“Leila?”

“Yes, Sam, what’s the matter?”

“You-you look lovely.”

“Why, thank you.”

But throughout dinner, Sam hardly spoke a word. He looked unhappy. She began to think that the whole evening was a miserable failure. Maybe he was wishing he hadn’t invited her to dinner.

“Sam?”

He looked up at her, startled.

“Sam, are you regretting this?”

“Oh. No, not at all.”

“You don’t seem very happy.”

“I’m not.”

“Why? Have I done something wrong?”

“No, I have.”

“What do you mean?”

He shook his head. “Forgive me, Leila. I haven’t been good company this evening. I’ve got some thinking to do.” He glanced at his watch. “ Marietta will be home soon. I’d better go.” He motioned for the waiter and paid the check.

He walked her to her car. Suddenly, he said, “Leila, do you still care for me?”

“Yes, Sam. You’re still my friend.”

“I don’t mean as a friend. I mean, do you think you could still care for me?”

She smiled at the anxiousness in his voice. “I think you already know I do.”

“What do you see in me, Leila? I’ve cheated on you, broken our engagement, been a cad. I didn’t want to admit it before, but I have been.”

“I agree. But I think it has been for the best. We each had things to learn, didn’t we?”

“I’m just afraid the tuition may have cost me too much.”

“Talk to Marietta. I admit I don’t like her much, but she deserves to know how you really feel. Then come and tell me how you feel about me. But not until then, all right?”

He nodded, then watched as she drove off.

Leila had just finished mixing a huge bag of mulch into the garden soil when she heard the sound of the gate opening. At first, she thought it was Alice Grayson, but she turned to see an odd vision of Marietta, taller than usual, gliding toward her. Then she realized Marietta was on skates. Of course, Leila thought, the latest fitness craze. They were a fancy, in-line pair, with fluorescent pink wheels. As Marietta drew closer, Leila saw that her face was a hard mask of fury, and she was flying toward Leila like a Valkyrie on Rollerblades.

“You bitch! You miserable old bitch!” she shouted, and tried to grab on to Leila.

Frightened, Leila dropped the shovel and started to run toward the house, but the skating Marietta was faster. Leila was amazed at the other woman’s agility. Marietta caught hold of Leila’s hair and yanked hard. Leila came to a halt and Marietta slammed into her. Leila toppled to the ground, landing facedown in the dirt. Marietta fell on top of her. In no time flat, she had her hands around Leila’s throat, choking her.

“Sam is mine! I won’t let you have him!”

Leila couldn’t breathe. Her head pounded as she tried to pry Marietta ’s fingers from her throat. But Marietta was strong, and her fingers didn’t budge.

“Let her go,” Leila heard a voice say, but everything around her was swimming out of focus.

“No! I’m younger, I’m prettier, I’m stronger-”

“You’re dead,” the voice said, and Leila heard the shovel ring out once again. She fell into darkness.

Sam and Leila were sitting on the loveseat. Two rosebushes grew on one side, a third on the other.

“ Marietta still hasn’t come back,” Sam said. “I think she’s left me for good.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you never see her again,” Leila said.

“I suppose you’re right. She went absolutely insane when I told her that I had decided to beg you to take me back. The language she used! Called me things I never imagined anyone would ever call me. And when Miss Grayson called that evening to tell me that Marietta had come by to attack you like that-“He looked at the bruises on her throat and winced. “I’m so sorry, Leila. You should have called me sooner.”

“I didn’t want to worry you. I’m fine now, really.”

“Anyway, I’m glad Miss Grayson called me. I guess it was while I was over here with you that Marietta cleared all of her things out of our old apartment.”

“ Alice was a great help that day,” Leila said, thinking of the apartment key that was now in a jar of buttons. She leaned back against Sam, who put his arms around her. “I’m glad you came over to see me.”

“Of course! You needed me.”

They sat in silence for a while, Sam holding Leila close, amazed by how strongly he had felt about her lately. Oh, he had thought of her often during the few months he had spent with Marietta, but somehow, something had changed in Leila since she had lived in this old house. He looked at the riot of colors around him. Amazing, he thought. And this loveseat. That seemed so sentimental, so unlike the old Leila.

“You planted this garden yourself?” he asked in wonder.

“Yes, all except this corner. Alice Grayson helped me with this one.”

“Ah, that explains the loveseat.”

Leila merely smiled.

It seemed to Sam that he had never desired her more.

Why tonight?

As she lay staring up at the lazily circling blades of the ceiling fan, Kaylie asked herself the question again and again. She wasn’t sure what caused her to ask herself that question more than any other, especially as there were certainly other matters she should be addressing before the sheriff arrived. But through the numbness that surrounded nearly every other line of thinking, one question occurred to her repeatedly, refused evasion by tricks of distraction: Why tonight?

Was it because of the heat? It was hot tonight. But then, it wasn’t the first hot summer night in Kansas. Even her grandmother used to say that the devil couldn’t be found in Kansas in August; in August he went back to hell, where he could cool off. No, the heat had not decided this night would be the night that Joseph Darren died.

She had met the man whose body hung from a rope tied to the rafters of the garage on another, long-ago August night, when she had gone down to the small, man-made lake on the edge of town, hoping it would be cool there.

She had talked Tommy Macon into driving her down there that night. She smiled, thinking of Tommy. Tommy who used to have a crush on her. Tommy, taking her out to drag Main in his big old Chrysler. Kaylie calling ‘Hey!’ to Sue Halloran, just to rub it in. Sue calling back, half-heartedly, like a beaten pup.

Willowy. That’s what Joseph called her that night. If his eyes had moved over her just a little more slowly, it would have been insulting. He had taken in her skinny frame, a body she dismissed with the word ‘awkward’ up to that moment, that moment when Joseph asked, “Who’s the willowy blonde, Tommy?”

When he introduced them, Tommy, who would never be a Thomas, whispered to her, “Don’t never call him ‘Joe’.” He needn’t have bothered with the warning. She knew from that first moment that Joseph would be extraordinary. He would never be “an average Joe”. Tommy was sweet and clumsy, but she was too stupid in those days to see the advantages of being with a sweet and clumsy man.

She sighed, closing her eyes. Too late to mourn the loss of Tommy, still married to Sue, and five kids and fifty pounds later would stay married to her. Kaylie couldn’t even bring herself to contemplate the idea of mourning Joe. She tried it. Not mourning him-calling him Joe.

Joe. Joe. Joe. She said it like a curse. Joe you. It suited him now, she decided.

He was a poet, he had told her, when he was Joseph. A poet. Tommy confirmed it. Tommy, naively bragging on a man he hadn’t even realized was already his rival. Joseph’s poetry had been in every issue of the Butler County College Literary Magazine every semester he had been there. Tommy didn’t claim to understand it all, but he thought it was pretty interesting that Joseph used all small letters, like that Ogden Nash-no, hell, no, that e.e. cummings fellow. That, and did Kaylie know that Joseph could recite all of the words to “American Pie” and tell her exactly what they all meant?