I did not have time to marvel at my ability to have sex without fear; I did not have time to wonder if what I was doing was wise, since I carried burdens enough for two, and Marshall was not exactly an unencumbered man. But we did take a moment for protection this time, and I hoped we wouldn't pay for our previous stupidity.

Afterward, it was hard to feel the limitations of my own skin, to feel myself shrinking back into the mold in which I'd cast myself before I'd come to Shakespeare. For the first time in years, it felt confining rather than comfortable.

And yet, as I looked around Marshall's Spartan bedroom—the queen-size mattress and box spring on a frame, no headboard or footboard; a dresser clearly retrieved from someone's attic; a thrift store night table—I felt uneasy at being out of my own home. In many months, I hadn't been in anyone's house except to clean it.

We'd been lying together quietly since making love, my back to his front, his arm around me. Every now and then, Marshall would kiss my neck or stroke my side. The intimacy of the moment both excited and threatened me.

"You know Thea is seeing someone else," I said quietly.

If he wanted to get divorced, he needed to know that. If he wanted to reconcile with Thea, he needed to know that.

"I thought so," he said after a long moment. "Do you know who it is?"

"What will you do if I tell you a name?" I turned over to face him, automatically reaching down for the sheet to cover my scars. Before he answered, he took the sheet, pulled it back down, and kissed my chest.

"Don't hide from me, Lily," he whispered.

My hands twitched with the effort I was making not to grab the sheet. Marshall moved even closer to me so that his body covered the scars, and I gradually relaxed against him.

"Are you thinking I might track him down and beat him up for Thea's honor?" he asked after letting enough time pass to let me know he didn't consider Thea's affair a personal thing.

"I don't know you well enough to know what you would do."

"Thea is a hometown sweetheart, because she's pretty and she was born and bred here. She knows when to act charming and sunny. She's good with children. But the people you won't find talking about Thea with this exaggerated awe are the men she's dated for a while—the men she's dated long enough to go to bed with."

I pulled back a little to look at Marshall's face. He looked as if he had a bad taste in his mouth.

"Lily, by the time I came to town, Thea had run through the few locals she felt were worthy of her. She could tell, I think, that people were starting to wonder why pretty, sweet Thea couldn't seem to form a lasting relationship with anyone, so she dated me and married me quickly. I didn't go to bed with Thea before I married her. She said she wanted to wait and I respected that, but I found out after maybe a month, that was just because she didn't want me to back out like other men had."

"She doesn't like sex?" I asked hesitantly. I should be the last one to criticize a woman who had problems dealing with men.

Marshall laughed in an unamused way. "Oh, no. She likes it. But she doesn't like it like we do it," and his hand ran down my back, caressed my hips. "She likes to do ... sick things, things that hurt. Because I loved her, I tried to oblige, but it ended up making me feel bad. Sad."

Degraded, I thought.

"Then she decided she wanted a baby, and I wondered if that might save our marriage, so I tried to oblige. But I'd lost my interest by then, and ... I couldn't." This cost Marshall a great deal to say. "So she called me names and taunted me, only in private, only when no one else could hear. Not because she cared about me, but because she didn't want anyone else to know she was capable of saying those things. Going home was like going to hell. I couldn't stand it anymore. I haven't had sex in six months, Lily, but that wasn't the worst of it, not by a long shot. So here I am, in this dump, wondering how to file for divorce without Thea taking my business away from me."

I had no response to his money worries. I have very little available cash myself because I am saving strenuously against the day when I have to have a new car, or a new roof, or any of the sudden catastrophic expenses that can wipe out a one-income household. But at least all my finances, good or bad, are dependent on me and me only. I can't imagine how I'd feel if I had to give half of my business away to someone who had found pleasure in degrading and humiliating me.

"Tom David Meiklejohn."

His eyes had been focused far away, staring past my shoulder at a bleak vista. Now he looked at me.

"The cop." His dark eyes stared into mine. I gave a tiny nod. "I'll bet she loves the handcuffs," he said.

I tried not to shrink at the thought of a woman handcuffed, but my breath came out in a little whine that drew Marshall's attention to me instantly. "Don't think of it, Lily," he said quietly. "Don't think of it; think of this." And his hand slid gently between my legs, his mouth found my breast, and I did indeed think of other things.

"Marshall," I said afterward, "if you hadn't noticed, I wanted to tell you I have absolutely no complaints about your virility." He laughed a little, breathlessly, and for a while we dozed together.

But I woke soon, anxious and ill at ease. Moving as quietly as I could, I got up and began pulling on my clothes. Marshall's breathing was still heavy and even and he shifted position, taking up more of the bed now that I wasn't in it. For a moment, I bent over the bed, my hand an inch from his shoulder. Then I drew back. I hated to wake him: I felt compelled to leave.

I eased out of the back door, punching in the button on the knob so it would lock behind me.

I'd begun thinking, as Marshall talked about Thea, of the dead rat someone had left on Thea's kitchen table in that neat white house on Celia. When I'd woken, the rat had worried me more and more.

The Ken doll, the toy handcuffs, the dead rat. Obviously, the tokens left for me referred to my past. The dead rat seemed cut from an entirely different pattern. A thought trailed through my mind like a slug: Had Thea perhaps tortured animals in her childhood? Was the rat also from Thea's past? I grimaced as I moved through the darkness. I could not bear cruelty to a helpless thing.

At this time of night, the streets were deserted, the town deep in sleep. I wasn't being as careful as I usually was. The only people likely to see me at this hour were the two patrolling policemen, and I knew where one of the two was; I'd checked on my way home, and Tom David was still at Thea's. Surely he'd gone off duty; wouldn't the dispatcher be trying to raise him otherwise?

I was yawning widely as I walked up my driveway. I'd pulled my keys from my pocket and was about to step off the drive to go to my front door when the attack came. Tired and inattentive as I'd been, I had trained for this moment for three years.

When I heard the rush of feet, I whirled to face the attacker, the keys clenched in my fist to reinforce my blow. But the man in the ski mask had a staff, maybe a mop or broom handle, and he swung it under my guard and whacked my ribs. I kept myself upright by a supreme effort, and when my assailant tried to swing the staff again, I let the keys fall, grabbed the staff with both hands, swung up my leg, and kicked him hard in the chest—not a very effective kick, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances. He did have to let go of the staff, which was good, but I staggered when he released it and dropped it myself, which was bad.

My kick had made him fall back, too, though, and that gave me time to recover my footing before he launched himself at me with a savage growl, like a dog out of control.

I was close to that point myself. When I saw the face coming toward me, shrouded in a ski mask but otherwise unguarded, I inhaled deeply, then struck as hard as I could with my fist, exhaling and locking into position automatically. The man screamed and began falling, his hands going up to clutch his nose, and on his way down, my knee came up, striking him sharply under the chin.