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you doing home so early?”
    “The teachers had a meeting or something. You know how they always have meetings on Friday afternoons.” She rolled her eyes. “Is it all right if I go to Susannah’s house? Her dad got a new pinball machine.”
    “Sure, go on. But don’t be late for supper,” she called after Lulu, who was already halfway down the stairs. “Good God,” she sighed with a combination of discomfort and relief as she heard the front door open and close.
    The phone rang.
    She moved quickly to answer it, careful not to walk too close to the window. “Hello?” As before, there was no response. “Oh no, not again.” She waited a second, listeningto the ominous silence at the other end, feeling invisible eyes upon her, as if the phone were a camera, and she dropped the receiver back onto its carriage as if she had just received a sudden charge of electricity. “Go bother someone else,” she admonished it, falling back across her bed, feeling exposed though she wasn’t sure why.
    That stupid magazine, she thought, renewed embarrassment creeping across her bare arms and legs as she contemplated her daughter’s startled expression at catching her mother with her head down between her thighs. Not that she was a prude about her body, Joanne thought. It was just that she had never made a point of parading around without her clothes in front of her daughters. She had never seen her own mother nude, she realized, until the woman had become too weak and sick to dress herself. What was Paul doing buying magazines like that? And why?
    “Hello? Is anybody home?” the masculine voice called as, once more, Joanne heard her front door open and shut.
    “Paul?” Joanne sat up, startled, quickly retrieving a robe from her walk-in closet and wrapping it around her before her husband appeared in the doorway. “What are you doing home in the middle of the afternoon? Are you feeling all right?”
    He didn’t look well, she thought, kissing him gently on the cheek. “I wanted to talk to Mr. Rogers,” he said, looking out the window. “Has he been around today?”
    “Just the workers. Although he might have been here—I was gone for a few hours. Eve and I had a tennis lesson at the club. A new instructor. He seems to feel that I have a certain natural ability, but I don’t know. It’s been so long since I played …” What was she rattling on about? Why was she so nervous?
    She looked at her husband’s back as he stared out the window. There was something about his stance, something about the tilt of his head, the visible tension in his shoulders, that made her uncomfortable. He turned toward her, and she didn’t like the expression on his face.
    “What is it?” she asked, wishing she could get that damn magazine out of her mind. “Is something wrong? Something the matter with the pool?” she questioned, though she knew instinctively that the pool was not the issue.
    He shook his head. “No. I just thought that if Rogers was around, I’d speak to him for a few minutes. That’s not it,” he continued almost in the same breath. “That’s not why I’m home early. It’s not the pool. It’s me.”
    “You? What’s wrong?” She felt herself begin to panic. “Have you been having pains in your chest?”
    “No, no,” he quickly reassured her. “No, it’s nothing like that.” There was a long, uncomfortable pause. “I have to talk to you,” he said finally.
    Joanne sank into the blue well-stuffed chair at the foot of their bed. She nodded her readiness to listen. He looked at her with the same trepidation that she had seen in his face on that afternoon three years earlier when he had rushed home in the middle of the day to tell her that her father had suffered a heart attack and had been rushed to the hospital. She didn’t know what he was going to say. She knew only that she wasn’t going to like it.

THREE
    L ater that night, after her husband had packed some things in a small suitcase and left