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Cilla sprawled over Cathy, fists flailing as if they were almost too heavy to lift. Cathy with blood running down her face, her eyes mad with pain and hate as Spock snapped and growled. The gun in her hand. Turning, turning toward Cilla.

He leaped, grabbing Cathy’s wrist with one hand, shoving Cilla clear with the other. He felt something, a quick bee sting at his biceps, before he wrenched the gun from Cathy’s hand.

“Ford! Thank God!” Cathy reached for him. “She went crazy. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what she’s on. She had the gun, and I tried—”

“Shut up,” he said coldly, clearly. “If you move, I swear to God, for the first time in my life, I’ll hit a woman. Spock, knock it off! And I’ll make it count,” he told Cathy. “So shut the fuck up.” He aimed the gun at her as he edged toward Cilla. “Or I may do worse than knock you out. Cilla. Cilla.”

He checked for wounds, then lifted her eyelid as Spock bathed her face frantically with his tongue. “Wake up!” He slapped her, lightly at first. “Move one more inch,” he warned Cathy in a voice he barely recognized himself. “Just one more. Cilla!” He slapped her again, harder, and watched her lids flutter. “Sit up. Wake up.” One-handed, he pulled her up to sit. “I’m calling for an ambulance, and the cops. You’re all right. Do you hear me?”

“Seconal,” she managed, then braced herself with one hand. And shoved her fingers ruthlessly down her throat.

 

 

LATER, A LONG TIME LATER, Cilla sat under the blue umbrella. Spring had gone, and summer nearly, she thought. She’d be here when the leaves changed and burned across the mountains. And when the first snow of the season fell, and the last. She’d be here, she thought, in all the springs to come, and the seasons to follow.

She’d be home. With Ford. And with Spock. Her heroes.

“You’re still pale,” he said. “Lying down might be a better idea than fresh air.”

“You’re still pale,” she countered. “You were shot.”

He glanced down at his bandaged arm. “Grazed” was the more accurate word. “Yeah. Eventually, that’ll be cool. I got shot once, I’ll say, rushing in—just a little too late again—to save the love of my life before she saved herself.”

“You did save me. I’d lost it. I CSI’d her,” she added, wiggling her fingers. “But I was done. You and Spock—fierce doggie,” she murmured as she bent down to nuzzle him. “You saved my life. Now you have to keep it.”

He reached over, took her hand. “That’s the plan. I nearly went in the wrong house. That’s it, Cilla. No more two households for us. I nearly went to the wrong one. Then I would’ve been too late.”

“You figured it out, and you came for me. You can draw all the heroes you want. You’re mine.”

“Hero, goddess and superdog. We’re pretty lucky, you and me.”

“I guess we are. Ford, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry for Brian.”

“We’ll help him get through it.” No question there, Ford thought, no choice. “We’ll find a way to help him get through it.”

“She carried that betrayal with her all these years. And couldn’t stand what I came here to do. In a way, this house was a symbol for both of us.” She studied it—her pretty home, the fresh paint, the windows glinting in the early morning sun.

“I needed to bring it back; she needed to watch it die. Every fresh board, every coat of paint, a slap in the face to her. The party? Can you imagine how that must have gnawed at her? Music and laughter, food and drink. And wedding talk. How could she stand it?”

“I knew them both all my life and never saw through it. So much for the writer’s power of observation.”

“They put it away. Locked it in a closet. She watched Janet die.” That still twisted in her heart. “She had it in her to watch. And she had it in her to put it away, to remake herself. To raise her family, to shop with her friends, to bake cookies and make the beds. And to drive by here, every once in a while, so she could let it out.”

“Like a pressure valve.”

“I’d say so. And I locked down the valve. My grandmother didn’t commit suicide. That’s going to be major news. Cameras, print, movie of the week—perhaps a major motion picture. More books, talk shows. Much.”

“I think I’ve got the picture by now. No warning necessary. Your grandmother didn’t commit suicide,” he repeated.

“No, she didn’t.” When her eyes filled, the tears felt like redemption. “She didn’t leave my mother, not in the way Mom always thought. She bought a lipstick-pink couch with white satin cushions. She grieved for a lost child and prepared for another.

“Not a saint,” Cilla continued. “She slept with another woman’s husband, and would have broken up his family without a qualm. Or much of one.”

“Cheating’s a two-way street. Tom betrayed his wife, his family. And even when he claimed he’d broken it off, he slept with Janet again. He had a pregnant wife and a child at home, and slept with the image—and refused to take responsibility for the consequences.”

“I wonder if it was the brutality of that last letter that snapped Janet’s feeling for him, had her come back, face him down with the facts. ‘I’m pregnant, the baby’s yours, but we don’t want or need you.’ ”

She let out a breath. “I like to think so.”

“Plays, doesn’t it? Sure jibes with what Tom told me. Cathy took and destroyed the pregnancy results, but she didn’t know about the letters. She didn’t know about
Gatsby
.”

“Janet kept the letters, I think, to remind her that the child was conceived in at least the illusion of love. And to remind herself why it would belong to only her. I think, too, she made certain the farm couldn’t be sold because she wanted the child to have it one day. Johnnie was gone, and she knew my mother had no real ties to it. But she had another chance.

“And maybe there will always be questions, but I have the answers I needed. I wonder if I’ll still dream of her, the way I always have.”

“Do you want to?”

“Maybe. Sometimes. But I think I’d like to start dreaming about what might happen, about what I hope for, rather than what used to be.” She smiled when he brushed his lips over her fingers.

“Take a walk with me.” He got to his feet, drew her to hers. “Just you. Just me.” He looked down at Spock as the dog did his happy dance. “Just us.”

She walked with him across the stones, over the grass still damp with dew, with roses madly blooming and the last of the summer’s flowers unfolded like jewels. Walked with him while the sweet, ugly dog chased his invisible cats around the pond strung with lily pads.

With her hand in his, she thought this was dream enough for her. Right now. With the three of them happy and safe and together.

And home.

Cooper Sullivan’s life, as he’d known it, was over. Judge and jury—in the form of his parents—had not been swayed by pleas, reason, temper, threats, but instead had sentenced him and shipped him off, away from everything he knew and cared about, to a world without video parlors or Big Macs.

The only thing that kept him from
completely
dying of boredom, or just going wacko, was his prized Game Boy.

As far as he could see, it would be him and Tetris for the duration of his prison term—two horrible, stupid months—in the wild freaking west. He knew damn well the game—which his father had gotten pretty much right off the assembly line in Tokyo—was a kind of bribe.

Coop was eleven, and nobody’s fool.

Practically nobody in the whole U. S. of A. had the game, and that was definitely cool. But what was the point in having something everybody else wanted if you couldn’t show it off to your friends?

This way, you were just Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne, the lame alter egos of the cool guys.

All of his friends were back, a zillion miles back, in New York. They’d be hanging out for the summer, taking trips to the beaches of Long Island or down to the Jersey Shore. He’d been promised two weeks at baseball camp in July.

But that was before.

Now his parents were off to Italy and France and other stupid places on a second honeymoon. Which was code for last-ditch effort to save the marriage.

No, Coop was nobody’s fool.

Having their eleven-year-old son around wasn’t romantic or whatever, so they’d shipped him off to his grandparents and the boondocks of South holy crap Dakota.

Godforsaken South Dakota. He’d heard his mother call it that plenty of times—except when she’d smiled and smiled, telling him he was going to have an
Adventure
, get to know his
roots
. Godforsaken turned into pristine and pure and exciting. Like he didn’t know she’d run off from her parents and their crappy little farm the minute she’d turned eighteen.

So he was stuck back where she’d run from, and he hadn’t done anything to deserve it. It wasn’t his fault that his father couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, or that his mother compensated by buying up Madison Avenue—information Coop had learned from expert and regular eavesdropping. They screwed things up and he was sentenced to a summer on a horse-shit farm with grandparents he barely knew.

And they were really
old
.

He was supposed to help with the horses, who smelled and looked like they wanted to bite you. With the chickens who smelled and did bite.

They didn’t have a housekeeper who cooked egg-white omelettes or picked up his action figures. And they drove trucks instead of cars. Even his ancient grandmother.

He hadn’t seen a cab in days.

He had chores, and had to eat home-cooked meals with food he’d never seen in his
life
. And maybe the food was pretty good, but that wasn’t the point.

The
one
TV in the whole house barely got anything, and there was no McDonald’s. No Chinese or pizza place that delivered. No friends. No park, no movie theaters, no video arcades.

He might as well be in Russia or someplace.

He glanced up from the Game Boy to look out the car window at what he considered a lot of nothing. Stupid mountains, stupid prairie, stupid trees. The same view, as far as he could tell, that had been outside the window since they’d left the farm. At least his grandparents had stopped interrupting his game to tell him stuff about what was outside the window.

Like he cared about a lot of stupid settlers and Indians and soldiers who hung around out here before he was even born. Hell, before his prehistoric grandparents had been born.

Who gave a shit about Crazy Horse and Sitting Bullshit. He cared about the X-Men and the box scores.

The way Coop looked at it, the fact that the closest town to the farm was called Deadwood said it all.

He didn’t care about cowboys and horses and buffalo. He cared about baseball and video games. He wasn’t going to see a
single
game in Yankee Stadium all summer.

He might as well be dead, too.

He spotted a bunch of what looked like mutant deer clomp ing across the high grass, and a lot of trees and stupid hills that were really green. Why did they call them black when they were green? Because he was in South crappy Dakota, where they didn’t know dick about squat.

What he didn’t see were buildings, people, streets, sidewalk vendors. What he didn’t see was home.

His grandmother shifted in her seat to look back at him. “Do you see the elk, Cooper?”

“I guess.”

“We’ll be getting to the Chance spread soon,” she told him. “It was nice of them to have us all over for supper. You’re going to like Lil. She’s nearly your age.”

He knew the rules. “Yes, ma’am.” As if he’d pal around with some
girl
. Some dumb farm girl who probably smelled like horse. And looked like one.

He bent his head and went back to Tetris so his grandmother would leave him alone. She looked sort of like his mother. If his mother had been old and didn’t get her hair done blond and wavy, and didn’t wear makeup. But he could see his mother in this strange old woman with the lines around her blue eyes.

It was a little spooky.

Her name was Lucy, and he was supposed to call her Grandma.

She cooked and baked. A lot. And hung sheets and stuff out on a line in back of the farmhouse. She sewed and scrubbed, and sang while she did so. Her voice was pretty, if you liked that sort of thing.

She helped with the horses, and, Coop could admit, he’d been surprised and impressed when he’d seen her jump right on one without a saddle or anything.

She
was
old—probably at least fifty, for God sakes. But she wasn’t creaky.

Mostly she wore boots and jeans and plaid shirts. Except for today. She’d put a dress on and left the brown hair she usually braided loose.

He didn’t notice when they turned off the endless stretch of road, not until the ride turned bumpier. When he glanced out he saw more trees, less flat land, and the mountains roughed up behind them. Mostly it looked like a lot of bumpy green hills topped with bare rock.

He knew his grandparents raised horses and rented them at trailheads to tourists who wanted to ride them. He didn’t get it. He just didn’t get why anybody would want to sit on a horse and ride around rocks and trees.

His grandfather drove along the more dirt than gravel road, and Coop saw cattle grazing on either side. He hoped it meant the drive was nearly over. He didn’t care about having dinner at the Chase farm or meeting dumb Lil.

But he had to pee.

His grandfather had to stop so his grandmother could hop out to open a cattle gate, then close it again when they’d gone through. As they bumped along his bladder began to protest.

He saw sheds and barns and stables, whatever they were, didn’t matter. It was, as far as it went out here, a sign of civilization.

Something was growing in some fields, and horses were running around in others like they didn’t have anything better to do.