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a legitimate, rational fear, but she knew she was lying. It was not just the lightning that terrified her. In fact, that was the least of it. There was something else, something she couldn’t identify, something formless and nameless in the room, and the very presence of it, whatever the hell it was, pushed a panic button deep inside her, on a sub-subconscious, primitive level; this fear was gut-deep, instinctive.
    A dervish of windblown leaves and papers whirled across the floor, directly toward her. It was a big one: a column about two feet in diameter, five or six feet high, composed of a hundred or more pieces of this and that. It stopped very near her, writhing, churning, hissing, changing shape, glimmering silver-dark in the flashing storm light, and she felt threatened by it. As she stared up at the whirlwind, she had the mad notion that it was staring down at her. After a moment it moved off to the left a few feet, then returned, paused in front of her again, hesitated, then scurried busily to the right, but came back once more, looming above her as if it were trying to make up its mind whether or not to pounce and tear her to shreds and sweep her up along with the leaves, newspaper pages, envelopes, and other flotsam by which it defined itself.
    It’s nothing more than a whirlwind of lifeless junk! she told herself angrily.
    The wind-shaped phantom moved away from her.
    See? she told herself scornfully. Just lifeless junk. What’s wrong with me? Am I losing my mind?
    She recalled the old axiom that was supposed to provide comfort in moments like this: If you think you’re going mad, then you must be completely sane, for a lunatic never has doubts about his sanity. As a psychiatrist, she knew that hoary bit of wisdom was an oversimplification of complex psychological principles, but in essence it was true. So she must be sane.
    Nevertheless, that frightening, irrational thought came to her again, unbidden, unwanted: Something’s trying to stop us from adopting a baby.
    If the maelstrom in which she lay was not an act of nature, then what was it? Was she to believe that the lightning had been sent with the conscious intent of transforming Mr. O’Brian into a smoking heap of charred flesh? That was a fruitcake notion, for sure.
    Who could use lightning as if it were a pistol? God? God wasn’t sitting up in Heaven, aiming at Mr. O’Brian, popping away at him with lightning bolts, just to screw up the adoption process for Carol and Paul Tracy. The Devil? Blasting away at poor Mr. O’Brian from the depths of Hell? That was a looney idea. Jesus!
    She wasn’t even sure she believed in God, but she knew she definitely did not believe in the Devil.
    Another window imploded, showering glass over her.
    Then the lightning stopped.
    The thunder decreased from a roar to a rumble, fading like the noise of a passing freight train.
    There was a stench of ozone.
    The wind was still pouring in through the broken windows, but apparently with less force than it had exerted a moment ago, for the whirling columns of leaves and papers subsided to the floor, where they lay in piles, fluttering and quivering as if exhausted.
    Something…
    Something…
    Something’s trying to stop us from— She clamped off that unwanted thought as though it were a spurting artery. She was an educated woman, dammit. She prided herself on her levelheadedness and common sense. She couldn’t permit herself to succumb to these disturbing, uncharacteristic, utterly superstitious fears.
    Freaky weather—that was the explanation for the lightning. Freaky weather. You read about such things in the newspapers every once in a while. A half an inch of snow in Beverly Hills. An eighty-degree day in the middle of an otherwise frigid Minnesota winter.
    Rain falling briefly from an apparently cloudless blue sky. Although a lightning strike of this magnitude and intensity was undoubtedly a rare occurrence, it probably had happened before, sometime, somewhere, probably more than