That was all.

And those same conditions applied to lots of other people.

No, I wouldn't let Sheriff Schuster get me panicked.

Not yet.

I'd automatically finished putting away my groceries, but I felt too unsettled to begin preparing my meals for the next week. It was almost suppertime, and the shadows of the tall trees in the arboretum across the street were making fringed patterns on the pavement. I tried to think of a reason to go out so I wouldn't be walking aimlessly. I decided to go see Joe C in the hospital. He didn't hear well over the telephone, anyway.

It was cool enough for a jacket. Track Street was quiet when I went out the front door. Carlton had mowed his grass for the first time, and the fresh smell released a puff of peace inside me—natural aromatherapy. That smell, when I was little, had meant home and Father and the proximity of summer. My troubles shifted, a bit; the burden was lighter.

A Bible verse flashed across my mind: "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light." The Book of Matthew, seemed like. I thought about that as I strode past Shakespeare Combined Church. After I'd been raped and scarred so horribly on my abdomen and chest, while the resulting terrible infection laid waste to my reproductive organs, my parents' minister had come to see me in the hospital. I'd sent him away. My parents had thought, maybe still thought, that I'd refused the consolation of religion because I was raging at fate. But it wasn't that I was asking, "Why me?" That's futility. Why not me? Why should I be exempt from suffering because I was a believer?

What had enraged me to the point of transforming my life was the question of what would happen to the men who had done such terrible things to me. My hatred was so strong, so adamant, that it required all my emotional energy. I'd shut down the parts of me that wanted to reach out to others, to cry about the pain and the fear, to be horrified because I'd killed a man. I'd made my choice, the choice to live, but it wasn't always a comfortable choice. I was convinced it wasn't the godly choice.

Now, pausing at the four-way stop a block away from the modest Shakespeare hospital, I shook my head. I always ran up against the same wall when I thought of my situation then; chained to a bed in a rotting shack, waiting for the man who'd abducted me to come claim me again, and holding a gun with one bullet. I could have shot myself; God wouldn't have liked that. I could have shot my abductor, and did; killing him wasn't good, either. I'd never thought of a third option. But in the years since then, from time to time I'd thought I might have been better off using the bullet on myself.

At that moment, in that shack, the look on his face had been worth it.

"What else could I have done?" I whispered out loud as I threaded through the cars in the hospital parking lot.

I still had no answer. I wondered what Joel McCorkindale would think of to say. I knew I'd never ask him.

Visiting hours were almost over, but the volunteer at the front desk seemed quite happy to give me Joe C's room number. Our old hospital, always in danger of closing, had been expanded and updated to suit modern medicine, and the result was a maze hard to decipher even with a floor plan. But I found the right room. There were people standing out in the corridor, talking intently in low, hushed hospital voices; Bobo, his mother, Beanie, and Calla Prader. If I had learned the family tree correctly, Calla was a first cousin of Bobo's father, once removed.

I was not ready to see Bobo again and almost spun on my heel to walk away until they'd left, but Calla spied me and was on me before I could blink.

I don't expect much from people, but I did assume she was going to thank me for saving Joe C from the flames. Instead, Calla raised her hand to slap me in the face.

I don't allow that.

Before her hand could reach my cheek, I'd gripped her wrist and held her arm rigid. We froze in a tense tableau. Then the fury seemed to drain out of Calla, taking her energy with it. The rush of angry color left her face, and even her eyes went pale and empty. When I was sure the purpose had left her, I released her wrist, and her arm dropped, dangling down by her side as if her bones had gone soft.

I looked over Calla's shoulder at Beanie and raised my eyebrows. It seemed apparent to me that Calla had just now found out about Joe C's will, and I wondered once again where she'd been when the fire started.

"I'm so sorry," Beanie said, mortified almost beyond speech. "Our whole family owes you thanks, Lily." And that must have choked her, considering the conversation we'd had when she'd terminated my employment. "Calla is just... beside herself, aren't you, honey?"

Calla's eyes had never left my face.

"Did you know, too?" she asked me in a low voice.

I couldn't complete that sentence mentally. I shook my head at her.

"Did you know that he's left me nothing? Did you know, too? Everyone in town seems to know that but me."

Normally I tell nothing but the truth, though I don't throw it around easily. But I could see that it was a good time to lie.

"No," I said, in a voice just as low as hers. "That makes him an old bastard, doesn't it?"

For all the violence of her feelings, that word shocked her back into herself.

Then she smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. It wasn't a middle-aged, church-going, rural-Arkansas-lady smile. Calla's smile was delighted and mean and just a wee bit triumphant.

"Old bastards," she said clearly, "have to cope for themselves, don't they?"

I smiled back. "I guess they do."

Calla Prader marched out of that hospital with a straight back and that happy, nasty smile still on her face.

Beanie stared after her, nonplussed. Beanie is in her midforties, an athletic, attractive woman whose most admirable trait is her love for her children.

"Thank you for handling that so well, Lily," Beanie said uncertainly. She was wearing a beige and white linen dress, and against her tan skin and brunette hair, the dress looked wonderful. Bobo's mother's expensive exterior hid a selfish heart and a shallow intelligence, partially concealed by good manners.

I could feel Bobo hovering on my left, but could not bring myself to look up at his face.

"Thanks, Lily," he echoed.

But his voice reminded his mother of his presence, and she turned on him like a snake about to strike.

"And you, young man," she began, sounding happy to have found a focus for her excited feelings, "You were the one who let Calla know about the will."

"I didn't know she was standing behind me," Bobo said plaintively, sounding about fourteen. "And anyway, now that we know, isn't it only honest to tell her?"

That stopped Beanie's anger like a dash of water; that question of morality, and the fact that she'd recollected that I was still standing there listening to all this family turmoil.

"Thank you for saving Uncle Joe C," Beanie said more formally. "The police tell me that you saw someone in his yard before the fire started?"

"Yes."

"But you couldn't see who it was?"

"Too dark."

"Probably some juvenile delinquent. These kids today will do anything, anything they see on television."

I shrugged. Beanie had always reduced me to gestures and monosyllables.

"But it bothers me that it was cigarettes," Beanie said, and then she sounded as if she were talking to a real person, me, instead of The Help.

I knew this from Bobo, but I had a feeling it wouldn't be wise to reveal that. "The fire was set with cigarettes?" That was expansive and unrevealing enough.

"Joe C says he didn't have any. Of course, the fire marshal thought he might have set it himself, smoking in the living room. But Joe C says no. Would you like to go in and talk to him?"