"Hello, Mother," he said softly.

"Some boy you've got here," one of the cops said, tousling the boy's dark hair. Only Carol saw the glare Jimmy leveled at him. "Kept his cool and called us as soon as he saw what happened. Too bad we couldn't get here in time."

"Yes," Jimmy said with a slow shake of his head. "He must have been in such terrible agony for so long. If only I'd found him sooner."

His eyes reflected none of the sadness in his voice.

"What happened, Jimmy?" Carol said when the police and the ambulance were gone.

"Jonah had an accident," Jimmy said blandly.

"Why did he have an accident?

"He made a mistake."

"It wasn't like Jonah to make mistakes."

"He made a serious one. He was supposed to be here to guard me. But he started believing he could be me."

As a numbing frost gathered in Carol's marrow, Jimmy turned and walked away.

DECEMBER

SEVEN

Lisl had just finished addressing the last invitation to her Christmas party when the phone rang.

"How's my favorite Prime?" Rafe said.

Warmth flowed through her at the sound of his voice.

"Pretty good. Glad to be just about done with these invitations."

"Feel like doing some Christmas shopping?"

Lisl thought about that. December had barely begun. She had a small list of people to buy for and usually she waited until the last minute. Purposely. She'd found that the trials and tribulations of last-minute shopping—the crowded malls, the clogged parking lots, anxiety over the very real possibility that all the good gifts would be gone—added a certain zest to the Christmas holidays.

But this wouldn't be just shopping. This would be a day with Rafe. They were together almost every night. But daytime together was rare. He had his studies to keep him busy, and she had her classes and her Palo Alto paper.

"Sure. When?"

"I'll pick you up in half an hour."

"I'll be ready."

As she stamped the invitations, Lisl double-checked to make sure she'd addressed one to everybody on her list—she had—and then she thought of Will. He wasn't on the list because he'd be a waste of an invitation, but dammit, she wanted him at her party. So why let him get off easy by not inviting him? Quickly she addressed one last envelope, added a personal note to Will, and shoved the stack into her purse. Then she hurried to get dressed.

She thought of the Thanksgiving she and Rafe had spent together.

For the first time in her life, Lisl hadn't shared the traditional turkey dinner with her folks. She had Rafe to thank for that. One result of her combative encounters with Rafe was a deeper insight into her childhood. She was beginning to understand her parents better, to see them in a new light. And she didn't like what she saw. As a result, it had been only mildly traumatic to call her folks and make up an excuse why she wouldn't be there this year. They'd been very understanding. She'd almost wished they'd been less so.

Rafe confessed that he'd had little experience with Thanksgiving Day. His Spanish father and French mother had never celebrated the holiday. But since he considered himself a full-blooded American, he now wanted to join in the tradition. So Lisl had baked a breast of turkey with all the usual trimmings. They'd drunk two bottles of Riesling during the course of the evening and wound up in another bout of traumatic lovemaking.

Their time together had become a bit strange. Rafe would start out gentle and loving, then begin to probe her past. He knew all the weak points in her armor, all the most sensitive areas of her psyche. He'd probe and poke until he provoked her to violence. And then they'd make love. She'd be left feeling exhausted and ashamed for physically lashing out at him. But he encouraged the violence, seemed to want it, and she had to admit that afterward she felt somehow cleansed.

A strange relationship, but one she did not want to quit. Rafe said he loved her and Lisl believed him. Even amid all her nagging insecurities, despite the tiny insistent voice that kept whispering, Watch out, he's going to hurt you, she sensed his deep interest in her. She needed that. Slowly, steadily, Rafe was filling an emptiness within her, a void she only vaguely had been aware of before now. His mind challenged her, his heart warmed her, and his body pleasured her. And now that she was beginning to feel complete, she couldn't bear the thought of facing mat emptiness again.

"Where are we going?" Lisl said as she slipped into the passenger seat of Rafe's Maserati.

"Downtown," he said, leaning over and kissing her on the lips. He was wearing gray wool slacks and a pale blue shirt under a cranberry cashmere sweater; black leather driving gloves, as tight s a second skin, completed the picture. "I thought we'd try the new Nordstrom's."

"Sounds good to me."

Downtown was festooned with Christmas decorations—animated Santa mannequins in the windows, giant plastic candy canes on the corners, tinselly arches over the streets of the shopping district, all under a bright sunny sky and temperatures in the balmy mid-sixties.

"Pretty garish," Rafe said.

"And it gets more garish every year. But that's the shopkeepers' doing. That's not what Christmas is about."

"Oh? And just what is Christmas all about?"

Lisl laughed. "I can buy the fact that your family didn't celebrate Thanksgiving, but Christmas?"

"Of course we celebrated Christmas. But I want to hear what you think it's all about."

"It's about all the good things in life—giving, receiving, sharing, friends gathering, good fellowship, brotherhood—"

"Peace on earth, goodwill toward men," Rafe said. "And so on and so forth."

Something in his voice made Lisl pause. "You're not some sort of Scrooge, are you?"

As they pulled to a stop at a light on Conway Street, Rafe turned toward her.

"You don't really believe all that brotherhood of man stuff, do you?"

"Of course. We're all on this planet together. Brotherhood is the only way we'll all come out of it in one piece."

Rafe shook his head and stared ahead.

"Man, oh, man, did they ever do a brainwashing number on you."

"What are you talking about?"

"Brotherhood. It's a myth. A lie. 'No man is an island'—the Big Lie."

Lisl had a 'sinking feeling.

"You don't really mean that," she said, but deep within she sensed that he did.

"Look around you, Lisl. Do you see any real brotherhood? I see only islands."

The Maserati was moving again. Lisl watched the people on the crowded sidewalks as they flowed by. She liked what she saw.

"I see people walking and talking together, smiling, laughing, hunting for gifts for their friends and loved ones. Christmastime draws people together. That's what it's all about."

"What about the children starving in Africa?"

"Oh, come on now!" Lisl said with a laugh. For a moment he reminded her of Will. "You're not going to drag out that hoary old cliche, are you? My mother used to pull that on me to make me finish my brussels sprouts."

Rafe didn't return her smile.

"I'm not your mother, Lisl, and I'm not giving you a line to make you finish your greens. I'm talking about a real country. I'm talking about real people, really dying."

Lisl felt her own smile fade. "Come on, Rafe…"

He pulled into a municipal lot just as someone was backing out of a space.

"He must have known I was coming," Rafe said. He pulled into the slot and turned to Lisl again. "What about the continuing genocide in Laos? What about the daily brutalization of the female half of the populace in any fundamentalist Moslem country?"

"Rafe, you're talking about the other side of the world".