She opened the door.

“Hi.” She was, for some reason, embarrassed, unable to say more. She wore dolphin shorts and a tank top and was barefoot, this buyer for Magnin’s. She backed up a step.

He walked in all right, then the weight of the place slowed him down. Through the living room he seemed to feel it more. Without talking, she headed for the bedroom. She was forgetting what he’d have to pass.

He got to the door that entered the hallway. By that time she’d come to the entrance to the bedroom. Dismas stopped in front of her little used sewing room. He stood there a long time. The door to it was closed.

“Remember how we wouldn’t close the door the first few weeks?” he said.

“How we wanted to hear every sound?”

He leaned back against the wall. She walked a few steps toward him. She heard the long breath.

“Maybe I should have come over to your place,” she said.

“You think I was wrong?” he asked, letting himself down to the floor. “Now, here, it seems so… immediate.”

She came a little closer. The only light in the hallway came from the kitchen, around an L-turn to the left by her bedroom. “I guess I got used to it,” she said. “The house, I mean. The room.” It didn’t sound right, but she had to say something. “I had to go on.”

“I couldn’t.”

“I know.”

Jane came and knelt next to him. She touched his hair. “If it’s any help, I understood. Even then.”

“Things just stopped mattering.”

“I know they did.”

“I mean, why do anything anyway? I thought everything made a difference. I’d make a better world.”

She pulled his face into her breast. “Shhh,” she whispered.

“I was just like Ed Cochran. And see where that gets us.”

She stroked him-his face, his hair-letting him get it out. At least he was with her, not running, his arms around her.

“I didn’t-” He stopped, pulling back slightly. “Leaving you,” he said, “that was wrong.”

“It wasn’t a lot of fun,” she agreed, “but I lived.”

“I never explained it, did I? Just upped and left.”

“You think I’m dumb, Dismas? I got it.”

“I just couldn’t handle caring anymore. That much.”

“I said I got it. I had to.”

He motioned with his head. “What’s in there now?”

“It’s my sewing room.”

“You mind if I look at it?”

They got up. She opened the door and flicked on the light, watching Dismas trying to imagine it as it had been. Now it was a different place-the alphabet wallpaper gone, no trinkets or kid stuff or upholstered edges. It was a working room, pleasant and dull.

Dismas, hands in pockets, just stood in the doorway, nodding. “I should’ve seen this about five years ago,” he said. “I kept seeing it like it was.”

“You thought nothing would change?”

“The old interior landscape,” he said, “it never did.”

She turned off the light, taking his hand. “So what happened?” she asked. “Now, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t know.”

“You’re the same, but you’re so different,” Jane said.

“Who isn’t?”

“I don’t think I am.”

“Which one, the same or different?”

“Different,” she decided.

Dismas was sitting crosslegged on the bed. He drank some of his wine. “You must be different, too,” he said, “or I don’t think I could be here with you.”

She reached over and touched his leg at the knee, where the jeans were worn nearly white. He was barefoot. His print shirt had a collar and needed ironing and the top two buttons were undone.

“Well, either way, I’m glad you are.” She leaned over and kissed him.

“How am I different?” he asked. Then, as though to himself, “How am I the same, come to think of it?”

“Well, you’re still intense.”

“I am intense,” he agreed.

“But it’s like it’s more controlled now. Like you think about things more before you do them.”

He kept his eyes on her, gray sleepy eyes that didn’t seem tired. She chuckled deep in her throat. “See, you’re doing it now. Just looking, thinking about things.”

“I do think about things,” he said. “No, it’s not that so much.”

“It’s not?”

“It’s more the way I think. I guess I just don’t jump into things anymore.”

“But isn’t this investigation…? Didn’t you just jump into that?”

“I make exceptions.”

She touched his chest at the V of his shirt. “And Pico and his shark. And you definitely jumped all over me at Shroeder’s.”

“I did? I thought that was you.”

“No, that was you.” She kissed him again. “Mostly. Which makes three jumps in a week. There could be a pattern emerging there.”

Dismas lay back on the bed, against the pillow, a hand back under his head. He held out his wineglass and Jane reached for the bottle on the floor and filled it.

“You know, it’s funny,” he said. “Running into those things again, that I jumped into. It’s not like I see them and decide. It’s almost automatic. Back then everything was passion. Being a cop, the law, you. I guess old Diz just lost himself with all that.”

Jane put the bottle back on the floor and stretched herself out beside him. “Is that why you quit them all?”

“They filled me up. They were what I was.” He closed his eyes and drank some wine. “Then when Michael died…”

“It’s okay, Diz.”

“I know, I know. But I realized all those… passions, they weren’t me. I was just a guy who did things pretty well-played cops, argued, made love maybe…”

“Definitely,” she said.

“… but none of it mattered. Or maybe mattered too much. I guess losing the kid made me realize that. There wasn’t any me- any Dismas-left there to handle it.”

“So you dropped out?”

“I didn’t look at it that way. I changed careers, that’s all, killed off that romantic idiot. You can’t have things be that important. You lose things. That’s life. You gotta be able to deal with it.”

She ran a hand over the stomach of the man who’d been her first husband. He was smiling at her, in spite of what he was saying. Still a wonderful smile. She kissed him on the cheek, the ear, the neck. His arms came around her.

“So have you been happy?” she asked.

“I haven’t been unhappy. I haven’t thought much about it.”

“Except developed your theory of love the attitude, the love-without-pain theory.”

He shrugged. “It’s a good theory. Have you been happy? Who’s happy, anyway? It’s a dumb concept.”

“I’m happy right now,” she said. “I don’t need to think about what it all might mean tomorrow.”

“Another difference between us.”

But really, saying it all as if it were suddenly a pose, his lips curving up a little, eyes twinkling. “But this isn’t bad.”

“Thank you so much.”

The kiss now slow, deep, hands moving. Feeling his breath soft over her body. “This isn’t bad either. Or this. Or…”

“Diz?”

“Huh?”

“Shhh.”

It wasn’t often Rose couldn’t sleep.

The last time had been when they’d had the Paulist missionary for that week, and that had been in February, she thought, or March, she couldn’t really remember. She did know that when the diocese sent around the missionaries, she was more nervous about her cooking, her housekeeping. It was, she felt, a reflection on the fathers, and she didn’t want to do anything to embarrass them, so she tended to stay awake, going over things she might have forgotten or that she could do better.

But on the other, regular nights, like tonight was, normally she’d finish the dinner dishes for the fathers and whatever guests they might have had, then watch television doing her needlework in her room until nine or so, then turn out the light. The days started early at the rectory and she knew she wasn’t a spring chicken anymore-she had to get her sleep.

But the thing with Father Cavanaugh just wouldn’t get out of her mind. And it probably wasn’t even important. She could bring it up to him in the morning, and that would be that. But her body just wouldn’t listen to her, and she lay awake, waiting for him to get back from seeing how Steven was progressing over to the Cochrans’.