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rose-colored stones filling the circular drive. One automatic step after another, she traveled in a circle back toward the front door, back to Marta. As she wiped her feet on the mat, she heard her mother’s voice on the answering machine in the kitchen. When Jane stepped forward and turned her head, she saw Marta’s form stretched out on the couch. Occasional snores punctuated Marta’s sleep. 
    “Jana?”
    To her mother she was always Jana, Ya-na .
    “Jana? It’s Magdalena.”
    Her mother always announced herself, as if her own daughter hadn’t heard that voice, its deep carrying tones, surely since before she was born.
    She stood listening, wondering if Marta would wake up at the sound. 
    “Are you inside, Jana? Can you hear me?” There was a brief silence as her mother waited. “Well, darling.” Her mother only left messages between festivals, when she wasn’t mentally in another century, one without telephones. “I’ll try you again soon.”
    Marta lay on the sofa, her foot propped up with a pillow. Buttermilk, the cat staying with them while their neighbor Hank was away, took up most of the space on her torso. Marta’s hair was so blonde it shone almost silver in the shaft of light from the window, paler than the cream tabby on her chest. Her brows were perfect broad arches, tapering to fine points. Her unlined sallow skin, thin mouth, finely arched nose, and compact efficiency gave Jane the impression of a petite bird of prey. With a ka-thump to the floor, Buttermilk wandered over to rub himself against Jane's legs. She leaned down and pet him.
    What’s he like?  
    Marta’s intensity as she asked that question bored through Jane’s head, an inescapable question demanding an answer other than the superficial trivialities she’d given as substitute for the real thing.
    He comes home and…she rubbed her temples, pressing as hard as she could. She crossed from the hall, past Marta, to her favorite chair by the fireplace and sat down, her head between her hands.
    She looked at Marta. The photographer snored on. Buttermilk trotted off on some business of his own.
    Marta had insisted on waiting until Tam came home from school before they left for the hospital. Otherwise they would have had to go get Tam out of school and bring her along, since she might have arrived home while they were gone. Jane wasn’t sure about the origin of Marta’s concern: that she not disrupt Tam’s school schedule or that she see Tam (not just through a camera lens) and have more time in the house. Marta wasn’t gaining much information at the moment. The combination of painkillers and too much coffee seemed to have knocked her right out. Maybe she would sleep until Tam arrived and there wouldn’t be any more questions. 
    Don’t you worry about the women he’s working with? They’re beautiful—he’s thrown together with them—you’re apart. Bad combination.  
    Do you read the tabloids?
    You’ve heard the rumors about his sexuality…then, of course, the other women…don’t you want to comment on that? I wanted you to have a chance to respond, put the stories to rest.
    Marta was doubtless using the tactics such people employed: telling lies in hope of a big reaction…creating news out of the product of a sick imagination. Trying to sell magazines.
    Jane had avoided tabloids for years. It wasn’t hard to blur peripheral vision with practice.
    If only Marta had been better at her job and stayed perched in her tree. Jane never would have known Marta were there if the branch hadn’t snapped, giving the interloper’s position away. 
    It would have seemed like a normal day. Marta would have had the pictures of Tam. Whether any harm would have come of it was debatable. There wouldn’t have been any decision to make; what happened would have been out of her hands.

 
     
     
     
    CHAPTER FIVE
     
    I AN HACKED AWAY at the smaller pieces protruding from the trunk balanced on its end, pretending to ignore the