"The point is he's your son," Bonnie said.

The sound that escaped Rod's mouth was halfway between a laugh and a cry. It chipped at the air like a shovel through ice.

"Maybe it wasn't Sam," Bonnie offered weakly, sitting up and drawing her knees toward her chest. "Maybe it was Haze. Maybe he dragged Sam into all this...." She stopped. Was she trying to convince her husband or herself? "I just can't believe that Sam is a killer," she continued after several seconds. "I've spent a lot of time with him these last weeks, and I just can't believe he'd do something like this. He's a gentle boy, Rod. He's unhappy and he's lonely, but he's not a psychopath. He couldn't murder his mother. He couldn't hurt Diana."

Rod flipped over onto his other side, burying his face into his pillow, not quite m.u.f.fling the sobs that twisted through his throat. Bonnie watched the trembling of his back, the spasmodic jerkings of his shoulders. She wanted to throw her body over his, to warm and protect him, like a child's security blanket. "Everything will be all right," she wanted to tell him, as Lauren had told him the night before. And yet, something stopped her. An invisible hand kept her an arm's length away, pushing her back into her own little corner, not letting her connect with her husband. What was stopping her? she wondered. What was keeping her from comforting the man she loved?

"It'll be all right, Rod," she said, but the words sounded hollow, even to her own ears.

Rod continued crying softly.

Was he crying for his son or himself? Bonnie wondered. Maybe for both of them. For the relationship they'd never had; for the relationship they would probably never have now. It was too late, too late to play the doting parent, too late to make up for all the lost years, too late to cement the parent-child bonds that had never been properly set in the first place.

Or maybe not, Bonnie realized, thoughts drifting closer to home, understanding that the need for a father was something a child never really outgrew. Maybe there was no such thing as too late for a father to reach out to his child.

Bonnie watched her husband's shoulders shudder to a halt. Was the enormity of all that had happened just now sinking in? That his child could have murdered his mother? That he could have raped and killed a woman who'd tried to befriend him? Certainly, Rod would waste no tears over Joan, a woman he'd despised, or Diana, a woman he'd barely tolerated. So why such bitter tears?

"Rod...."

He sat up, wiped the tears from his face with the back of his hand. When he turned to her, his brown eyes seemed more opaque than ever before, like the very bottom of a mud-filled river.

"What is it?" she asked.

He shook his head, as if to shake loose whatever unwanted thoughts had settled there.

"Rod, please tell me."

"The police will be conducting tests," he said, as if he were taking part in a different conversation altogether.

"What do you mean?"

"Blood samples, sperm samples," he continued in the now-familiar monotone. "For their DNA tests."

"Yes," Bonnie said, not sure where Rod was going with this.

"It's over," he said. "Everything's over."

"Rod, what are you talking about?"

There was a long pause.

"Sam didn't rape Diana," Rod said finally. "Neither did Haze."

"What?"

"The sperm they'll find in Diana's body, it's not Sam's," he repeated.

Bonnie found herself inching off the bed, backing toward the wall, though she could scarcely feel her feet on the carpet. "What are you saying?"

"I think you know," he told her.

Bonnie tried for several seconds to find her voice, was finally able to croak out a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "You're saying the sperm is yours?"

Rod said nothing.

"You're saying that you killed her?" Bonnie looked toward the doorway, silently measuring how many steps she'd need to the door.

"No!" Rod said adamantly, snapping out of his lethargy. "Although that's what the police will think, that's for d.a.m.n sure. They can't wait to get their hands on me." He laughed, a strangled sound that punctured the air like a nail going into a balloon.

"I don't understand."

"I didn't kill Diana, for G.o.d's sake. I could never do anything to hurt her." Rod's face contorted with undisguised pain. "I loved her," he whispered, burying his face in his hands so that his words were m.u.f.fled. "I loved her," he repeated, the words now as clear, and as cold, as a mountain stream.

"You loved Diana," Bonnie said, and waited for Rod to continue, but he said nothing further, just stared at her with those opaque, bottomless eyes. "How long...?"

"About a year."

"All those nights you were working late, all those early-morning meetings...."

Rod nodded, recognizing there was no need to say the words.

"But you never liked Diana," Bonnie protested weakly, feeling as if the floor beneath her feet had vanished, as if she were standing in the middle of a vast void, and it was only a question of time before she was sucked into its center, before whatever was left of her disappeared altogether.

"It just happened, Bonnie." Rod lifted one hand in the air, let it float aimlessly about for several seconds, then drop to his side.

What could he say after all? That they never meant for it to go this far? That they never meant to hurt her?

"She didn't go to New York," Bonnie said. "She was with you in Florida."

Rod nodded.

"She was standing right beside you when I told you I'd been to see Dr. Kline, and I said Diana had recommended him."

"She said she never heard of him."

"That's how you knew that her doctor's name was Gizmondi, because she told you."

"It was so unlike you to lie. We thought you might have gotten suspicious and were trying to trap us."

Bonnie lowered her head, thinking of her misguided suspicions. "I thought it was Marla you were having an affair with."

"Marla?"

Rod actually managed to look offended by the suggestion. Bonnie almost laughed. It was all starting to make sense, she thought, gathering all the pieces of the puzzle together, pushing them into their designated slots.

"The lingerie I found in your bottom drawer, that wasn't for me," she stated, slipping into Caroline Gossett's habit of stating all her questions. "It was for Diana." She pictured her former friend, luxuriant dark hair resting atop high ample b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "No wonder the bra size was too big." She remembered the conversation she'd had with Diana right after finding the s.e.xy undergarments in the bottom of Rod's dresser drawers. Obviously Diana had called Rod immediately afterward, informed him of his wife's untimely discovery, sent Rod home with instructions to be extra loving and attentive.

"So, you've been sleeping with Diana for almost a year," Bonnie began. "The times the three of us were together, the times you supposedly put up with her for my sake, you were actually putting up with me. That time in the police station when you were so angry about finding her there, you weren't angry at her at all. You were angry at me. Because I dragged you away from your little tryst. Isn't that so? Isn't that the reason I couldn't locate either one of you? Isn't that the reason you didn't have an alibi for the time of Joan's death? Because you were out f.u.c.king my best friend!"

"Bonnie...."

"The whole time I was sick, you were with her," Bonnie said wondrously. Could she really have been so stupid? Was she such a pitiful cliche? The wife who's the last to know? "Even after you came back from Florida, you were with her."

"We flew back together, I dropped her off, then came straight home," he volunteered, the words spilling from his mouth, almost as if he were eager to finally be able to talk to her about it.

Perhaps he was eager, she thought, listening helplessly, wanting to tell him to shut up, but unable to do so. He was making her an accomplice, she thought uneasily. "So, you came home, checked in on me for a few minutes, then put me to bed like a good little girl and went back out to play."

"You make it sound so callous. It wasn't like that."

"Wasn't it?"

"It wasn't meant to be."

"So you were there when Sam and Lauren showed up to finish wallpapering the bathroom," she stated, picturing the scene, wondering whether she would have found it amusing had it happened to somebody else.

"I told them I'd flown back early and stopped in at Diana's to find out how you really were, if there was something you weren't telling me. They seemed to buy it...." His voice drifted off, as if suddenly cognizant of the fact that he should at least have the decency to be embarra.s.sed by these revelations.

"And then you came home and found out your wife had flown the proverbial coop."

"I was frantic. I didn't know where the h.e.l.l you'd disappeared."

"How thoughtless of me," Bonnie said.

"I didn't mean...."

"So, you went back to Diana's. You must have been very relieved when I phoned."

"We didn't know what was going on."

"So, of course, you had to comfort each other."

"I didn't stay the night," Rod said.

"But you did make love."

A minute's silence before stating the obvious. "Yes."

"And then you left."

"I came home."

"What time was that?"

"Around midnight."

"And the next thing you knew, Diana was dead, shot through the heart just like Joan, in all probability by the same gun, undoubtedly by the very same hand. But, of course, you had nothing to do with either killing. Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

"I didn't kill them, Bonnie. I swear I didn't. You have to believe me. I'm devastated by Diana's death."

"The reason you're so d.a.m.n devastated has nothing to do with the fact that Diana is dead," Bonnie snapped, "and everything to do with the fact that you were stupid enough to leave your sperm in her body. Isn't that true? Your tears have nothing to do with Diana, or even your son. They're all about you. Tell me, Rod, have you ever cared about anyone other than yourself?"

He regarded her plaintively. "I care about you," he said, holding out his arms.

Bonnie approached him slowly, drawn by the power of his need into a tight embrace. She felt the warmth of his arms as they snaked around her body, the softness of his cheeks as they pressed against her own. How she'd always loved the feeling of being in his arms.

She pulled back slowly, stared into his unfathomably deep brown eyes. Except that they weren't so deep after all, she realized, gently extricating herself from his grip. They were surprisingly, disappointingly, dangerously, shallow.

"What are you doing?" he asked as Bonnie walked to the phone beside the bed and pressed the appropriate numbers into the receiver.

"This is Bonnie Wheeler," she said. "I need to get in touch with Captain Mahoney immediately. Yes," she told the police operator, watching as her husband collapsed back on the bed, burying his head in his hands, "I can wait."

"Where did my father go?" Lauren asked, coming into the kitchen, Amanda at her side.

Bonnie was sitting at the kitchen table staring at Amanda's painting of people with boxlike heads. She turned around slowly, smiling at Rod's two daughters, all red and blond curls, one face echoing the other. Sugar and spice and everything nice. That's what little girls are made of, she thought. "He had to go down to the police station."

"That was hours ago," Lauren said. "Shouldn't he be back by now?"

Bonnie checked her watch. It was almost eleven A.M. "I guess the police had a lot of questions to ask him."

"What about Sam?"

"He and Haze are at the station." Bonnie checked her watch again, although only a few seconds had pa.s.sed. She hadn't heard from either Nick or the police in several hours. No doubt, there was simply nothing new to tell her at this point. Her husband, his son, and his son's friend were all being questioned. Everyone had been informed of his rights. Mirandized, she remembered Diana saying. Lawyers had been summoned. Hopefully, she would hear something soon.

"I want to go to the park," Amanda said, bouncing up and down without moving her feet.

"I can't go to the park now, sweetie," Bonnie told her.

"Why?"

"I can take her," Lauren volunteered. "I wouldn't mind getting some fresh air."

"I don't know," Bonnie said, not sure if it was a good idea for them to go anywhere until after the police called.

"Please," Amanda pleaded.

Bonnie wondered why she was hesitating. The police had all the major suspects in the murders down at the station. Was she waiting for a call to tell her that the killer had confessed? Did she really consider that a possibility? She wasn't even sure the police would lay any charges. Could she really keep her daughter cooped up indefinitely? "I guess you can go," she said finally, understanding Lauren's need for air.

"Hooray." This time when Amanda jumped up and down, her feet moved with her.

"Let me get my purse," Lauren said, chasing Amanda out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

The phone rang.

"h.e.l.lo," Bonnie said, picking it up almost instantly.

"Bonnie, it's Josh. How are you?"

"Josh?"