“Right.” I thought, too, perhaps her mental state had changed. If good artists are crazy – and she was a good artist, and crazy – then a return to some degree of mental health might kill that spark of mad genius. That’s good and bad. Mostly, I think, good. I mean, I can live with a bad painting, but it’s not easy living with a crazy wife.

Anyway, I wondered if this new, improved tranquil personality I was now witnessing was the happy result of successful therapy or very good meds.

Susan said to me, “Now that I’m back… I should see if I’m inspired.”

“Right.” But don’t stop those meds.

Ironically, one of the best paintings she’d ever done, and probably the last, was of the ruins of Alhambra. Mrs. Sutter, on the occasion of our first visit to Alhambra for coffee and cannolis, generously offered to paint the Alhambra palm court as a housewarming gift to our new neighbors. Susan had photographs of the magnificent two-tiered atrium palm court as it existed before the Bellarosas restored the mansion, and she explained to them that she was going to paint it as a ruin. This surprised Mrs. Bellarosa, who wondered why anyone would want to paint what she called “a wreck.” But Mr. Bellarosa, recalling some art he’d seen in Rome, thought it was a swell idea. I, too, was surprised at this offer, because this was no small undertaking, and Susan rarely gave away any of her paintings, though she sometimes donated them for charity auctions. Susan had informed the Bellarosas that though she could work mostly from her photographs and from memory, she needed to set up her easel in the palm court, so she could get the right perspective, and take advantage of the shifting sunlight from the glass dome, and so forth. Frank assured her that the door was permanently open to her.

Thinking back on that evening, as I’d done a few dozen times, there was more going on here than a housewarming gift, or coffee and cannolis.

It was hard to believe, but Susan Stanhope Sutter and Frank the Bishop Bellarosa had connected like a plug in a socket, and I should have seen the lights going on in their eyes. But I didn’t, and neither did Anna, and we both remained clueless in the dark.

In any case, the relocation of the stable on Susan’s property, and the painting of the Alhambra palm court, led to frequent contact between Mrs. Sutter and Mr. Bellarosa.

Meanwhile, I was in the city a lot, and Anna spent a good deal of time being driven back and forth in the black Cadillac to Brooklyn, where she visited her family and stocked up on cannolis and olive oil.

I still don’t know who made the first move on whom, or where and how it happened, but I’m sure that Mr. Italian Stud thought he was the aggressor.

Susan continued with her last thought and said, “Most of the abandoned houses are either restored or razed now, but I still have a lot of old photographs that I could paint from.”

“Or maybe you should paint your parents and call it American Grotesque.” Well, I didn’t say that – I thought it. I said, “Paint the gatehouse before Nasim puts aluminum siding on it.” That may have actually been a Freudian slip – I mean, inviting her to set up her easel outside my house. Amazing how the subconscious mind works.

She replied, “That’s a good idea… with the wrought-iron gates.”

The subject of Susan’s artistic periods, past and present, seemed closed, and we continued our walk down memory lane. Then she changed subjects completely and asked me, “John, what are they saying in London about 9/11?”

I recalled my answer to Elizabeth on that question and replied, “They’re saying they’re next.”

She thought about that and observed, “The world has become a frightening place.”

I replied, “The world is a fine place, and most of the people in it are good people. I saw that on my sail.”

“Did you? That’s good.” She then said, “But what happened here… it has so changed everything for so many people.”

“I know.”

“Some people we knew were killed.”

“I know that.”

“Nothing will ever be the same for those families.”

“No, it won’t be.”

“What happened… it’s made a lot of people I know rethink their lives.”

“I understand that.”

“It made me appreciate things… I was frantic that day because Carolyn was downtown, and I couldn’t get a call through to her.”

“I know. Neither could I.”

She turned toward me as we walked, and said, “I thought you would call me that day.”

“I almost did… I did speak to Edward, and he said he’d gotten through to Carolyn on her cell phone, and she was all right, and he said he had called you and told you that.”

“He did… but I thought I’d hear from you.”

“I almost called.” I added, “I thought you’d call me.”

“I did, but when I called, I realized it was three A.M. in London, so I hung up, and the next day… I was drained and too… I was crying too much… so I e-mailed you… but I didn’t hear back from you.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s all right… but that… that horror made me think… there are terrible things that can happen to us out of the blue… for no reason. Just because we’re there, and something evil has come our way. It made me put a lot of things into perspective, and it was a wake-up call… and that’s when I began thinking about moving back here, and being close to people I grew up with, and… well, I began thinking about you.”

I didn’t respond for a while, then I said truthfully, “I had similar thoughts.” I mean, how long can we hold a grudge? Well, in my case, a long time. But 9/11 did get me thinking and possibly started me on the road that led me here, as it had led Susan here.

Susan continued her thought and asked, “How long can we stay angry at people we once loved in the face of such… real hatred and evil?”

That sounded like a rhetorical question, but it wasn’t, so I answered, “The anger is gone. Even the feeling of betrayal is gone. But what remains is… well, a badly wounded ego, and a sense of… embarrassment that this happened to me. In public.”

“And you haven’t gotten over that?”

“No.”

“Will you ever?”

“No.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“No.”

She took a deep breath and said, “He’s dead, John. I killed him. For us.”

The time had come to confront this, so I replied, “That’s what you said.”

She stopped walking, and I did, too. We faced each other, and she said to me, “I was ready to go to jail for the rest of my life to give you back your pride and your honor. That was my public penance, and my public humiliation, which I did, hoping you would take me back.”

I hardly knew what to say, but I tried and said, “Susan… murdering a human being is not-”

“He was evil.”

Indeed, he was. But I didn’t think she realized that until he scorned her. Right up to that time, I think she was ready to run off with him to Italy, where the government was going to send him under the Witness Protection Program. I said to her, “You need to tell me why you killed him.”

“I just told you.”

I was seeing a little of the old Susan again, the bright green eyes, crazy eyes, and the pouty lips that morphed into a thin, pressed mouth, with her chin thrust forward as if to say, “I dare you to contradict me.”

Well, I needed to do that, and I said, “That’s what you may believe now, ten years later. But that is not why you killed him. Not for me, and not for us.”

She stared at me, and I stared back. I had confronted her with this once before, in the palm court of Alhambra, with Frank Bellarosa lying dead on the floor, and a dozen FBI agents and county detectives standing off to the side so that Mrs. Sutter, a homicide suspect, and her husband, who was also her attorney, could converse in private. And when I asked her then why she killed him, she gave me the answer I’d just gotten. I could have accepted that, and from there we could have possibly rebuilt our lives.