With the service over, the casket was carried out to the graveside. This was the part Rachel had been dreading; but by the time the moment of descent came, and she was standing there in the drizzle watching the casket go from view, she'd been anticipating the horror of it for so long the actuality was something of an anticlimax. There were more prayers; flowers thrown down into the grave; then it was over.

The rain came on heavily as she drove back to the city. A few miles short of the bridge she was overtaken by a white Mercedes being driven at suicidal speed, which was pursued through the deluge by two police cars. Another two miles and she saw red lights flashing through the downpour, and flames burning on the highway. The pursued car had plowed into the back of a large truck; and two other vehicles had then struck it, spinning across the slick asphalt. One was burning, its lucky occupants standing in the rain watching the conflagration. The other had turned over and sat in the rain like a tortured tortoise, while the officers attempted to free the family inside. As for whoever had been driving the Mercedes, he or she had presumably been given up for dead, along with any passengers: it had concertinaed against the rear of the truck and was virtually unrecognizable. Needless to say, the entire highway was blocked. She waited for half an hour before the flow was reestablished, during which time she saw a whole melancholy scenario played out before her like a piece of rain-sodden theater. The arrival of firetrucks and ambulances; the freeing of the family (one of whom, a child, was delivered from the wreckage dead); grief and accusations; and finally the prying apart of the truck and the Mercedes, the contents of which were thankfully concealed from her view. It was only when she was off on her way again that she turned her thoughts to the business of the following day: the search for Danny's letters. If she was lucky Garrison would go to Mass in the morning, as he sometimes did. He had his liberty to give thanks for. And while he was being a good Catholic boy she'd go up to the apartment in the Trump Tower and start her search. If she failed to find anything in the first attempt, she'd either have to wait for the following Sunday, when she could guarantee his absence, or else somehow monitor his whereabouts during the week. It would be hard to spy on the Tower without being noticed. There'd be journalists cruising around for a little while yet; and there had of course been some staff in residence, though she'd heard from somebody that two of them had left after Margie's murder and the third had been telling all kinds of tales to the gutter-press, so she'd presumably been fired.

In the end she'd just have to trust to luck, and have a good, solid excuse for her presence in the apartment if she was discovered. The fact was she felt perversely exhilarated at the thought of going into the Tower. For too long she'd been a passive object; part of the grand Geary scheme. Even her trip to Kaua'i had been initiated by somebody within the family. By helping Danny-or attempting to do so-she was defying her allotted role; and her only regret was that she'd taken so long to do it. Such were the seductions of luxury.

Now, as she began to see the path before her more clearly, she found herself wondering whether Galilee, the prince of her heart, was also one of those seductions. Was he the ultimate luxury? Dropped in her path to distract her from looking where she was not supposed to look? How she longed to have Margie at the other end of a telephone, to share these ruminations with her. Margie had always been able to go unerringly to the heart of a subject; to strip away all the high-minded stuff and focus on the real meat of a thing. What would she have said about Rachel's theorizing? That it was irrelevant, probably, to the business of getting through the day. That attempting to understand the big picture was to partake of a peculiarly male delusion: the belief that events could be shaped and dictated, forced to reflect the will of an individual. Margie had never had much time for that kind of thinking. The only things in life that could truly be controlled were the little things: the number of olives in your martini, the height of your heel. And the men who believed otherwise-the potentates and the plutocrats-were setting themselves up for terrible disappointment sooner or later; which fact, of course, gave her no little pleasure.

Perhaps, Rachel thought, these things worked differently on the Golden Floor. Perhaps up there the Grand Design was the subject of daily chitchat, and the spirits of the dead took pleasure in working out the vast patterns of human endeavor. But she doubted it. Certainly she couldn't imagine Margie having much time for that kind of business. Matters of destiny might be the subject of debate in other quarters, but where Margie held court there would be a happy throng of gossipers, rolling their eyes at the theorists.

The thought made Rachel smile; the first smile of that long, unhappy day. Margie had earned her freedom. Whether her suffering had been self-inflicted (or at least self-perpetuated) the point was surely that she'd endured it without losing sight of the sweet soul she'd been before the Gearys had found her. She'd made the trick look simple, but, as Rachel had found, it was hard to pull off. This world was like a labyrinth; it was easy to get lost in, to become a stranger to yourself. Rachel had been lucky. She'd rediscovered herself back on the island; found the wildling Rachel, the woman of flesh and blood and appetite. She would not lose that woman again. However dark the maze became, however threatening its occupants, she would never again let go of the creature she was; not now that Galilee loved her.

Sunday morning, and the rain was heavier than ever, so heavy at times you couldn't see more than a block in any direction. If there'd been any photographers outside the Tower they'd taken refuge until their subject came back from Mass; or else they'd followed him there. Margie had given Rachel a key to the apartment when the first difficulties with Mitchell had begun, telling her to use the place whenever she wanted to escape.

"Garrison's scarcely ever here," she'd said, "so you needn't worry about meeting him in his underwear. Which is quite a sight, believe me. He looks like a stick of dough with a paunch."

Rachel had never liked the Tower, or the apartment. It had always seemed, despite its glitz, a rather depressing place, even on bright days. And on a day like today, with the sky gray, it was murky and melancholy. The fact that the rooms were furnished with antiques, and the halls hung with huge, futile paintings which Garrison had collected as investments in the early eighties, only added to the charmlessness of the place.

She waited in the hallway for a few moments listening for any sound of occupancy. The only noise she heard came from outside; rain beating against the windows; the distant wail of a siren. She was alone. Time to begin.

She started up the stairs, her ascent taking her into still darker territory. There was a grandfather dock at the top of the flight and her heart jumped when she saw it looming there, imagining for a moment it was Garrison, waiting for her.

She paused while the hammering in her heart subsided. I'm afraid of him, she thought. It was the first time she'd admitted the fact to herself: she was afraid of what he might do if he found her trespassing where she had no business going. It was one thing to hear Loretta talk about his perversions, or to see him, weak and pale, standing before Margie's casket. It was quite another to imagine encountering him here, in the place where he'd slaughtered his own wife. What would she say to him if he did suddenly appear? Did she have a single lie in her head that he'd believe? Probably not. Her only defense against his malice was the fact that she had once been his brother's bride, and how secure a lien against assault was that? The bond between the brothers was far stronger than any claim she might have. At that moment, standing on the stairs, she believed he would probably kill her if the occasion called for it.