“I don’t need that. I don’t want money.”

“He insists on it, Bry. He worries about his reputation, so he covers his ass at all times. And since I am going to be Mrs. Deep Pockets, he’s covering my ass, too.”

This was a turn of events he didn’t like. On the other hand, if anything happened to him, the trust fund would guarantee Hope’s care.

He said, “A trust fund needs directors to manage it, invest the money, pay it out. That’ll put you in my life, Vanessa, in the girl’s life. How would that work?”

“Last thing I want is in your miserable life, Bry, and I’ve had what fun there was to have with the little freak, I don’t want to be in her life anymore, either. The trust needs two directors to start, to sign the documents, then those two can appoint a third later. You will be one director, Bry, and the Redwing bitch can be the other.”

He did not trust himself to speak.

After a silence, she let out that throaty, deceptively normal laugh. “I told you my guy covers his ass. He didn’t even want to make a deal with you till he knew all about you. He didn’t want to set up a trust fund, give you the girl, then it turns out you fondled some six-year-old on a playground. Bad publicity is cancer to him.”

“He invaded my privacy, turned loose private detectives on me, something like that?”

“Get the holier-than-thou tone out of your voice, Bry. You’re getting what you wanted, so you have to eat some dirt. Knowing what used to get your juices flowing, I have to say I’m surprised you’re with Amy. Yeah, she’s cute in a Sandra Bullock tomboy kind of way, but are you sure that she’s sure about her gender?”

“You leave her out of this.”

“Can’t leave her out of it, Bry. If we’re going to do this deal, my guy wants it done right away. You need two directors of the trust. And from what I know about your life-which is mostly everything-Miss Amy is the only candidate. Considering you used to bang anything with a sufficient bra size, she must be witchy, cast a monogamy spell on you. Is she ever going to accept your proposal? She doesn’t need to marry you to be a director of the trust. I’m just curious.”

He had put himself in this position by his actions as a young man, as he had put Hope where she was now. Actions have consequences. Vanessa was right: He had to eat dirt now, as much as she wanted to feed to him.

“You hate me, don’t you?” she asked.

“No.”

“Come on, Bry. For this to work, I have to trust you.”

“You enrage me sometimes. You scare me. But I don’t hate you.”

“Bry, I’ve been blunt with you. I told you, years ago I wanted you dead. I still hate you. If you don’t hate me, something’s wrong with your head.”

He took a deep breath. “All right. I hate you. Why shouldn’t I? But it doesn’t matter if we get this done. Let’s get it done. When do we meet? Where are you?”

“Here’s the problem. For years I’ve been knocking around with our fat-faced little mutant, hooking up with one guy or another who knows how to take care of business, none of them the caliber of what I have now, and every damn time it gets half good, some child-welfare bitch shows up, she’s heard about Piggy not being in school and not being treated like the princess of the galaxy, and I have to quick move on, get new ID, find someone new to shack up with.”

Given what Hope must have endured, Brian wondered if he would ever be able to redeem himself.

He said, “Sorry to hear about the inconvenience. But what does it have to do with now?”

“So say I give you the address and we make an appointment all businesslike, and you show up with a pack of child-welfare bitches.”

“I wouldn’t do that. Why would I do that?”

“To embarrass Mr. Deep Pockets, to ruin things between me and him, to get your little freak back without me getting what I want.”

“I wouldn’t risk it,” he protested. “There’s no guarantee they’d give the girl to me. The deal you’ve laid out is good. I don’t hate you enough to risk the deal.”

“Here’s what I’d be risking, Bry. Not just all the money I’ll ever need. If some child-welfare bitch gets a chance to ask Piggy how does her mommy take care of her, Piggy won’t lie. She’ll fumble out the truth in her own stupid way, and those bitches won’t think what I did with her was as much fun as I thought it was.”

He dared not ask for details of the cruelties that she had visited upon their daughter. For the first time, Brian realized that, if he were privy to all the facts, he might be driven to kill this woman. An hour ago, he would have thought that he didn’t have the capacity for homicide. Now he was not so sure of that.

“So how do we do this?” he asked.

“You and Miss Amy come to us in baby steps. You don’t know the last step, the address, until right before we meet.”

“And each step of the way, I figure we’re being watched.”

She said, “What would really upset my horny rich fella is if you show up with a crew from some tabloid-TV show. He’s not a celebrity, but he’s a name a lot of people know. He’s got the reputation those sickos love to chew up and vomit out coast to coast. First step is, you go to Santa Barbara tonight.”

“Think about it one more time,” Brian said. “I have everything to lose and nothing to gain by trying to take you down. You have every reason to trust me.”

“Every reason? Is that right? Like I trusted you to knock me up with a fine little pink baby, and what you gave me was a freak and ten years of my life ruined. There’s nobody I’ve got less reason to trust, Bry.”

Her position was irrational, but that didn’t surprise him. Any attempt to reason with her about this would be as great a folly as commanding the sea to stop breaking on the shore.

“I have to talk this over with Amy,” he said. “I can’t decide for her.”

“Oh, I’m sure she’ll do it. She’s so dog nuts. Tell her there’s a funky little dog here named Piggy, needs to be rescued. But better e-mail me within an hour.”

“An hour isn’t enough.”

She said, “I’ve worked this out with Mr. Deep Pockets, but he could turn skittish on me.”

Vanessa hung up.

Brian turned to Amy.

“The way you look,” she said.

A cold sweat greased the back of his neck. He figured the blood had drained out of his face because his lips felt half numb.

“Like Death,” Amy said, “like Death looking for someone to cut down and take away.”

Harrow says, “Cool as ice.”

Getting off the kitchen stool from which she had made the call, sitting across from him at the table, she says, “Brian always was easy.”

“Dry ice.”

As the moon draws ocean tides, so she seems to bend the light of the candles to her by a gravity of her own.

“How much did you prep for that?” he asks.

“No prep. Just played off him.”

“Not off him. Played him.”

She smiles. “Like a piccolo.”

“He should know you by now.”

“I wasn’t this much me, back then.”

“You were never less.”

“Was I never a child?”

“Were you?”

She does not answer.

“Where did you learn?”

“You mean, to lie like that?”

“You make lying poetry.”

“Started learning from Mama’s tit.”

“You’ve never told me about your mother.”

“She’s dead.”

“That’s it?”

“What else could there be?”

He watches her sip red wine. It looks black on her lips, and then she licks it away.

They are in a new place in their relationship. Anticipation of what is coming gives them a greater sense of shared destiny.

Harrow feels that he can ask questions that were previously off limits. He senses, however, that he cannot yet ask her why she has kept Piggy all these years or why she had a child when she believes, as certainly she does, that nothing matters but the self, the moment, and the thrill.