Pipsborough was smal ; the drive over the slick streets was quick except for the mad gray squirrels dashing across streets in search of richer foraging grounds. Shannon's cabin was one of a half dozen that had once been part of a motor court, probably built in the thirties and now in much too bad shape to attract vacationers. A knee-high, once-painted picket fence, snaggle-toothed, sagged backward. She could imagine the old cars parked along the horseshoe driveway, kids in overal shorts and fathers in captain's hats, the mothers wearing wide-legged rayon playsuits. Ginger would like this place. Would have liked.

"Where's her bike?" asked Rayanne.

"Inside?" Yolanda suggested.

Dawn opened the creaky screen door and knocked. "Shannon?" she cal ed. Shannon's cat came streaking out of the cabin and made for the woods in back.

When there was no answer, Jefferson, Rayanne, and Yolanda went to the windows. The cabin consisted of a smal combined living room and kitchen and a sleeping loft. The bathroom had a high frosted-gla.s.s window. Light flooded inside when Dawn opened the front door. She watched Yolanda enter behind Dawn and knew she'd been watching too many episodes of Law & Order when she wondered why their guns weren't drawn.

She felt light-headed and an acrid taste came into her mouth. She slumped against the cabin, nauseous. What was up with her? She'd handled plenty of situations in cla.s.ses, on playing fields. Was it the thought of another death? She wanted to go lumbering into the woods like a wounded old moose to lie down and die in peace.

"Jefferson!" Dawn cal ed from inside, and she felt the shame that had always come when she realized her clothes were dirty once again from playing in the woods. Emmy's mute disappointment had felt like an elevator at Lord and Taylor's crashing to the ground. That had been a recurrent nightmare in her childhood, the elevator fal ing with her in it, Emmy many floors above. It plunged; she stood frozen and silent with fear.

Breakfast erupted. They were cal ing, sounding frantic. She wiped her face with the hem of her shirt. To quel more nausea, she pictured herself at the end of the day, alone in her big soft chair by the fire. Then she wove her way to the car and started it while they put Shannon, limp, on the backseat. Dawn sat with Shannon's head on her lap, Rayanne leapt into the front seat, while Yolanda lifted Shannon's legs and rested them on her own. Even as she started the Avalon, she gagged again at the smel of vomit.

"Shannon's sick?" She searched Dawn's worried face in the rearview mirror.

"She swal owed pil s," Dawn was shaking her head, "but she threw up so much, I don't know if they got into her system."

Jefferson reached the street and gunned the car toward the hospital in Laconia. "Let's hope she tossed the pil s before they reached her liver."

"What would happen to her?"

Rayanne was dialing on her cel phone, stabbing numbers, cursing, stabbing them again.

"Cal nine-one-one," Jefferson advised as she rounded a curve too fast.

"Nothing's happening! Wait-Yeah," Rayanne said into the phone. "We're coming in with a suicide. Me? I'm Rayanne Vishengrad. Is she breathing? I don't know-Dawn?"

"She is, but real y slowly. And she's sweating bul ets. Jefferson, where-"

"About fifteen minutes out."

"Fifteen minutes." Rayanne pushed the phone toward Dawn. "She's going to walk you through CPR."

"I know CPR," Dawn said. "I'l start again now."

"Geeze, we should have thought of that." Yolanda grabbed the phone.

"I did, on the bathroom floor," Dawn said as she positioned Shannon's jaw. "Tel her we have the bottle. It's ibuprofen."

Yolanda repeated instructions to Dawn. Jefferson focused on the road, pa.s.sing cars as she never had before, no matter how drunk.

"Jef, the dispatcher is tel ing the police we're on our way. She said they'd meet us with an ambulance, but it wouldn't save time at this point. The ER is waiting for us."

She pressed the pedal down harder. Ahead a police cruiser, lights rotating, was waving her on, holding her hand up to stop intersection traffic. What a different world, she thought, from the scene in The Well of Loneliness, the first gay book she had ever read, where a character, another young lesbian, hanged herself. Not different enough, she thought. Al those years she'd spent drinking and chasing women, she thought, she hadn't noticed that she was doing what the straight world wanted her to do. She was kil ing herself like Shannon, only slower. Kil ing us-why hadn't she thought enough of her relationship to do right by Ginger? She'd been a mirror for a whole society that thinks gays aren't worth much. Who knew if Ginger's aneurysm wasn't from the whole gay-straight thing eating up her gut? Ginger had never told the Quinn family any more than she had told the Jeffersons. Neither of them was out at work. your silence wil not protect you-she'd seen that b.u.mper sticker at the Lake Front Shop. Protect us? It's kil ing us.

By the time Shannon had been wheeled into the ER, Jefferson had stopped shaking; no one knew she'd gotten sick.

"The Bean-Supper Gang rides again," said Yolanda. "You think they have beer in that soda machine?"

"I think they cal it a soda machine for a reason," Rayanne said.

Yolanda had cal ed Shannon's mother and got up to meet her as she came in.

"How is she?"

"We don't know. They might let you in to see her," Yolanda said. "They won't let us. I'l go over to Shannon's later, find her cat and keep him at my place."

"Oh, that girl and her strays," said Shannon's mother. She sighed and looked toward the hal way. "I cal ed Shannon's father. He'l be here in a minute."

Dawn was hugging Mrs. Wiley. She and her husband hadn't helped Shannon either. The poor kid. This wasn't supposed to happen in this new century: Lesbians weren't isolated. They helped each other through these things. Shannon had been out to her family and loved anyway. She was gay in the military, in theory. Jefferson wondered what was real y going on with Shannon, with al of them, with the whole group being single. They treated Jefferson like a widow, but she wasn't, real y. She was an unattached ex who had taken care of her former lover. A lover who'd left her for a man. Which was like that old wel -of-loneliness book.

She was no brain. Probably she'd never figure out what was what, but that was okay. Right now she didn't want to lose someone else in her life.

Shannon's community was al gathered, except for Drew and Ryan, and they were on their way. Maybe this was working; maybe they were taking care of one another. "Please let Shannon make it," she prayed to that big old boring G.o.d who seemed to be in charge of these things.

"What would Xena do?" she asked aloud, for Shannon's sake.

Mr. Wiley hurried in the door, obviously distraught. "Doesn't she know she's government property?" he asked his former wife. "They can toss her in the brig for doing this." Mrs. Wiley shushed him and they were al owed back to see Shannon.

Jefferson was incredulous. "Government property?"

"My dad told me the same thing," Dawn said.

"He would have told her to go fight," said Rayanne.

Jefferson chuckled to herself. Angela and Tam had been big into Xena too. Cafe Femmes used to go silent once a week when the show came on.

"In Iraq?" Dawn asked. She was crying. Jefferson, seated next to her, gathered her to her shoulder. Dawn felt fragile in her arms. "Shannon's a kid in her head," Dawn said. "She wanted to go play soldier, but she'd rather patch up an injured enemy soldier than kil him."

"She'd have a better chance of surviving there than she had on whatever she did to herself back in her cabin," said Yolanda.

Jefferson asked, "How many did she take?"

"There was an empty hundred-tablet bottle on the sink," Dawn told her, stil resting in Jefferson's arms.

Yolanda added, "And she was lying in a puddle of what came up. Your whole backseat may need to go to the dry cleaners."

"So if Shannon does make it, she could be in bad shape."

"Let's put it this way, Jefferson." Yolanda looked across Rayanne, who sat between them, to meet her eyes. "The Guard isn't going to want her."

"Not true," Rayanne said. "Who would make better cannon fodder than a suicidal d.y.k.e?"

Chapter Thirty-Eight.

That night, a doctor final y told Shannon's parents that her friends had brought Shannon in time and she would be fine except for a very sore throat. He told them everyone might as wel go home. Drew and Ryan stayed because they'd just arrived, but Jefferson walked out to her car feeling drained and scared and guilty. Couldn't she have helped Shannon or at least made her feel better about herself?

The hospital was tiny compared to those in New York. She was al too familiar with the place. The ambulance had rushed to Ginger only to declare her dead. She had no desire to stick around tonight, especial y since no one but Shannon's parents would be al owed to visit.

She felt so unsettled. In New York, she would have gone to the bar and had a cup of that tranquil ity tea Amaretto made up. The act of drinking something she was told would calm her, did calm her.

So when Dawn hugged her extra long and asked her back to her house for tea, an herbal concoction Dawn's grandmother mixed that would practical y knock her out, of course she said yes.

"You keep your place shipshape," she told Dawn when they'd settled in her living room, side by side on the couch, mugs and teapot on a low bamboo coffee table before them. From a big boom box on the entertainment center came soft, bouncy electronic music.

"It's easy when the place is too big for me-and I don't have six kittens turning it upside down and shedding everywhere," Dawn said with a gentle smile, then added, "You have your work cut out for you. I should adopt some animals, but I'm away al day." She poured the tea for Jefferson. "Inhaling the steam makes my eyelids heavy."

Jefferson inhaled. It was probably only taking more oxygen in that did it, but she was able to reply, "Yes. Yes," she repeated, breathing again, "it's like taking a Xanax."

"Do you?" Dawn asked, slipping a new-age CD into the player.

"Do I what?"

"Take tranquilizers."

She nodded. "My life's been so ful of changes. And now that I don't drink... Wel , I started using liquor so early I never learned how to calm myself because I always had my liquid tranq."

Dawn touched her hand. "You've had a tough time."

Something-maybe because of the tea, maybe the aftereffects of her adrenaline spike-had changed radical y. No longer was she two streets over from Sat.u.r.day Lake, in a plain, spa.r.s.ely furnished ranch house in a little cul de sac cut out of the New Hampshire woods, but she was in a softer world, where hints of a design emerged. A framed picture here and there, of birds, fantastic, long-tailed, crested birds; a piece of woven art, also depicting birds; an unusual orange lampshade and a warm brown carpet; several daffodil yel ow pil ows, including two very large pil ows on the floor-al were knitted into a sheer weightless fabric around her. Dawn was stroking her hand. She was in a safe place with a safe woman whose eyes were tender and whose hands were hot.

At the same time, guilt was tearing her up. How could she be so happy in Dawn's company when Ginger was dead? What was she stealing from Dawn, when they were together, by thinking so much about Ginger? When she added guilt about Shannon, her serenity threatened to flee.

So she reached out to Dawn, to hold her and to be held after the events of the afternoon, but their cheeks touched, Dawn's softer than she might have imagined had she ever tried to imagine it, with little hairs that brushed along the hairs on her own cheek.

A cloud of desire enveloped them, like fog rushing off the lake, exotic as the sea, and they, to Jefferson's pleased surprise, were kissing. Oh, such hungry little kisses Dawn gave her, unusual in their brevity and light quick touches. She couldn't get hold of Dawn, like the woman was a little Yankee sprite in the fog.

Through the fog and her struggle to stil Dawn, to get serious, as she thought of it, about what they were doing, appeared a memory of Shannon's face, tight with muteness, trying so hard not to blurt what she felt about Dawn, how she feared Jefferson's handsome looks, how desperate she was for this woman now taking comfort in Jefferson's arms, in arms that right now sought only the warm animal closeness of a desiring woman, Dawn or not.

"I'm sorry to be shaking." Dawn flopped against the back of the couch. "It's been a long time." She straightened Jefferson's col ar and smoothed it down.

"For me too," she said, although it felt so natural to move into this s.p.a.ce with a woman, with such an appealing woman, as she'd been swimming in Sat.u.r.day Lake al her life, dipping in, out, stroking, diving, so she felt held up by the buoyancy of her love for al of them, for Dawn, Ginger, Lily Ann-they were one endless lake and she a was a lone long-distance swimmer, immersed in them.

Or was she only skinny-dipping into love with this tomboy femme librarian? Ah, she thought, my first librarian, then erased the thought. She would not be a col ector of encounters anymore. She hadn't meant this to happen, never intended to be lovers with quiet Dawn. Her habitual attention to femmes made Dawn seem available and interested whether she was or not, and then she couldn't say no when they thought they were responding to her overtures. She could never say to them that it was very simple: she loved women. She loved the chal enge and the acquiescence of them, the touching and the entry to their protected places.

The moment was what she treasured: the moment laughter turned to recognition, the moment a hug got serious, the moment friendship spil ed into desire, the moment yearning was released, the moment tenderness flamed to pa.s.sion. Above al , she admitted to herself, they loved her. For that moment, or for years, they imagined something loveable about her. Weren't lovers al figments of one another's imaginations? Each thought the other had something she wanted. With time, they saw how they had enhanced their simply human lovers and what remained. Ginger had obviously been disappointed, although Ginger, for Jefferson, had always retained her appeal. How did Dawn see her? How long would her interest last? There would be no love-her-and-leave her solution here at the lake. What was she getting herself into?

Dawn said, "It's because of Shannon."

"Do you mean the shock is messing with our emotions?" Jefferson asked.

"Not that." Dawn was playing with the hair that had grown too long down the back of Jefferson's neck.

Jefferson realized it felt good to be touched again.

"Shannon's been so-there-al the time. As soon as I think of being with someone, it's as if I'm being unfaithful to Shannon, as if she's my lover. I want you to know that she is not and never has been. I have brought her home and fed her, found her cottage for her, listened to her troubles endlessly."

Dawn turned her eyes up to Jefferson's. "Oh, but I've had my eyes on you since that first church supper. And your hands. Such strong, lesbian hands."

Dawn used one finger to stroke with the conscious sensitivity she might use to outline a wild bird's body.

"And you're moving to Concord to escape Shannon?"

"Maybe I was," Dawn said, with a timorous voice. Her tone became animated. "Am I moving? Now?" Dawn gave Jefferson another of her quick kisses.

Jefferson wanted to object that Dawn shouldn't stay around for her, that she wasn't a U-Haul kind of woman, that she might only be running away from her grief, but the kisses were making her nuts so she slid her arms around Dawn's rib cage-so narrow it made her feel protective and Dawn fragile -and pressed herself to her, locking their lips, not hard, but steady, varying the pressure delicately, as she liked to, committing herself and Dawn to what they could give each other.

Dawn pul ed away. "I don't do this with just anyone."

A little ashamed, she realized, I do. With just about anyone who wants me. She thought of Dawn's first girlfriend in her unkempt home with her stream of needy married women. She could see the attraction for the women: the forbidden, the other side, the eroticism of the uberbutch in her splendid, sordid isolation. Would she become a monied version of her if she didn't get things right this time? The thought was as dismal as the butch's trailer. That was no way to get love. She didn't want to think about how close it was to her way.

"I'm not just looking for some fun." It was clear that Dawn expected from Jefferson a declaration similar to her own. "I don't know what I'm looking for."

She touched Dawn's shoulders with the hands she'd been told were competent, confident, persuasive hands, her tools of seduction.

Dawn hadn't struck her as one of those women who needed to process her way into bed. She added, "Except you," and kissed Dawn's neck, just behind the earlobe.

Dawn, hot to the touch, fingers rhythmical y kneading Jefferson's upper arms as if to restrain herself, told her, "You're claiming me."

She was taken aback: this little terrier sank her teeth in. d.a.m.n. Did she want this? Wasn't she thinking just the other day how much easier life was now that she needn't worry about anyone but herself and the kittens? Why put herself at risk for more pain?

She remembered the hurt. If Ginger had only stayed with her a few more months, the pain would have been simpler, cleaner. Death happened, it was not a choice; but when a woman left a woman for a man-that was 3-D rejection. Whatever the circ.u.mstances, she didn't plan to go through it again.

Dawn returned with two bottles of Poland Spring water. "You haven't left," said Dawn, setting down the water.

"No, but let's go the slow route. I need to be sure." Why was she hesitating? It must be some sign of maturity in herself that she could even appreciate and al ow a woman like this in her life. Dawn wasn't one of her bad girls, or a woman with love stuck in her craw, choking on it rather than letting it out.

Dawn dug her fingers into her shoulders and ma.s.saged so deeply it hurt where she hadn't known she was tense. Dawn kissed her on the forehead and stroked her hair. "I would never leave a woman for a man, Jefferson. You wouldn't have to be scared of that. I'm lesbian to the bone."

She tensed. "I meant that I need to be sure of me."

"These muscles are rock, Jefferson. Let it go."

She did then, letting her shoulders sag, her neck bow forward to Dawn's wise fingers and words.

"Jefferson, I've fal en in love with you. No, I fel for you the first time I saw you. You're what's missing in me. I want to be yours in every way there is. Wil you let me?"

She wasn't dreaming, was she? How had she gotten so nuts about this woman?