But she wasn't real y listening anymore. Her eyes got al glazed and her ears fil ed with an Abba song she loved to dance to. This a.n.a.lysis stuff was fluff. She just did what she did.

"You stil want to find her, don't you?" Lily Ann asked.

She was surprised at the question.

"What about writing to the family, asking if you can take them Ginger's things, or if they want to pick them up?"

Jefferson felt like the floor was fal ing out from under her. "Give away Ginger's stuff? Her first tap shoes?" She held them up. "The green leather sneakers she found in the trash?" She knew she must look sil y, the large bear Ginger had won at a street fair under her arm, the tap shoes dangling from one hand, a long slinky black dance skirt draped over her shoulder.

"Give them up, J. Go face-to-face with the family. They'd have to tel you something then."

"Lily Ann, I don't think so. I can't imagine."

"Okay, don't twist yourself inside out, girl. I can see how it could smart a bit."

She let out a painful breath. "You know what real y makes me break down? Folding sheets by myself." She remembered the time, folding laundry together, she'd wrapped Ginger in a sheet and spun her out, then col apsed on the clean linens with her. She gave a happy laugh at herself. "Thanks for listening to me obsess, Lil. Come on, let's get the dresser in here."

The weirdest change for her wasn't Ginger's absence; it was the absence of the despair that had haunted her al her life, until the last several months.

Listening to someone else talk about her family in an AA meeting, she'd realized that Jarvy was an alcoholic. He'd been a happy drinker through her childhood, but at some point that had changed. She remembered how moody he was and wondered if he, too, had suffered from joylessness. If he, too, had tried to escape it with whiskey. If his dal iances at the railroad station in Dutchess were attempts to shake off frightening funks like, she'd figured out with her sponsor, her womanizing had sometimes been.

They had drifted back to the furniture. "Ginger left this beautiful dresser?" Lily Ann asked. "It's gorgeous and in such great shape."

"It was her grandparents'."

"I'd use it, myself."

"No, Lily Ann." She b.u.mped Lily Ann's arm with her knuckles. "If it belonged to your ex you wouldn't want to wake up in the morning and have it be the first thing you see."

Lily Ann hefted her side and they walked a few steps, Jefferson backward.

"But it isn't my ex's," Lily Ann said, setting the chest down. "Neither is Ginger's family. I could cal them, J. I could say me and my husband are coming to town for the weekend-"

"You'd do that? Pretend to be straight?"

"Why not? I could cal right now."

"They might have cal er ID."

"Tonight then."

But when Lily Ann cal ed Jefferson that night, before the Murder, She Wrote reruns came on, she said no one had answered and promised to try again the next day. "I'm not leaving a message, J, in case they think it's strange of me to be too persistent or decide to get hold of Ginger about who I real y am."

"What if they know, Lily Ann? What if they give you a number to cal ? I'm not going to cal it and have to talk to them."

"We can Google the number. Or use a reverse phone directory, Jef. I have some resources at work."

Jefferson closed her eyes and saw Ginger and Mitchel in the back of the cab again. "Do I want to know?" she asked, flipping the hood of her sweatshirt over her head and crossing her arms in a defensive pose.

"You want to know she's al right."

"Mitchel wouldn't hurt Ginger."

"But what is he doing with her?"

"Lily Ann, you're talking like he kidnapped her for ransom."

"For al you know, he might have. Or worse."

"What're you talking about? Mitchel is our friend."

"Friends don't ride off into the sunset with your partner."

"No cal . That's what gets to me the most, Lily Ann. Ginger would tel me something, wouldn't she?"

"If she could."

"You're scaring me."

"What's worse, J, her running off on you with a man or foul play?"

"Worse for Ginger or worse for me?"

"Gee-jus, Jefferson."

"Wel , it's the truth. I a.s.sumed she and that turncoat wanted to be together. I may not deserve better after al the years I ran around on her, but I'm sober and faithful now." She knew she was whining.

"She got bored? She did like you better wild?"

"But if Mitchel was up to no good, then when she comes back, we stil have a chance."

"You mean it saves your ego."

"What's left of it." She looked at Lily Ann. "You don't get it, do you?"

"I get being left, J. Col ege. Remember? There was me, there was Ms. Big Hair-and goodness knows who else."

"I was a kid. She was the bartender. And femme. I was swept off my feet."

"Again."

She touched Lily Ann's short hair. "I wish I hadn't treated you like that, but at least I didn't leave you for a man."

"Gets you where you live, doesn't it?"

"She always said she could be bi, but a lot of women hang on to that idea, especial y femmes. Like they have one foot on sh.o.r.e and can bail if the going gets rough."

"So you're saying it's worse because she's not leaving you, she's leaving the gay life."

"Something like that."

"And you take that personal y. A double rejection."

"Everything I am. Everything I stand for. Everything being with me means, from the intimate stuff to her knowing how I brush my teeth."

"It is not a failure for you, J. You're such a catch."

"It's my failure. I've failed us al ."

"Al like who-lesbians?"

She nodded. When was she going to find someone who real y, down to her roots, understood, somebody queer enough to know the depth of what Ginger had done?

"It sounds like you'd rather she was dead."

"Dead? Who said anything about dead?"

"That's what it sounded like to me."

"You've been watching too many cop shows."

"I don't watch cop shows. I hang out with some cops, though. The things they tel me."

"You think I should report her as a missing person?"

"I don't think you can. Not with her family refusing to talk to you."

"That confirms what I think-she's stil with Mitchel . Why else won't they tel me anything?"

"He could have threatened them."

"And Aunt Til y?"

"That's where he grabbed Ginger from, her school, remember?"

"So you think I should go looking for her."

"If you insist on wanting her. You've heard that Jamie Anderson song, 'Her Problem Now'? Wel , she's his problem now."

"But," she said, looking for the words she needed. "It's not even Ginger. It's that sweet thril of longing. No, that's not quite true, but the two are bound together. With Ginger there's the permanent pleasure of seduction."

"I swear, you need therapy, girl. Even if she left to be with him-and the suitcases, unless they're a smokescreen, might confirm that. But even then, J, wouldn't you expect Ginger to come after you if you'd been gone this long with no word?"

"I never thought of that. She might be waiting for me to make a move."

"She might have gone wil ingly with him and now be stuck."

"You're not thinking she's gagged and bound somewhere."

"I never trusted Mitchel . He was always showing up places with straight girls, like he needed to show the world he wasn't as queer as the rest of us."

"Where are you going with this, Lily Ann?"

"What if he-they-went to one of those fix-the-gays groups?"

"Ginger would never go along with that."

"She might not have known what she was getting into, J."

"But her parents might have."

They looked at each other.

Lily Ann said, "A cult kidnapping?"

"Which would mean the family isn't talking because they're shielding her from me. They final y got her away from the big bad wolf."

She sat thinking for a while, confused. This made more sense than anything else. Stil , it didn't sound like Ginger to go into some kind of cult deprogramming situation. She'd always scoffed at them. "Why would Mitchel have dragged Ginger with him to something like that? Why not work on himself?"

"He's the type of guy who needs a prop."

"He could have told her anything. That she needed to get away for a while. Or that they were going to a dance workshop and to let me stew because I'd done it to her enough. No, that doesn't make sense. It's not Ginger."

"You don't know what makes sense for other people, J."

"For Ginger?"

"It's midlife-crisis time, J. You had a soft landing. Ginger may be taking off."

"I stepped back, didn't I? I respected her choice and even expected her choice. I thought I deserved this. I thought if a man was involved I couldn't fight back."

"No, you a.s.sumed you'd lost."

"Maybe I have."

"And maybe you haven't."

Chapter Twenty-Three.

The next spring, she waded, twice, through fal en white blossoms in one of those delightful pocket parks hidden in midtown before she completed a trip to Cafe Femmes. This was the first time she'd gone to the bar without Ginger in her life.