then you're all full of shit, all right?"

I don't know what to say to that. I want to hit him. Or something.

"Blair, I'm sorry. I don't--" He pulls over, into the tiny parking lot behind the funeral home, and shuts off the car.

"Yeah." I take a deep breath and roll my shoulders. "Yeah...."

"You're a good cop, Blair. I'm not saying--"

"I know. I know."

"I'm going to watch this job chew them up, Blair. Or I'm going to watch them get hurt."

"Jim," I say carefully, "if you don't want to do this any more... you don't have to do this any more."

"Retire?" He sighs. "They'd give my job to that bozo Anders. Or somebody like him. He doesn't have a clue."

I don't know what to say. This isn't like Jim, not really. Since coming here he's started to put more effort into the managing/mentoring part of things - a side of his personality that normally only saw the light of day when he was backed up against the wall with no escape except for being supportive. He's been good here. Patient. Proactive. Compassionate, but firm. It even seemed like he was getting more comfortable with it. Where is all this hopelessness coming from?

I think about the incident at the house yesterday and wonder if he's somehow messed up chemically. This is probably not the time to ask. I reach out and lay my hand on his arm. He leans his head back against the headrest and closes his eyes.

It's a long day. Jim doesn't talk much. I don't push him.

The next day he goes with Elliot to bring Doris back from the vet's. They are gone for three hours. I spend the time updating computer security protocols and doing a weapons inventory. Jim comes back alone; Elliot will stay home with his partner for several days. "They're fine," Jim says.

We work the weekend. Jim is not himself, but he's not in horrible shape, either. No headache, no dizziness, no trouble sleeping. He doesn't avoid me or ignore me or sit further away than usual. Saturday night, the Unitarians hold a fundraising spaghetti supper for the middle-school library. We go--Jim is much better about being civic here than he ever was in Cascade--and he is polite and calm and present.

Sunday, we have the domestic call to end all domestic calls--at a christening, yet. What kind of people bring their guns to church, that's what I want to know. Turns out that just before the ceremony, mom found out dad was having an affair with the woman who was the maid of honor at their wedding. When we get there, we find dad curled up in the corner, going into shock from where he's been really brutally kneed in the groin. Everyone else is screaming petty invectives at each other. One grandfather has slugged the minister. The other is drunk and waving a shotgun. Nobody pays one bit of attention to the siren when we arrive, or the bullhorn when we come in, so we have to draw on them. In a church. With the baby crying.

We cuff everybody who is yelling, armed, or drunk and sit them down on the lawn outside. That's 8 people, more people than we brought deputies, and we have to get more cuffs out of the car. The proud new mommy is still shouting profanities at her former best friend even as she sits there getting grass stains on her pink dress.

Then Jim looks up from patting down the choir director (apparently an uncle of the new baby, but on which side is hard to tell, because he is cussing at everybody) and our eyes meet with a profound relief. Neither one of us is nearly as dysfunctional as we could have been, and aren't we glad?

The call takes four hours. We take in everybody who'd been either drunk or armed. Dave gives the innocent and abused father (or 'stupid cheating bastard,' depending on who you ask) a lift to the emergency room.

We both have Monday off. It's a house day. The cutting for the deck is done, and today is assembly. We get there early, before the workmen arrive. The house has changed so much in such a short time. The living room looks finished, ready to live in. So does the kitchen; only the appliances and cabinets are missing. The floor there is slate tile, and looks fantastic. I suddenly feel much better about spending that money.

We are almost to the kitchen when Jim starts sneezing. He stands for a moment, glaring wordlessly, and then runs, trying to hide his nose in the collar of his shirt.

When I catch up to him, he is leaning against the truck with his eyes shut. I rein myself in, not pressuring him, letting him get his breath. Finally, he opens watery eyes and whispers, "I can still smell the glue. It's been two days, Chief. I shouldn't--"

"Hey. It's ok."

"Blair--"

"Jim. We knew there could be problems." Or I did anyway. Apparently Jim's been in denial. Never mind. "We leave the windows open from now on. After a while, things will air out. It'll be fine."

Jim looks dismally up at our log cabin. "I stay away from the house."

"Yeah. For now."

He is silent for a moment. "Why don't you give me a lift home. I might as well go to work."

"Ok. Yeah."

By the time I get back the guys have arrived. We spend the day assembling the deck. Really, it's just as well that Jim didn't stay; the lumber is already cut and cured without formaldehyde, but still, he doesn't need to be handling it intimately. The deck is finished by four-thirty, but I take my time cleaning up the worksite and washing down with the hose; there's no point in getting home before Jim.

When I get in he is dressed in sweats, sitting huddled in the corner of the couch. He doesn't look good, although I can't put my finger on what's wrong. I sit next to him and gently take one of his hands. "Hey," I say softly.

He shudders ever so slightly. "Bad day," he whispers. Something in him is tightly stretched, quivering, desperate. He is struggling with something.

"The job? Or you?" I whisper.

"Me. Me. Everything's off. Skin hurts."

"Ok." I take his face to look into his eyes. He cringes at the touch, winces as I turn him toward the light. His eyes are red and puffy, but not very. "Just relax--"

"It shouldn't still be bothering me."

"This morning?" He nods. "No, it shouldn't. But I don't think we're in too much trouble here. There's been a lot of stress lately, with the house and... things. The schedule's been unusual. It's just a bad day."

He fumbles for my shoulder. He is wound up so tightly. "Numbers, Jim."

He snatches a glance at me, embarrassed and slightly frightened. "High. About two-forty over two-ten."

Crap. I have never even imagined numbers this high.

"Ok, ok." I slide to the other end of the couch and guide him down to put his head in my lap. This is already better. "Let's just be in this moment, ok? We're just going to relax."

"No center."

"Yeah, I know. It's ok." I want to hold him, but his skin is giving him trouble. I stroke his hair; this is usually safe. "Just listen. Just relax. Just pay attention to now."

"I'm not going to be sick again." An angry growl.

"No, Jim. It isn't like that. Just relax, ok? Breathe nice and slow."

He manages a few deep, slow breaths, but in a couple of minutes his breathing slides back to fast and shallow. He isn't relaxing; he's tired and unfocused and jittery, even lying down. He has spent the whole day winding himself up, and our failure to get on top of it now will only compound the stress. Damn. "I love you, you know. We're having a hard time right now, but we're going to get past this. You're the best thing that ever happened to me--"

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't use your feelings for me as a relaxation exercise."

I ride out the short burst of anger. I am not playing games or manipulating him or experimenting on him. Jim is in real trouble, and if I don't capture his attention and drag it away from the stress he's been under, things are not going to get better.

Pointing out that he is being a jerk probably isn't going to calm him down. "Ok. Ok, never mind. It's all right. Let me up." I slide out and head for the kitchen.

"Where are you going?"

"Don't worry. I'm going to fix it." In the back of the cabinet are two bottles of herbal capsules I bought last month when I was turning into a basket case worrying about Jim. As it turned out, I never used them, but I was desperate to stop inflicting my sanity problems on Jim, and I wanted to keep that avenue open. One acts sort of like a sedative, the other is more of a muscle relaxant. I break the seals on the bottles and drop one of each into my hand. The dose is only a third what I would use for myself, but more than I would normally offer Jim. A lot more. Things are bad enough, though, that this probably isn't too much.

I frown. This is a shortcut I don't like taking. But Jim is in a bad place.

I bring the two capsules and a bottle of water to Jim on the couch. He wrinkles his nose while I'm still several feet away. "Not that again. It smells like cat piss."

"Yeah, yeah."

He swallows the pills and hands me the water bottle back. I sit down and motion Jim to settle back in my lap. "Blair--" The apology tone.

"S'ok. Don't worry about it."

Jim goes to sleep almost at once. I sit stroking his hair, thinking. Partly, I am worried because, while I have given Jim these herbs before, I have always done it with diluted tinctures; Jim's body responds best of all to subtlety. I dislike being so direct with him. I dislike the idea that I needed to even more.

Whatever emotional lift he gets from the house isn't enough to balance out his exposure to building materials. He can't go near the house again until it's finished. Maybe not for a couple of weeks after that.

That might not be enough.

Jim isn't enjoying his work. He isn't happy. More exercise? Therapy? More sex? There hasn't been a whole lot of that lately. Isn't going to be, if his skin keeps hurting.

I could take him out of town. He'll resist--both of us away from the house will make him anxious. He isn't thrilled with travel. Where would we go? His niece is graduating next week, we could go to Cascade. We'd told Stephen "Probably not" because of the house, but if Jim can't go to the house anyway, we might as well.

Bill will be there. Maybe not all that relaxing. We could meet Simon for lunch or something though. That would take his mind off things here.

Jim stirs. I glance at the VCR; only two hours sleep. I hold him loosely, waiting. He turns and takes a deep breath. One hand brushes at my clothing, and then pulls away. I catch the hand. "Hey."

"Thirsty..."

I sit him up and put the water bottle in his hand. The water is tepid by now, but he doesn't seem to care. He hands me the empty bottle and drops back into my lap, one arm stretching around my waist. "How do you feel?"

He answers with a disinterested shrug. I sigh. "Numbers?"

"Dunno. The bottom one's sixty-something."

I smile slightly. Sixty-something is safe. "That's good."

"I didn't do it."

"It's ok. Once in two years. Don't worry about it." I look down at him. His eyes are closed. His face is relaxed. "Can you tell me what's wrong?"

"I don't know what's wrong."

"Ok. Don't worry about it. Ah. Say, you have Friday off anyway. What say I try to trade with somebody for Wednesday, and we go up for Amanda's graduation this weekend?"

A tiny smile. "You know, Cascade was the place we ran away from last time I melted down."

"You're not melting down. It isn't the same."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I am." I hug him very gently. "How was work today?"

"Nothing unusual."

"How's Loraine?"

"Acting like nothing happened. Maybe that's good, at this stage."

"When was the last time you talked to Elliot?"

"This morning. He wants another day before coming back to work. Doris is having trouble going to the bathroom. He carries her outside, but she likes to walk around a little before going, and she doesn't understand why he won't let her try."

"My God. Somebody who's actually a worse patient than you."

"Very funny. So I guess you're not looking to trade me in on a dog?"

"Not looking to trade you in on anybody."

Jim doesn't answer that. After a while, I get up and make dinner; soup and crackers. We go to bed early. Jim slides close and lets me gently stroke his back and shoulders. We fall asleep clinging to each other.

Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. We go to work. Tuesday we get called to the high school; the principal caught six boys behind the shop trailer with cocaine. School is almost out, and they took the stupidity of senioritis to amazing new heights. Shoemacher comes back on Wednesday. He says Doris is better. On Thursday nothing interesting happens--just heavy grey rain that keeps people home and discourages speeding among those that do go out.

I decide to take my cues from Jim. I don't push him, I don't ask him questions. When we're alone, I touch him. I spend a lot of time thinking about the meaning of patience.

In the evenings I spend a couple of hours working at the house, painting the ceilings in the bathrooms or hanging the rods in the closets. The end really is in sight, but I won't give notice on the rent house until I am sure it is safe for Jim to move. I always shower and change before going home.

While I am at the house every night, Jim makes dinner. He always fusses over me when I get home, slipping his arms around me and nuzzling my still-damp hair. Sometimes I am too tired from the long days to manage anything but a limp hug before falling into a chair and working to stay awake long enough to eat. Somehow, we make it to Friday morning.

We leave early on Friday morning. The rain has passed, and the air is bright and fresh. We take my truck, but Jim drives. We get in a little early, and have time to hit Restoration Hardware. Jim gets his happy, nesting look while we're shopping. I don't make any comments about retail therapy. We get knobs for the kitchen cabinets, frighteningly expensive light switchplates for the upstairs bedroom, and a mirror for the guest bathroom.

Lunch with Simon is nice. They have steak, I have a chicken Caesar. Jim talks. Not about anything serious, but maybe relaxed is better than serious. But when Jim gets up to go to the men's room, Simon leans across to me and says, "Does Jim seem a little pale?"

"His hearing's still great, though."

"Hell, Sandburg, I figured this was the only way you'd get a word in edgewise today." His eyes tell me he's kind of suspicious about that, too.

"Life's not perfect, Simon." He looks at me. "It's been a bad couple of weeks. Our K-9 got shot."

Simon winces. "He didn't say anything."

I lean forward and lower my voice. "We're a really small department, Simon. Everybody's very... close. Jim is smelling and hearing everybody's stress."

"So you got outta Dodge."

"Yeah. Maybe. For a couple of days."

Simon nods.

"He's gonna be fine, Simon." He just nods sympathetically, and I change the subject. "I've got a new DVD for Daryl." I slide it across the table. Daryl is a lawyer now. His firm handles stuff for Jim and me. The DVD contains the latest copy of my sentinel evidence and research. If something were to happen to us, it would be publicly released--mostly because the knowledge needs to be out there, but partly, too, because if the government were to pull some hanky-panky and borrow one or both of us, we want all of the secrets blown wide open.

"I'll pass this along. He'd love to see you, you know."

"We'll come back later this summer, when we have more time."

The next stop is Jim's dad's. Stephen's in-laws are coming in for the graduation, so we're staying at Bill's where there's 'more room.' This is more togetherness with Jim's old man than I initially had in mind, but ok.

Bill does have plenty of space. So much so, that he gives us separate rooms. Generous, huh? We separate long enough to set down our bags and hang up our suits, and then I trot down the hall to Jim's old room. It's been kept pretty much the way he left it, like some kind of weird shrine.

Jim looks up from his suitcase and sighs. "Sorry about the set up, Chief."

I shrug and roll my eyes. "No worries."

"So. Now we know he hasn't guessed anything."

"Ah. No, we don't. He might have figured everything out, but doesn't want to let on that he knows."

"Believe me, he doesn't know. If knowing upset him that much, we'd know he was freaking."

I sober. "No. He wouldn't. He adores you. He worships you so completely that he's put up with me for years."

Jim turns away suddenly and says softly, "Something's wrong, Blair. He's taking something."

"What do you mean?" But I know he must mean he smells something. "Do you recognize it?"

"No. It's not familiar."

"Does he smell sick?"

"I don't think so." But he looks uncertain. He looks worried. How nice, something else for Jim to worry about.

I think about going down and asking Bill what's up. Then I picture going down and hinting around to Bill about how good Jim's sense of smell is, and how it makes him edgy to sort of know what's going on, but not be sure.

Then I throw up my hands and go across the hall to the master bedroom. There is a bathroom attached. I am back in a minute and a half. "Blood thinner. Not unusual in a man his age, Jim. It doesn't necessarily mean anything disastrous." He's nearly seventy. Really, this isn't all that alarming.

Jim blinks. "You're sure?"

I nod. I have the PDR nearly memorized--you never know what some idiot quack is going to try to give Jim. "It's not serious." Probably. But I think about Naomi getting older, and I know how he feels.

Jim pulls me against him and holds me until he hears his dad coming up the stairs.

We spend the afternoon in Bill's stuffy living room, drinking very good coffee and talking about the house. The house is still Jim's favorite topic. Bill, it turns out, has a secret lust for big power tools--questions of social class not withstanding. They talk about table saws for nearly twenty minutes. Then they talk about different tile materials. I find myself uncharacteristically quiet, smiling just a little.

At five, Sally arrives. After the initial hugs, Jim hands her the pictures of the house. She chuckles. "You used to play with Stevie's Lincoln Logs. He was still at that age where all he wanted to do was knock things over, and you were building these elaborate things. I thought maybe you were headed to be an architect."

Jim blinks, surprised. I can tell this is not a memory he has. "When was this?"

"You were, oh, almost nine, Jimmy. Stevie could hardly wait till you'd finish building so he could start smashing. Eventually, you both lost interest."

"We started crashing model airplanes," he says slowly.

"Yes, you'd work on them for hours, paint them and everything...."

The two hour conversation that follows is one I have been waiting years for. Sally and Bill talk about Jim's childhood. I listen, motionless and silent, nearly holding my breath. They sound amazingly normal, a pair of typical parents going on and on about how wonderful their children are. Perfect grades, both boys, all the time--or at least that's what they remember. Popular, polite, athletic. Stephen, apparently, went through a period as a comedian, entertaining Sally with absurdist commentaries on his friends and classmates as she put him to bed. Just the sort of thing I've heard over and over from parents and grandparents. Very, very normal.

But they sound strange, too. Off, just a little. Some of what Sally says, Bill never had a clue about. He doesn't know what his sons' favorite foods were. He never heard the story about the fight Jimmy lost when he took on two much bigger bullies who were picking on his little brother. Nobody bothers to point out why everybody kept this from dad.

It is Sally who brings up Jim's senses. "He always knew where Stevie was and what he was doing."

Bill says softly, "He always knew where everybody was and what they were doing. I know he never got a surprise for Christmas until he was--" Bill stops, looking slightly ill.

"It was finding the Easter baskets that was fun." Jim takes over quickly enough that it has to be a deliberate move to get attention away from his father.

"You always found the most eggs. Stevie would have three, and you'd have a dozen and half. In just a few minutes...."

Without meaning to, I ask, "You could smell the eggs in the shell?"

"I could smell the dye." At my blank look, he adds, "Vinegar."

"Dear God," Bill whispers. This man was never equipped to raise a sentinel.

Jim meets my eyes and nods ever so slowly. What? I wonder--and then I realize I have been given permission to ask my questions. "Were there ever any problems?"

"Problems," Bill repeats, looking horrified.

Sally says, "No. He was a very good boy. They were both good boys."

"No, I mean... any signs of difficulty concentrating, unexplained illnesses. Did you ever have trouble getting his attention?"

Sally thinks for a moment. "Rashes. The rash from the shampoo was different from the rash from the laundry soap. And he couldn't go swimming at the country club. Something they put in the water. Jimmy was so miserable."

"Do you have any idea about which specific ingredients--"

Sally shakes her head. It has been more than thirty years.

I look at each of them and then lurch onward. "Did --were there ever periods when he seemed not to notice what was going on around him?"

"No, never."

I look at Bill, and he nods agreement. No zoning, then. He was on line enough to track eggs by the smell of the dye, but didn't have the focus problems we had to work so hard to compensate for later.

We talk until it's time to leave to go meet the family for dinner: Stephen, his wife Lauren, Amanda, and Lauren's parents. Bill drives us in and we meet the others at a very upper class Italian restaurant. Lauren has hugs for everyone. Stephen looks ready to explode with pride. Amanda looks withdrawn, even though she is smiling. I wonder if she's gotten shy all of a sudden.

Dinner is nice--and I don't even mean that ironically. I sit between Sally and Lauren's mother, Minna. We spend the evening talking about changes they've witnessed in American culture in the last thirty years or so. The food is fantastic, and there's lots of it. I am stuffed full of wild mushroom ravioli and spinach salad. It is not quite dark when we come out of the restaurant, so we decide to take a short walk in the park across the street before ending the evening.

The path is fairly narrow, and we straggle out in clusters. Lauren goes first, with her parents. Then Stephen and Sally, Bill and me, and Jim and Amanda. The arrangement has me a little suspicious; if Jim's dad has positioned himself beside me on purpose, then he wants to talk about something. I am tired, I am stuffed, and I am way too stressed out to find one of Bill's ambush conversations fun.

"Nice evening," I say neutrally.

"Unseasonably warm."

Good. Nice, innocent conversation. This is going well.

Behind me, Amanda says, "Uncle Jim, what kind of bird is that?"

"Where?"

"There, on that building."

Jim doesn't answer, and I glance back to see where Amanda is pointing and stumble over my feet. The only place she could be pointing at is on the other side of the park. Jim glances at me, doesn't like what he sees there. "It's a woodpecker. Big, I don't know the species. You don't usually see them in Cascade." I don't think that he notices taking a step forward and putting himself between Amanda and her grandfather.

The four of us stand frozen as the rest of our party drifts away. Amanda's eyes narrow. "What's wrong?" She glances at Jim. "Is that what this is about? They can't see the bird?"

I look at the building, both distant and shadowed. Somewhere over there is a bird. "Almost nobody could see a bird."

"So--what? We can see a bird and all of a sudden everybody smells like they're teaching me to drive. Why is this a big deal?"

"Honey, if you can smell our anxiety, this is a big deal," I say.

She snorts. "But you hear about 'the smell of fear' all the time."

"That's usually an exaggeration. Or a euphemism."

"Amanda, how long has this been going on?" Jim asks.

"I don't know."

"You don't know?" Jim glances at me. "It wasn't always like this, Amanda. When did it start?"

She is worried now, glancing from Jim to me. "I don't know. I could always tell when the milk had gone off from across the room. I think. Most people can't." That comes out a question, and I nod. "I know my vision's better than it was two years ago, because this fall, I could see the football players' faces." She pauses, smiling slightly. "I couldn't before. But I dunno. It wasn't anything sudden." She looks at us hard. "What's going on? Uncle Jim? Is this the thing that's wrong with you?"

"There is nothing wrong with your Uncle Jim," Bill grinds out. I think this response scares her more than a simple yes would have.

I step toward her. We can't go on the way we are. "Amanda, it's ok. We've been keeping secrets about your uncle because if the wrong people knew about him, they would find a way to use it against him. It was an awful big secret to ask you to keep."

"I'm not a little girl!"

"I know that." I would calm down more, I'm sure, if I were touching Jim. I need to be as calm as I can manage. Just as much as I need her to be sure I'm telling the truth. "Amanda, I will tell you everything. You have nothing to be afraid of."

"Hey? Is everything ok?" It is Lauren. My stomach sinks. We are not ready to deal with the parents, not now.

Bill slips an arm through his daughter-in-law's. "Jim and Blair want to take Amanda out for ice cream. They'll bring her home later." He holds out his car keys. I take them numbly.

A few moments later, we are alone.

Jim looks scared. This is not good--she's going to know. "Chill," I mutter, before remembering that Amanda will be able to hear me. I sigh and start over. "Amanda, before I know what to tell you, we have to know what's going on. Ok?" She nods. I start the three of us moving towards Bill's car. "You can see the players' faces. From one endzone to the other?"

"Yes."

"Farther than that?"

"No. I don't think so."

"Can you hear my heartbeat right now?"

No answer.

"Amanda?"

"I could. I don't like to listen that hard."

Ok. Progress. "Why?"

"It's hard. I mean, really hard. If it works I get all distracted and lose track of time... and then I can't stop doing it."

"Amanda?" Jim breaks his silence. "Those people over there. What are they saying?" He points at a couple sitting on the fountain at the center of the park. At a guess, I'd say they were about ten yards away. Well within Jim's range, even if they were whispering.

"They're arguing over birth control methods."

"What about your sense of touch?" I ask.

"What about it?"

"Has it changed?"

"Not that I've noticed." But she doesn't sound sure.

Jim says, "Do your clothes or sheets ever feel unusually rough or itchy? Have you had any strange rashes?"

She doesn't answer at once. "When I get my... you know... I feel like I'm bruised all over." She pauses. "The nurse says it's because I'm retaining water or it's the hormones."

I blink. This is a bit beyond me. I have not given any thought to women's cycles since I took a graduate class in anthro of the body--God, fifteen years ago, now. More. But Jim nods. "Yes. I know that feeling."

"So. What is this about? Exactly."

It is getting dark, but the park is crisscrossed by floodlights. The lights are haloed by small swarms of insects. I wish I could buy some time here; I have only given this spiel twice before, and one of these times I frightened and insulted my client. "It's not uncommon, one or two unusually acute senses. Five is very rare, and very special. The, ah, word for it is sentinel. You see it rarely in non-industrial societies. Almost never in the Western world." I swallow hard. "It seems to run in your family."

She glances at Jim. "This is what makes my dad so...."

"Frantic," Jim sighs.

"Yeah. Frantic. Why?"

"It's hard to live with," I whisper. "Five heightened senses make for a lot of data to process. It takes practice. Training."

She turns huge, blue eyes on Jim. "Who trained you?"

"Blair did."

"But he's not--?"

"No. That was his specialty, when he was in anthropology. People like me. Us."

Amanda gets quiet after that. We take Bill's car to a diner. We're all too full for ice cream, but we take a table in the back and order coffee.

"You use it for police work," Amanda says after a few minutes. "Is that why it's a secret? Because it breaks some rules?"

"The first identified American sentinel would never be left alone by the media," Jim says.

"It's a secret because it's dangerous. If the world knew too much about sentinels, it would know how to hurt them."

"How?"

I do not--really not--want to get into this. Her first discussions about her senses shouldn't be about fear. But as I look into her eyes, I see that she is already turning over ideas. "Sonic dog trainers hurt," she says.

Jim nods.

"And I'm... one of those? A sentinel."

"We think so. I don't have a way to test touch or taste or smell here, and you can't just wing those."

"You can test taste?" she asks.

"Let me have your hand," Jim says. He picks up the salt shaker. "Close your eyes." He shakes some of the salt onto the table, then pinches a few grains into her palm. "How many?"

She laughs. "You're kidding."

"No. How many?"

She goes very still. "Six," she says at last. Jim holds out her hand where I can see it. Six. "Ugh!" She jerks her hand free and shakes it. "That burns!"

"Think about something else," Jim advises.

"Like what?"

"Do you have a quiet place?"

Of course she does. While other girls were taking jazz and tap, she was taking stress management classes. Amanda stares at Jim and her eyes harden. "You were expecting this! You, my parents! You had me in classes--"

"We knew it was possible," I say. "We didn't see any signs. If we had, we would have explained what was going on. If you'd needed to know--"

She is angry and won't look at me. "I think I needed to know."

"Why didn't you say anything, Amanda? When you noticed your vision or your hearing was changing?"

"You're kidding, right? Do you have any idea how freaked out my dad gets when I see the eye doctor? And there was this big secret he wouldn't talk about!"

"But you figured it out, didn't you?" Jim asks.

"I didn't think I was right! Who would believe this?"

When we take her home, Stephen meets us at the door. He hugs Amanda, hard, and then leads us into the living room. Bill and Lauren are waiting for us. When I look around, Lauren says, "Mom and dad went up to bed. They had a long flight. Sally went home."

Stephen sits down on the couch, pulling Amanda with him. Her hand is trapped between both of his. Everybody looks at me.

I wonder what they want to hear. "Looks like all five," I say. "I can't give you exact numbers. I don't have the equipment to test smell, taste and hearing any more."

"How's she doing?" Lauren asks. She doesn't look as frightened as Stephen.

"Pretty well, actually. It looks like things came on so gradually that she's been able to adapt." I do not mention that I never considered that coming on-line could happen like this. "She's coping with the vision very well--I mean, she's driving, right? If her depth perception or concentration were unreliable, we'd know by now." Unwillingly, I think of Jim's red Land Rover, totaled less than seventy-two hours after I met him. We fought the whole time I was driving him around to dealerships that weekend. Jim's problems distinguishing near and far passed very quickly, but I still feel slightly ill thinking about it. "Hearing seems to be overwhelming, but she's ignoring all the input she can't handle."

"She's repressing?" Stephen asks.

"No, she's on line. She's just ignoring most of the information from smell, touch, and hearing because it's too much work to make sense out of it."

Jim speaks for the first time. "She's not ignoring smell. She's masking it with peppermint oil." I look at him in surprise. He shrugs ever so slightly.

I turn toward Amanda. So does everybody else. She blinks at us. "I tried using perfume for a while, but it started giving me a headache."

"Honey, why didn't you say something?" Lauren asks.

"I thought everybody--I mean, you complain that things smell bad all the time. And all those advertisements--for odor eaters and room deodorizers and scented whatevers. I thought, you know, things just stank."

Of course she did. Our culture is obsessed with smell. In her place I might have come to the same conclusion, especially if the senses came on gradually.

"So what happens now?" Lauren asks. "Can we... turn them off?"

Jim puts a hand on my arm. I wonder what I smell like, that he thinks he has to remind me not to jump down his sister-in-law's throat. "No. I don't know how. Even if that was what Amanda wanted... trying wouldn't work out well in the long run."

Bill turns his face to the wall.

"She needs training," I say. "She needs practice. She needs to learn how to use her abilities and how to avoid things that will hurt her."

"Will you do it?" Stephen whispers.

"Of course we will," Jim answers. "She can stay with us this summer. In a couple more weeks the house will be done--"

Amanda is shaking her head vigorously. "No. No way. This summer I'm going to Europe with Hillary and Madeline."

Stephen looks at her in surprise. "This is important--"

"Not from where I'm sitting."

"Amanda." It is not quite Jim's cop voice, but it is dark enough to get her attention. "Ignoring this part of yourself won't work out in the long run. You need to learn to use your senses, not endure them."

"I don't need to use them. I'm not going to be a cop. I'm going into art history. I don't need special senses for that, I need to go to France!"

Could she possibly not appreciate how serious this is? Doesn't she get that we're talking about her life, her sanity, her entire future here? But her eyes are like a wall, furious and uninterested and unreachable. I am stunned. What do you do with a sentinel who doesn't want explanations, who has no interest in control?

Shockingly, it is Bill who steps up to the plate. "Do you expect to do any authentication or restoration? You're turning your back on a huge advantage."

"Grandpa! I can't do it now."

"That's enough," Lauren says. "We'll talk about it tomorrow."

On the front steps, Jim looks from me to his father. "The sad part is, that probably went well, considering ...."

"She doesn't get it," I say.

"Well, yeah. I mean." Jim abandons diplomacy. "She's being stupid."

"She doesn't know," I say. Part of me is glad that she doesn't know how hard it can be for an untrained sentinel living in an industrial society. But she may not be done coming on line. Even if she is, sooner or later there will be an input she can't ignore, and it will overwhelm her, spinning everything else out of control.

"She'll come around," Bill says. "It's a big surprise and inconvenient, but she'll come around. She has her whole life ahead of her to travel."

It is two-fifteen, and I am staring at the clock beside my bed when Jim creeps into the room. He drops his robe across the footboard and slides in beside me. It is a twin bed; there isn't a lot of room. Even with me at the edge of the bed, we are barely a breath apart.

"Stop worrying," Jim whispers. His arms come around me, warm and solid.

I sigh. "There are so many things I should have done differently with you."

"Like what?"

"I should have gotten you out of police work. I should have gotten you out of Cascade sooner."

Jim chuckles. "Like I would have gone for any of that."

"Yeah, well."

"Face it, Chief. You knew about everything you possibly could. You did everything that could be done."

"I'm sorry. About the house, I mean." I'm sorry everything I knew, everything I did wasn't enough.

"I'm sorry you were right." Jim pulls me closer. With two of us, it's very warm. I slide out an arm and shove the blanket off. "Don't worry about it, Chief. Only a couple more weeks. Think of it, our house. We can start landscaping. Get some flowering bushes, maybe. Something that likes shade. Plant some flowers."

"What, no ornamental pond? No rock garden? No hammock?"

"Well, not this year. I don't think we'll have time. The hammock, maybe."

"Yeah. Jim, what are we going to do about your niece?"

"It's weird, you know? I finally find somebody like me, who sees the world the way I do, and she turns out to be such a ...."

"Teenager?"

"Yeah."

I plant a few soft kisses on his shoulder. "She'll grow out of that."

Jim curls around me and whispers in my ear, "God, Blair. Why isn't she scared? I was so scared."

It's true; she wasn't scared. She was just pissed that she had been kept in the dark, had to learn the truth by ambush, and now things are getting inconvenient. Annoyed, but not scared. "Well, Jim. She can see that you're sane and normal, that you've had an interesting life.... Despite her dad's constant state of badly concealed hysteria, you don't seem ill or endangered. She's been living with this for a year, probably more, and the worst that's happened is that it was inconvenient and annoying. She solved those by ignoring her hearing and using peppermint oil." She's been loved all her life. There has never been a moment when she had cause to doubt that her dad supported her completely--whatever mistakes Stephen and Lauren might have made, that wasn't one of them. And she didn't come on line all at once, alone, while under unbearable pressure.

Jim, Jim. How did you do it?

I realize that being depressed and worried will just make me smell depressed and worried, and Jim will never get any sleep tonight for comforting me. But he seems too preoccupied to notice this time. "Can you teach a teenager?"

"You make teenager sound worse than know-it-all, macho cop."

"Know-it-all, macho cop?"

"Jim, it was like pulling teeth. Amanda will be a piece of cake compared to you."

"Famous last words, Chief. Famous last words."

The graduation is Saturday afternoon. Saturday morning, Jim and I sleep late, and then we meet the family for brunch. It's an upscale brunch, involving a buffet and lots of hollandaise. We don't talk about sentinels--as much because nobody wants a scene about Europe today as because 'sentinel' remains an awkward topic.

The ceremony is lovely.

Ok, it's not. It is dismally long. The air conditioning in the gym can't meet the challenge of the hundreds of relatives crammed in there. The sound system probably could meet the challenge of the distorted acoustics if the person running it had a clue about what they were doing. But rites of passage are supposed to be memorable, not necessarily pleasant. In fact, memorably unpleasant will do just fine.

Afterward, Amanda runs to us, hugs everyone happily, and disappears to a party with her friends. Feeling a little bereft, the grown-ups stand around talking, then we wander off to yet another restaurant. This time it's sushi.

The food is great. The service is slow. Bill and Lauren's parents reminisce about high school in 'their day.' Jim, naturally, goes on and on to Sally and Lauren about things he's already told them about the house. I concentrate on the sushi--I've been too long without raw fish in my life. Stephen quietly gets drunk.

His whole mourning act is starting to piss me off. Somebody needs to thunk him up side the head. Or something. Jim won't trust himself to do it, though, and William is downright conflict avoidant with his boys these days. Well, why should they make the effort, when they have good old Blair to do their communicating for them?

"She's going to be fine, you know?" I make a gentle start.

"You're supposed to protect your kids," Stephen whispers.

"This isn't something you protect her from, this is who she is!"

"Oh, yes. You have another one now, don't you?"

"This is not about me. And, by the way, it's not about you either!" I lower my voice, but the others are all too involved to notice the argument going on next to them. "This is about Amanda. You have got to be behind her. You have got to believe in her. She's--she's not Jim. She's not afraid, she's barely fighting herself, not yet. Maybe never. But not if you keep acting like it's the end of the world. She needs more from you than this."

Stephen stops arguing. I'm not sure this means I win. The whole thing comes up again the next morning, when Bill drives Jim and me over to Stephen's house, clearly for the purpose of me convincing Amanda that she needs sentinel lessons more than she needs to go to Europe this summer.

Lauren puts us on the patio. Alone. With lemonade and cookies. I sigh. Amanda looks at me sulkily. "You're not going to change my mind."

"Yeah. Well, I hope I can. If we don't do this now... you're starting college in the fall. You won't be free again until next year, and I think that's longer than we should wait."

She looks at me earnestly, bent on being reasonable, on changing my mind. "Why? I mean, I'm fine. I know that Uncle Jim has problems with his senses sometimes. But not me, nothing I can't live with." I open my mouth, but she keeps going. "I'm not going to need them, not the way he does. I mean, what am I going to use them for? Everybody's just overreacting."

"Yeah. Yeah. See, the thing is, right now you're very young."

"And that means I'm stupid and ignorant."

I don't sigh. "No. That means you're resilient. You have tons of energy. Your body repairs itself. You can lose a night's sleep and not miss it." Her mouth is set stubbornly. I push on. "You are going to need the skills you learn now later. The habits and patterns you're setting up now are going to have a huge effect on what happens for the rest of your life!"

She glances at me nervously. "Is Uncle Jim dying?"

"No." I sit down on a wooden bench and pat the seat beside me. I must be completely honest and accurate; if her senses have been coming on line for over a year, she'll perceive a great deal in my non-verbal communication. Even without training, her intuition will tell her when I'm holding back or freaking out. She sits beside me, and I turn toward her, letting her get a good look. "No. Jim... overreacts to minor irritations. I don't just mean how he perceives them and, and responses like stress and anxiety. Sometimes his body physically overreacts, and he shows physical symptoms. Sometimes the symptoms cause problems of their own." I take a deep breath. "He's basically all right, most of the time."

"Am I going to have to avoid cities, too?"

"Amanda, I honestly don't know. Maybe. Not for a while. The thing is, you have a number of advantages your uncle didn't."

She snorts. "Like what? I'm not tough like he is. I can't ever be as--as strong as he is!"

"Believe me. Being tough is one of the things working against him. No, really. Sometimes he has to fight himself really hard to be, ah, flexible. We made sure of that, Amanda, that you would be given the tools and skills to manage stress effectively. We made sure you knew how to monitor your body. Just in case."

"Just in case."

"But we have to build on that, Amanda. You have to learn to pay attention to sensory input without being overwhelmed. You have to learn to control your attention, to focus your concentration--"

"Hey, yoga since the age of nine, remember?"

"That was just a warm up. This is the real thing."

But half an hour later I have not convinced her. I wander back to the living room with my tail between my legs. "All right," Stephen says to his brother. "You go back there and put the fear of God into her."

"No! I don't want her to be afraid of this," Jim snaps back.

Bill scowls. "She's a child. Just send her to Ithaca. She's not old enough to make the choice."

"Oh, yeah. Brilliant. Jim and I will just drag her off into the woods and force her to meditate and concentrate and get in touch with her inner sentinel. That'll work."

"It's not safe to send her to Europe," Bill protests.

"It's a delicate thing we're asking her to do! The stuff she has to learn--it's going to take a lot of hard work and patience on her part! You can't make her do it. Not and have it work!"

We end with nobody happy and everybody worried. In four days, Amanda will either be on the way to France or at the start of a summer-long temper tantrum for which she will hold me personally responsible.

Lovely.

Jim and I head home that afternoon. We have Monday off, but it's a house day for me and Jim will get a start on packing.

Monday we install the bathtubs, which means I get a real shower (indoors!) before I go home. I hadn't realized how much I hated washing with cold water in our lawnless back yard until I didn't have to. I get home to find all of the most seldom-used kitchen equipment packed up into tidily labeled boxes. Jim pounces on me when I'm barely in the door. "Tell me everything."

"What about, 'hello?' A kiss maybe? 'How was your day, Sandburg?'"

"What about them?" He holds his innocent look, thinking he's teasing me. Well, fine.

"You remember the color on the bathtub for upstairs?"

"Bisque."

I shake my head sadly. "Somebody wrote the product number down wrong. Marbleized avocado. It's pretty nasty looking, and it clashes with the floor, but I had the plumber go ahead and set it because he's all booked up for the rest of the month--"

Jim chuckles and shakes a finger at me. "Nice try, funny man. Tease the unstable sentinel. We both know I'm this close to snapping."

I open my mouth for a come-back, but there is a knock at the door. I go to answer it while Jim checks on dinner. It's Loraine. She's still in her uniform, although it's her personal car parked in the drive. "Hey," I say.

"Blair."

"Uh, come on in. Jim? We got company."

But Jim is already on his way in. He meets my eyes for just a moment, and I say, "Uh, Jim, we're out of coffee. I'll just, ah."

"Thanks. We could also use bread."

I am gone for an hour and a half, a feat I achieve by driving very slowly and being really indecisive about the bread. When I get back, Loraine's car is gone. I find Jim sitting alone in the kitchen, his roast chicken getting cold on a platter on the counter.

I turn on a light over the stove, lift a lid to sniff the potatoes. Jim glances at me briefly. "Did she quit?" I ask.

"Tried to."

"Tried to?"

"We had a little... talk."

I blink, wondering what there was to talk about. She'd had time to think it over. If she'd made her decision, she'd made her decision.

"I yelled at her, actually."

"Okaaaay." Because--and never mind honoring her autonomy--the last thing you want on patrol with you is somebody who doesn't want to be there.

"I asked her if stopping Meriwether was worth it. I asked her if the lives of her fellow officers were worth it."

"Jim--"

"Because, damn it, it is worth it!" He glances away. "She's got ambition, Blair, but if she starts running away from responsibility, she's just dangerous!"

"Ok."

"Chief, I really don't want to argue about this with you--Ok?"

"Yeah." I stand still for a moment, feeling awkward. I take down some plates and begin to serve up dinner. "So. How did it go?"

Jim sighs. "You know, we thought she'd be gone in a year or so... bigger things? I don't think she'll be ready that soon."

"Ok."

Jim stares at the plate I set in front of him. "Why are you not arguing about this?"

"Jim, I'm a detective. A cop. Or whatever. I was never in charge of people doing this. I never really even had the normal training for--you know--embodying authority. Following orders. This particular leadership thing isn't my shtick. Maybe yelling was the right thing to do."

"But you don't really think so."

"Well. I would prefer to treat people like adults and let them make their own decisions."

Jim laughs, startling me. "You don't even always treat me like an adult."

"When you act like an adult, I treat you like an adult," I say quickly. But I find myself sneaking a look, unsure how serious he is. Unsure if there's some resentment there.

"I'm teasing," he says softly.

"Are you? Becomes sometimes I can be.... You know. A little."

"Yes," he says seriously. "You can. But it's usually when I can't cope real well."

"Jim," I whisper, "I know I'm being a prick about the house."

He looks away. "You've been right. I don't like it, but I'm not real fond of being sick, either."

I nod, since suddenly I can't speak. Jim takes my hand, tugging slightly to make me look at him. "We're almost there, Chief." I nod again, and he adds, "I can wait."

"Thanks," I manage.

Jim takes a deep breath. "So. Since you're feeling all sappy now, any chance of, you know, getting any tonight?"

I laugh, surprised. "Horn dog."

"Hey! It's been days."

"Only because you're shy at the old homestead."

"Only because I'm not an exhibitionist." My smile fades abruptly. "What?" Jim asks.

"If we get Amanda this summer--are we not--for months? Oh, hell!" She's a sentinel, I think. Jim wouldn't feel adequately private in a hotel four miles away from her.

"Oh, no, Chief. God invented white noise generators for a reason."

"Oh. Right. Good. Ok."

That night there is lovemaking. Wonderful lovemaking. Jim is careful and thorough. He plays my body for--oh, it feels like hours--until he is so drunk and zoned on my heat and touch and taste that he can barely reach for me and mumble my name. He trembles and gasps as I touch him. He is fully present, completely open to his body. In only a few minutes, my hands are too rough and hard for his skin to bear. Only my mouth is soft enough. Even so, Jim's teeth are pushed together and tears leak out of his eyes. Not pain, I know, but Jim can't do this much longer. I whisper for him to come and touch him gently once more with the tip of my tongue.

Jim climaxes in silence, holding his breath and clenching every muscle. When he sags, finally, shaking, I move up to lie beside him. I can't touch him yet, even to keep him warm. I wait, exhausted, my belly filled with a warm light. Happy. God. Happy! I never imagined being loved the way Jim loves me. And what I can do for him--what he lets me do for him! If I had had any idea how wonderful it would be, I don't know how I would have survived all those years not doing this. I sigh.

"You ok?"

"Oh, hey, look who's verbal!" I clean us both and then pull the sheet up over Jim. He sighs and turns toward me. I pull him into my arms and fall asleep.

The next morning, we take separate cars to work, since I'll be going to the house afterward. At the door, Jim pauses for a moment for me to catch up to him. We are still both buzzing from last night. We don't touch.

Two steps in the door, Jim freezes like he's walked into a wall. The look on his face reminds me of the time the toilet backed up on the weekend we had a house full of out of town visitors. I sniff. For a police station, the front office smells oddly pleasant. "Jim, weren't you supposed to call Commissioner Whitfield?" He flees toward his office, and I look around, quickly finding the culprit plugged into the outlet behind Sherry's desk. It has a little fan in it to make it more efficient. How nice.

Sherry straightens, her hackles rising as I remove the little poison dispenser and lay it on her desk. Sherry glares. I keep my voice friendly. "You know, they don't make these things out of real... summer rain?" Yuck. Anger flashes through me, but I manage to keep it out of my eyes. Almost. "It's mostly petroleum products. They smell nice, but our bodies weren't meant to be exposed to these chemicals, let alone breathing them all day."

"Blair, would you stop being such a--" She stops, censoring herself. "It's not a big deal. This place stinks. You're being so picky!"

I am a hell of a lot worse than picky. I am obnoxious and unrelenting and an utter bastard. "Untreated cedar shavings," I say. "Peppermint essential oil--I do not mean fragrance oil. That's a synthetic. Or orange oil. Or fir oil. Or the deodorizing spray made from corn starch--unscented."

"It's not a big deal!"

"Baking soda. Live plants. Jim is allergic to this crap." I pull an evidence bag out of my pocket and drop the little electric poison sprayer into it. "Take it home." I drop it on the desk, and go back outside; I can't stay in the office with her and I won't retreat to Jim's office or the little kitchenette.

I sit against the hood of Jim's county car, trying to look casual but ominous--the cop being visible look. Inside, I am furious. A couple of times in there I had felt a powerful urge to do Sherry bodily harm. Stupid, useless bitch.

No, no. Come on. She's a nice lady. She's been good to us. Ignorant, maybe, but not unusually so. Well meaning. Everything is fine. I am calm.

She wants a pleasant workplace. It's not a crime. She doesn't know--

I am calm. Jim is fine. He can handle a little crap. He is not so fragile. I am calm.

"Hey, Chief," Jim says casually. He jingles his keys. "Accident on the bridge over by the high school. No injury, but the traffic's not moving. Let's go."

Although school in Cascade is out, Dorset County has another week. That bridge in the mornings is the closest we have to a genuine traffic jam--and that's when cars are actually moving. "Oooo. Fun."

It's a busy day. Marty wants to talk to Jim before the circuit court session starts up next week. Oksana wants a meeting too; we have lunch with her. In the afternoon, Joey finds an abandoned car out by Applejack. Stolen, it turns out. Then the hospital reports almost six thousand dollars worth of controlled substances missing from the pharmacy.

I barely make it to the house on time to meet the guys bringing the kitchen appliances, although we arranged to be the last trip of the day. Everything is the right color and the right brand and the right model. It all gets in the right place.

That night we get a call from Amanda. That sounds encouraging, but no. She doesn't want to schedule a visit, she just wants some quick advice: do I know anything about grooming products that won't make her eyes water. She does ok with children's soap, but just about everything else is inconveniently stinky.

Suppressing a sigh, I say, "Instead of hair gel, try aloe. You can buy it by the bottle. Just don't get the minty cool kind they sell for sunburn. For deodorant, there's several brands of salt wash that might help. They control odor, but not perspiration." I know that make-up comes unscented and hypoallergenic, but that's all I know about it. I tell her all I can over the phone. I know it won't be enough.

The rest of the week is like that. I have Wednesday off. Mostly, what is left at the house is clean-up. Sawdust everywhere, and little bits of wood. Tools. Wayward screws. Torn paper and cardboard.

The workmen are gone, finally. I leave the windows open and turn on a couple of fans. I think about living here. I think about Jim, going home after work to pack. It's time to give notice on the other house.

Thursday, Amanda gets on the plane for Paris. I spend my lunch hour on the phone with Stephen, listening to him angst. Most of it is normal baby-growing-up stress, but some of it is reasonable fear about what happens to a sentinel when all the subtle, saturating inputs change.

Friday Jim packs. We wind up both working Friday evening, though. Lost hiker season has started: four teenagers in the national park. They have a cell phone, which means people know they're in trouble hours before their friends would have missed them otherwise, but the battery gives out before we can use the signal to pinpoint a location. So the hunt begins: the parks service, Dorset County Sheriff's Department, Chelan County police department, and everybody's volunteers.

At full dark, the search is sharply curtailed. The search dogs are tired, and there is a limit to what most people can do at night. Not Jim, though. Jim and I get to them just after 2:00 am. We've got snacks and blankets, so we call it in and then settle until morning. The kids are ok, but exhausted and cold. They don't quiet down for about an hour, alternately pissed at the world and weepy with relief. I had been hoping for a nap, but they are so jumpy nobody gets much rest. If I'd thought the kids could manage the steep trail in the dark, I would have just suggested giving in and trekking up to the clearing where a chopper could meet us, but one of the girls is in cutesy high-heeled cowboy boots and one of the boys says he suffers from night blindness.

Ah, the joys of lost hiker season. We will do this at least once a month until school starts again in the fall--and maybe for a few weeks more, if the weather is nice. It's not always the park, which is too bad, since that's the most fun.

We get back to Ithaca at ten on Saturday morning. This means I have been technically on duty for twenty six hours. I steal a hot shower across the street in the jail and get a nap on the ancient naugahyde couch in the hall between our holding cell and the kitchenette. At one, the weekend secretary goes home and I swap out with Jim, holding down the fort while he catches some sleep. It is, fortunately, a quiet day.

We go off shift--finally, finally--and on the highway Jim turns right instead of left. He's headed for the house. Ok, whatever. I don't blame him.

Jim gets out of his county car and approaches almost reverently. The house has changed since he's seen it last. The steps up to the front door have a proper railing. The garage, which sits under the living room where the landscape dips, has a door. Oh, and the exterior stain is on. It looks beautiful.

The door has a proper lock, now. Does Jim have a key? No, his key is still in my glove compartment. I take out my keys and toss them to him. Jim opens the door but stalls out in the entry area, looking around slowly. Across from the door is the little room where we'll keep the file cabinet and the computer and the free weights. To the right, the narrow entry way opens into the living room and kitchen/eating area. It's very open; Jim can see everything. There are no rooms above the living room, and it is open to the upstairs hall. The stairs have railings, and so does the balcony.

"The cabinets look good," Jim says, walking slowly forward. "The tile looks good."

Yeah. The tile. "How do things smell?"

"Fine. Like wood. Lots of wood...." He turns around slowly, his arms spread out and caressing the air. "What's left?"

"We have to treat the interior." Given that it's us, that means we coat the pale logs with mineral oil and bee's wax.

"Can I do that?"

"Sure." Long as you're feeling ok.

"Monday?" Our next day off.

"Sure."

"I can schedule the Dawson brothers and their van for next Friday."

"For moving?" I'll have to trade with somebody, even though after last night I'll have the comp time. Dave and Eddy are both going on vacation this week. Coverage will be thin on Friday if I don't go in. "Yeah, maybe."

Jim wanders around, slowly flipping on lights. Quality fixtures, properly positioned, artfully directed. He opens the sliding glass doors to the front patio, which sits on top of the garage. He opens the French doors to the cedar deck off the eating area. "Blair--it's wonderful."

"Yeah." I am still standing by the door. Jim comes over and kisses me. His mouth is warm and slow and undemanding. He is stunningly sweet, and I feel myself tremble inside.

"Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Thank you for this." His arms go around me, one hand sliding up under my hair. We are still in uniform, and our belts are lumpy between us. "It's a beautiful, beautiful house."

I search his eyes. He is calm beneath his delight. Grounded. Wise and solid. I have to swallow hard. "It's not a hovel."

He shakes his head. "It's home. It's ours. God, Blair, it's been so long... in somebody else's house." He kisses me again.

We christen both floors.

End Obscure Music by Dasha: dasha_mte@yahoo.com

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