"Anything to eat in this joint?" asked Grady, tearing off for the kitchen.

Mary rushed after her. "What are you hungry for?"

Grady turned her head, a quizzical expression on her face. "Why are you so nervous?"

Mary stopped. "I'm not. I'm trying to show you around."

"No, you're not. You're nervous." They stared at each other. "Are you embarra.s.sed of me? Afraid your mother might smell the trailer park?"

"No, I-"

"I might smell the home owner's a.s.sociation on her. It's combustible."

"No, it's not that-"

"Yes it is, and it's fine. I'm here for you, and I'm here for me. I needed to get away from a lot of s.h.i.t."

Mary nodded.

"Don't you get it?"

She shook her head.

"I'm never going back, never gonna speak to them again."

"Grady, you don't have to do that. Are you sure you-"

"I've needed this for-" said Grady, pausing, her eyes filled with memory. "A long, long time."

Mary reached out, rubbed Grady's arm. Grady put her arm around her, and they walked, like lovers or old friends, into the kitchen. The pantry was full. There was macaroni and cheese, tuna, spaghetti, cans of chili. And chips, lots and lots of chips. Mary had never realized that her diet, when she ate at all, was junk.

They cooked two boxes of macaroni and cheese. Mary topped the pasta with cheese and a load of hot sauce, per Grady's request, and her friend loved it, shoveled heaping spoonfuls into her mouth. Mary thought then that she loved her, this rough girl from some world she would probably never even visit, much less understand.

They were at the kitchen table when the front door opened. Freddie entered first, and Mary was taken aback: Her mother's eyes were puffy, baggy underneath, and a sharp foundation line ran beneath her jaw. Freddie smiled wanly, carefully, as if her face might crack. "Oh, you're back," she said, dumped her purse on the kitchen island, then picked up a stack of mail and thumbed through it, taking hesitant steps.

"Mom?" asked Mary, rising.

Freddie stopped short of her daughter, who had opened her arms, and Mary blinked, rocking back on her heels. They shared a silence and Grady watched, still seated at the table. "This is Grady, Mom," Mary said, pointing over but not looking.

Freddie nodded. "Gathered that," she said, then lowered her eyes, her voice, clenched her fists by her jeans and growled, "Mary, how could you do this to-"

"To who, Mom?"

"Us, you, the whole family!" shouted Freddie.

"That's my mom, worried about her reputation," said Mary to Grady, who shrugged, looked away, fiddled with the plastic table mat.

While Mary's face was turned Freddie smacked her. "Don't you make light of this!" she screamed.

Mary stumbled back, touched the quickly reddening hand print and blinked back the tears.

Grady surprised them both. She smashed her fist on the table so hard all the silverware jumped. Then she stepped between them, pressed two fingers into Freddie's chest, and pushed. Hard. Freddie stumbled back into the kitchen's island, her eyes wider than before. "How dare you-" she began, but Grady stepped forward like a warrior, her face red, her hand raised. "Try me, b.i.t.c.h," she said, and Freddie shut her mouth, stood there motionless, leaned back on the counter as if to rest.

And that's when George strolled in, holding a six pack of Heineken keg-cans. "What in all of h.e.l.l?" He set the cans on the counter behind Freddie, joined her. "Are you Grady?"

"d.a.m.n straight, I'm-"

"Sit down, please," he said, staring right into her furious eyes.

Grady eyed him a moment, then sat, crossing her arms.

George glanced at Mary, who was still rubbing her cheek, then back at his wife. "Did you hit her?"

"George, you don't-"

"Take a seat and shut up," he said. Freddie did as she was told. "You too, Mary."

When they were all seated, George stood at the head of the table, his knuckles set on the wood-grain. "Listen, I do not care what happened, only that it doesn't happen again. If any one of you touches another, you will all be out of a place to stay," he said, straightening up. "I'm talking to you too, honey," he said, then smiled broadly, as if the incident was all but forgotten. "Grady, I apologize you were greeted in this way. Welcome to our home," he said. "I hope you don't mind sharing a room with Mary."

"No, not at all," Grady said respectfully.

"You two hungry?"

The girls shook their heads. Freddie turned, stared out the sliding gla.s.s door into the backyard.

"Call it a night, then. There's a television in your room."

They walked across the house, Mary listening to her father chide her mother, she and Grady sharing looks.

3.

Robert forgot all about his mother's diary until the following morning. His hip felt better, and his eyesight was clear. He put the last volume in his briefcase, saw Jenn to her bus, and drove to school. He taught his courses on autopilot, not listening to himself, not remembering a word he'd said.

At lunchtime, he skipped the cafeteria line, headed straight to a table near the back, and opened the book. As they had before, the pa.s.sages struck him as decreasing in lucidity. His mother had been a woman of intelligence but little schooling, a cynical autodidact, and as her condition had grown worse she had struggled to make sense of it all. All her life she'd believed in magic, but as the tumor grew, she harkened back to the stories she'd told in the earlier volumes-the tales of an ancient lineage of witches, their bloodline barely intact. Instead of retelling old stories, though, she spoke of this bloodline's history-how anyone who'd ever had an extrasensory gift had undoubtedly been one of them. It struck Robert as even stranger than the earlier tales-which he'd taken merely as a mythology of her early childhood-because she was naming names and listing dates.

Perhaps he'd been wrong about her mind. But what did it all mean? Exactly how was she cloaking the facts with these tales? Well, s.h.i.t, he thought. Maybe she really did go apes.h.i.t.

He let his next cla.s.s out early. Before descending the steps to the parking lot, he glanced over the balcony wall. The man wasn't down there. Only kids cluttered the courtyard. Some were studying quietly on the gra.s.s, sitting Indian-style, hunched over thick books. A girl lay belly-down, kicking her legs, scanning a text with her index finger. A group of artists sat around a large pine tree. Its shadow stretched over them.

Robert didn't remember much of his own college career. Two years into it, he'd made the decision to teach; at the time, he'd thought he wanted to because campus life was so exhilarating with fresh ideas and new minds. Now, watching the bright courtyard house the next generation of dreamers and burnouts, a nameless feeling returned. During college, he'd gravitated toward artists and intellectuals. Future bureaucrats galled him, and now he understood why. He admired those who possessed true courage, envied their drive and ambition, needed to be around their pa.s.sion. In turn, he loathed and spurned those flawed like him. Looking over the courtyard, he longed to yell out, to tell them not to be afraid.

Later, he pulled behind Dan's Chevy. Dan took his cigarette from his lips. His eyes widened. "You look like c.r.a.p."

"Got in a fight with G.o.d."

"Pity, seeing how you don't believe in Him."

He sat beside Dan, lifted the pack of Camel's from Dan's thigh, plucked out a cigarette, positioning it between his lips. Twenty years ago, he'd taken a single puff from a Lucky Strike.

Dan surveyed him, then slapped a match across the book's scratch, lighting the cigarette; then he waved the match into smoke. "When the h.e.l.l did you get a life?"

"Dying tends to focus a guy."

Instead of the surprise Robert had antic.i.p.ated, Dan's face registered nothing.

He took a drag, exhaling without so much as a cough. "Cancer."

Dan leaned over. "Christ."

"He's got zero to do with it. Dumb luck is the only G.o.d I know, and she's a real c.u.n.t."

"You're wrong."

"I hope so," Robert said.

"I don't know if we can understand the Divine, but it works mysteriously."

"I don't read you."

"You didn't get hit with the cancer stick, Robert. It's not dumb luck. You're just not seeing the pattern."

A minute smile spread over Dan's face at this, and Robert stared at him, nearly through him. The bookseller spread over his chair like an explosion, his face carpeted in stubble, his eyes darting over his thoughts, a cigarette slanting from his drawn lips. All this, and yet there was an air about this man, vague as the smoke disintegrating around him, of sorcery. "It's not for a lack of looking, I'll tell you."

"Anything out of the ordinary going on? I mean besides being ill."

Robert thought of the scales, his regained sight, the Charles Manson look-alike. "Plenty."

"Well, I don't believe that G.o.d, or the Divine, or whatever it is that comprises the universe has a plan for humanity, but I do subscribe to the order of the strange. Sooner or later, things will add up."

"No, they won't," said Robert, pausing. He thought a moment, then slowly said, "The Divine is, as it always has been, only what we cannot explain, or cannot accept."

"Exactly," grinned Dan, puffing out smoke. "Can you accept it?"

4.

Mary awoke early the next morning. She went to the kitchen, found her father up, making coffee. "Morning," he said. "Sleep okay?"

She nodded, and he watched her cross the kitchen. She couldn't read his eyes, but when she neared him he, much to her relief, opened her arms and took her in. She nestled her head under his chin, asking herself why she had been embarra.s.sed of him all those years. Her father was, and quite suddenly, not skinny, but fit from his daily walks; not geeky, but studious; his face not bony, but austere. "I love you so much, Daddy. You know that?"

"Sure, honey. Me, too," he said, rubbing her shoulder. "Your mother will come around. You're all she's got."

Mary's brow knotted; she'd wondered often, and knew she'd guessed right. "It wasn't that you didn't want another, was it? You couldn't."

Her father drew away, eyed her cautiously a moment. "Not after you came out so awkwardly. They tied her tubes out of caution."

Mary thought of her mother, wondering if she'd ever hated her little girl. Women, especially beautiful women such as her mother had been, were aged by the G.o.dlike gift. Women who reveled in their fecundity became haggard quickly; by fifty they looked shriveled and puffy all at once. Progeny was vampiric, parasitic, stealing from their hosts those quiet nine months in the abyss. It was worth it, she supposed, only if the gift remained-even if it was, in the woman's mind, only the illusory promise of option. "Sorry, Dad," she said, all the while hoping that she would never lose it. She'd always dreamed of a big family.

"You kidding? We're crazy about you."

They embraced, then her dad poured himself a cup of coffee. "Want one?" he asked with a smile, knowing her answer.

She smiled. "I still hate coffee."

"You're older now."

"I'll never be that old."

"We'll see," he said, opened the refrigerator. "Would you like some breakfast? You know, for the little one."

Mary looked away, hiding her smile. Would he be upset if he knew she was happy about it? "Yeah, why not?"

George fixed her a bowl of cereal, himself oatmeal, and they sat beside each other, ate silently for a few minutes. Then he asked what sort of girl Grady was, and why she'd brought her to Florida.

"What do you mean?" As a child, she'd often adopted stray cats. This was different, but she found herself wondering if her dad saw it that way.

"Sorry," he said, smiling timidly. "We'll get to know each other. Tell me this, though-why did she want to come?"

Mary stared at her father. "Rough life," she answered.

Chapter Nineteen: The Edge of a Dark Wood.

1.