But it wasn't her problem anymore.

"I'll have to check the calendar," she said. She'd been covering up for Ted for so many years that her voice betrayed none of her emotions. "Perhaps I'll call you tomorrow?" But when Marge left a few minutes later, the neutrality vanished from her tone. "Where have you been?" she demanded. "Do you have any idea what it's like to wake up and find that your mate-who was so stinking drunk he couldn't stand up straight the last time you saw him-has taken off in the car?" Ted opened his mouth to reply, but Janet didn't give him the chance. "Of course you don't! And you never will, as long as you're married to me. But that's going to end, Ted. I've had it! Do you understand? I've finally and forever had it!" She paused, her breath momentarily spent, and braced herself for the explosion.

"I'm sorry," he said softly. "I don't know why you've put up with it all these years."

The genuine contrition she heard in his voice threw Janet totally off stride. She'd been prepared for the usual scene: a fight, building until she was finally reduced to tears. Only then, after he'd shouted her down, battering at her defenses until she had none left, would he finally gather her in his arms and promise that things would be different. But never, not in all the years since the drinking had started, had he suggested that she shouldn't have put up with his drinking at all.

But even now she was certain that whatever he said, his motivations were simple-to keep her with him, to keep her taking care of him. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Why would you know?" she asked, her voice reflecting the exhaustion she suddenly felt. "You've been too drunk to know anything, haven't you? Too drunk to know why you lose your jobs, and too drunk to know how frightened your kids are of you. And way too drunk to know what you've done to me."

Molly, standing up in her playpen and clutching at the netting with her tiny fingers, began to cry, and Janet reached down to scoop her up. "It's all right, baby," she cooed. "Mommy and Daddy aren't going to have a fight. We're not ever going to fight again." Her eyes shifted back to Ted. "I'm leaving this afternoon," she told him, "as soon as I get the few things I'm taking with me into the car." Scout, who had been curled up on the floor, suddenly rose, whining almost as if he knew what she was saying. "Don't worry, boy," she told the big dog. "We'll take you, too." Once again she braced herself against the attack Ted might mount on her determination, marshaling her grievances like an army, ready to repel anything he might say. Once again, he surprised her.

"Let me tell you what happened last night," he said so quietly it commanded her full attention.

But she didn't lower her guard an inch. "You mean you remember?"

Ted nodded. "Every bit of it. After you left, I kept drinking, and started wandering around the house. And everywhere I went, all I saw was a mess." A painful smile twisted his lips. "It was like looking at myself," he went on, his gesture sweeping over the kitchen and beyond, to the tangled mess of the grounds surrounding the house. "Everything about it's been let go, just like I've let myself go. Another few years, and it's literally going to fall apart," He turned back to Janet and met her gaze steadily. "Just like me," he went on. "Last night it finally came to me. I'm not just killing our marriage, and my relations with my kids, and my career. If you can call that job at the Majestic a career," he added derisively, but without even a hint of the self-pity Janet had always heard in his previous pleas. "I'm killing myself, too. I decided I didn't want to die."

Janet felt the first tiny crack develop in her defenses, and fought against it. "And," she asked, deliberately edging her voice with sarcasm, "having stumbled drunkenly upon this great truth, what exactly did you decide to do about it?"

Ted flinched, but didn't try to turn away. "I made myself sick," he replied. "I went down in the basement, and I threw up more than I've ever thrown up in my life." For the first time since he'd begun to talk, a genuine smile played around the corners of his mouth, and a sparkle of humor lit his eyes. "And you have to admit, I've thrown up some doozies in my life." When Janet failed to respond to his stab at a joke, his smile fled. "Look at me," he said softly. "Just look at my eyes."

Don't do it, Janet told herself. But she could feel the cracks in her resolve widening, and finally she allowed herself to look into his eyes.

Something had changed.

It wasn't just their clarity, which was surprising enough, given how much he'd been drinking last night. Still, if he'd really thrown up most of it, it might be possible that he'd slept it off.

It was as if he read her mind: "When you drink as much as I've been drinking, it takes a hell of a lot to bring on a hangover."

Janet made no reply, but still she gazed into his eyes. There was something familiar there, something dimly remembered.

And then she knew. It was as if she were looking into Ted's eyes when they'd first met, and she'd felt as if she could sink right into him through his eyes, or float in their blue clarity forever, needing nothing else but him, and his caress, and the look in his eyes when they beheld her.

"Come with me," he said now. Lifting Molly out of her arms and settling her gently back into the playpen, Ted took Janet's hand and led her out of the kitchen, through the entry hall and the living room, to the small room in which she'd found him last night.

The empty bottle still lay on the sofa, and the box of full ones still sat on the hearth, just as it had last night. As Ted lifted a bottle of vodka from the box, broke its seal, and opened it, Janet felt a cold emptiness in her stomach. Was he planning to prove that he'd changed by having a drink? But instead of raising the bottle to his lips, he held it over the sink in the wet bar that had been built next to the fireplace and tipped it up.

Its contents flowed down the drain.

He reached for another bottle, and drained it, too.

And then another, and another, until every bottle in the box was empty. "Have you ever known me to do that before?" he asked.

In her mind, all the assurances and all the promises he'd ever made echoed.

"I don't have to drink-I like to drink."

"Just because it's here doesn't mean I'll drink it."

"I won't touch a drop, but we have to have something to serve company, don't we?"

How many times had she heard it? How many variations had there been? And the couple of times she'd simply poured out his liquor herself, he'd only replaced it, usually within the hour. He'd even had a rationalization for that: "Even if I decide to have a drink-which I won't-wouldn't you rather I had it here?"

No! she had wanted to scream. I don't want you to drink at all!

But no matter what she'd said, it didn't do any good. There had never been a time-unless they ran completely out of money-when there wasn't any liquor in the house. Then she remembered the trailer behind the Toyota.

Again it was as if he'd read her mind. "And I didn't buy any more," he said. There was a flash of lightning, a crash of thunder shook the house, and the first drops of rain began to fall. "Oh, Jesus," Ted cried. "I've got to get all the stuff in the trailer into the carriage house before it gets ruined!" Dropping the last of the bottles into the sink, he raced through the house and out the back door. By the time Janet caught up with him, he was already digging deep into the trailer's depths. "There's some plastic drop cloths-" His hand closed on something and he pulled it out. "Here!" he cried. Ripping a plastic bag open, he pulled one of the polyethylene sheets out and began shaking it open. A minute later he and Janet had it stretched out over the trailer, protecting its contents from the storm. But already the wind was starting to pull at it; in a few minutes it would be gone. "Get in the car," Ted told her as the rain came down harder. "I'll open the carriage house doors, and you can pull it in."