"But Miss Sunday is all right?"

"Yep. She was at home when the fire started. She went down there in her nightgown, I heard." Another smirk.

I turned to leave the store, lost in thought.

"Don't you want to buy something?" the boy asked pointedly.

"I do want to find where Bobbye Sunday lives."

"I already told you a lot of stuff," he grumbled. "You need some gas, some cigarettes?"

"No, thank you," I told him, out of all the things I could have said. It had just dawned on me that I probably knew where Bob-bye Sunday lived; the small trailer behind the little office.

The woman that answered my knock was in her early thirties. She was plump and had hair the color of a rusty chrysanthemum. It was either a very inept or a very avant-garde dye job. Either way, it was notable. The cut itself was conventional, short and curly. But her ears were pierced at least four times apiece. Then again she was wearing nurse whites and orthopedic shoes. Miss Mixed Signals.

"Bobbye Sunday?" I asked.

"Yes." She didn't invite me in, but she didn't bar the door. "Have you come about the fire, are you from the insurance office?" "No, I'm afraid I'm not." I tried smiling, but she didn't respond. "Could you tell me what happened?"

"Why should I talk to you?" she asked. She slammed the trailer door in my face.

Bushmill was chock-full of reticent people.

I trudged back to the Jeep through the snow, feeling my blue jeans brush against my boots with the heavy feel of wet material. My feet were warm and dry, at least, and I made myself stamp the snow out of the treads of my boots before I hoisted myself up into the Jeep.

"Wait!" Bobbye Sunday slogged through the snow, holding her hands out for balance.

"I'm sorry I was so short with you," she said, when she'd reached the side of the Jeep. I'd shut myself in, but rolled down the window. "I lost so much in that fire," the midwife continued. "My patient records, the computers and software I'd just gotten ..."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm glad you weren't hurt."

"I keep telling myself that."

"Sometimes that's not much consolation, I guess."

"If you aren't from the insurance company..." "I just wanted to ask you about a patient you had, a baby you delivered, around three weeks ago? Here, at your office."

"Oh, I can't tell you about that," Bobbye Sunday said firmly. "That's private." She hesitated. "I usually go to the mother's house for delivery, but every now and then I deliver a baby-here. That's all I can say." I could tell she meant it, and I felt sorry for her. "Goodbye," I said, so she could get in out of the cold. "I hope your insurance comes through for you, soon."

She made a face at me, half doubting, half smiling. "Thanks." She turned and made her way through the yard back to the trailer door. So that was another door shut.

I found myself wondering about the so-timely fire, destroying the record of Regina's prenatal visits and delivery—if she had indeed delivered in Nurse Sunday's office—right after Rory came back to Corinth. When I thought of Rory's handsome young face, impossibly guileless, I heaved a long sigh. What would we do with Rory? Would he be safe, riding back into Corinth with Karl? Did I care? Would Martin be willing to keep the boy in the house overnight? I wasn't sure I would.

I was grateful to see the entrance to the farm, and even more grateful when I entered the kitchen to find Rory intact and Martin and Karl apparently holding on to their tempers. I tossed down the keys and my purse, realized I'd forgotten to take my boots off at the door, and knelt to dry them with a towel. "So, what have you guys been talking about?" I asked. I looked up at Karl.

"This fool—" he began, and then the window exploded. Since I'd been kneeling well away from it, I clearly saw the shards of glass flying into the kitchen, glinting in the fluorescent light. The glass sprayed Rory's left side as he sat slumped at the table, sprayed Martin's right side as he stood across from him, and grazed Karl who was perched beyond Rory on one corner.

And the bullet that had broken the glass, that bullet hit Rory in the neck on the left side, punching a mortal hole and exiting on the right, causing a shower of blood and tissue that rained on Karl, as the same bullet struck Karl's thigh, hitched over the corner of the table.

At that moment, it seemed, Martin screamed, "Down, down, down!" and took a flying leap to land on top of me, flattening me to the floor. A heartbeat later—a heartbeat Rory didn't have—I was facedown on the floor amid the glass and blood, my heart racing at a terrifying pace. Karl was screaming, and Rory bonelessly slid out of his chair and landed two feet away from me, blood pouring out of the wounds in his neck to puddle under him. His eyes were open. I shrieked without knowing I was going to do it. With Martin weighing me down, I lay shivering and shaking on the floor with Rory's blood spreading toward me. And then the kitchen was silent.

After the longest minute I'd ever lived through, no more bullets punched through the window. Martin gradually eased off me. I made myself crawl over to Karl, who had begun to moan steadily. The floor was covered with glass, and I found myself thinking of brooms and dustpans—and mops—as the advancing pool of blood stopped inches from me.

"Martin?" I asked hoarsely.

"Yes," he said, breathily.

"Honey, I think Karl has to have a tourniquet."

"Rory?" he asked.

"Dead," I said.

Trying not to sit up, I fumbled my belt out of its loops, and wound it around Karl's thigh. To my intense relief, Martin scooted on his elbows to the other side of the wounded man and drew the belt tight. Karl became silent, and I risked looking at his face to see he was as pale as his complexion would permit him to get.

I glanced at Martin, wanting to see if Karl's poor condition had registered with him.

I made an incoherent sound of horror. Martin was covered with blood.

My husband, the invincible and strong, the coper with crises. "Oh, honey," I said. "Oh, honey, you're hurt." Sometimes the obvious truth is the only one that fills your mind and you don't care if you sound smart or not. "Cuts from the glass," he said briefly. But he was breathing shallowly, and his color was as bad as Karl's.

Without wasting further breath, Martin reached up a cautious hand to get the telephone sitting on the counter.

From upstairs, Hayden began crying. It came over the monitor clearly. I made as if to rise, and Martin clamped a hand on my shoulder. His grip wasn't strong, but the force of his will was.

"Are you crazy?" he hissed. "Stay down!" He dialed without holding the phone to his ear. I was closer to it, and I could see that the little light, the one that comes on to illuminate the numbers so you can dial in the dark, was off. "Phone's dead," I told him, unable to control the shaking of my voice. I followed the wire with my eyes, and when it came to the jack, I saw that the phone had not been cut off outside the house, but inside; the little plastic connector had been cut off. I pointed, and Martin followed the line of my finger. For the first time since I'd met him, I saw despair in his eyes. Martin held it up to his ear to confirm what his eyes had already checked. One of the people who had been our visitors in the past two hours had done this. They'd all been in the kitchen. This was the only phone in the house.

"Where's the cell phone?" I asked.

"It's out in the Jeep."

Of course. I'd seen it there minutes before.

"We'll have to get Karl into the Jeep. We'll call the hospital on our way into town."

"You and the baby have to come." Though he seemed barely conscious, Martin crawled over to the wall and got Karl's rifle.

I couldn't remember how close the Jeep was to the front door. "Let me go check where I parked the Jeep," I told Martin, and crept on my hands and knees to the front door. I stretched up a hand and opened the door, peering around the frame to keep as much of myself covered as possible.