He barked until she opened the car door and then began to bounce from front seat to back. She slid into the driver's seat and he took a long, investigative sniff at her hair. His interest and antics restored some of her humor and the rest of the drive home was a pleasure.

Rupert raced through the house, rolling on the carpet and making sure no one had peed on his favorite backyard post. Maryl carried her things inside and began getting her life back on track. There was a sadness to it, but it was comforting as well.

All of her plants needed watering and the mail needed to be dealt with. She put her camping clothes in the laundry and threw the hated sleeping bag out in the carport. She wasn't sure what she was going to do with it, but she knew she was never going to use it again. She considered taking it back to the store and having words with the clerk, but decided it wouldn't do any good. Most of the messages on her machine were from tele-marketers and the rest were from people she considered part-time friends.

When everything was in satisfactory order, Maryl ran a hot bath and eased into it with a groan of pleasure. The hot water was soothing to muscles stiff and sore from lovemaking and her heart catalogued each spot for future retrieval.

She was snuggling with Rupert on the sofa later that evening when the phone rang. She reached over her head for it without needing to look. "h.e.l.lo."

"Welcome home," Janelle's cheerful voice rang out. "How was your trip?"

After being best friends for nine years and co-workers for over four, this was the one person Maryl was most relieved to hear on the other end of the line. "Not bad. How did things go at work?"

"You don't even want to know. Besides, I didn't call about work. Are you glad you went?"

Maryl's heart broke and soared at the same time. "Very."

"From the way you talked, you didn't think you'd have a good time. They must be easier to get along with than you thought."

"Sometimes, yes. Other times, no. But all in all it went pretty well."

There was silence on the line for a long moment. "You sound kind of depressed. What's wrong?"

"I'm just very tired." It wasn't a complete lie. "I'm lying here with Rupert trying to catch up on what's been going on in the world. I think I'll skip dinner and go to bed."

"Okay. Do you want to get together tomorrow? You can show me your tan lines and bug bites and I'll tell you about Carlos."

"Who's Carlos?"

"A guy I met in the grocery store."

Maryl smiled tiredly at Janelle's naughty tone of voice. "You're not going to show up at the crack of dawn, are you?"

"On a Sunday? I'll aim for noon like always."

"Okay. See you then."

Maryl was watering the front lawn when Janelle drove up in her ancient (It's a cla.s.sic!) El Camino. She shook her head with a patient grin as it struggled to stay running even as Janelle bounced up the walk. She was starting to wonder if it intended to take itself for a drive when it choked and died with an exaggerated sigh.

"I still think that hunk of junk is sentient," Maryl said.

"It should be after all the attention I give it."

Maryl returned Janelle's hug, careful to keep the hose pointed away from her. Janelle sat down on her front steps as she dragged the hose over so she could reach the nasturtiums that grew outside her bedroom window. "So, tell me about Carlos. How did you meet?"

"Produce, of course. It's the best place because you can tell right away if they're gay or married."

"How do you figure that?"

"Gay men know how to pick ripe fruit and married men don't shop for produce."

Maryl grimaced at Janelle's matter-of-fact statement. "You do know how terribly stereotypical that is, don't you?"

"Stereotypes exist for a reason," Janelle pointed out. "Anyhow, he was trying to figure out which watermelon to buy and I helped him."

"Were you there for a reason or just cruising?"

"Both, of course! You know I never go to the store just to shop."

"Actually," Maryl admitted. "I didn't know that. So then what happened?"

"I asked him to help me pick out condoms."

Maryl flung water in Janelle's direction.

"It is his area of expertise," Janelle complained. "And it sends an important message right off the bat." She paused for effect. "That I'm available."

Maryl smiled with affection. "Tramp."

"Ouch! That hurts."

"Yeah, right. Did he call yet?"

"Of course! He's taking me to see Macy Gray next Friday."

"Lucky you!"

Janelle leaned back on her elbows with satisfaction. "He's cute, too."

"I hope it works out." Maryl turned off the water and coiled the hose neatly. She pushed at Janelle with her knee as she went inside and Janelle followed her.

"So tell me more about your trip. Did you sit around and cry all the time? Or did you have fun?"

Maryl knew it was inevitable that she would tell her friend all about Robin, but she just couldn't say it straight out. This was going to be one of those times that she needed the information drug out of her a piece at a time. "I learned to skip rocks," she offered.

"Ooh!" Janelle wiggled her fingers. "Sounds exciting."

"It was. I guess you had to be there."

"Not me," she said with relief. "It's not camping unless there's an RV and satellite television." Janelle sat down at the kitchen table. "I'm dying to know what seven lesbians do for fun when they're stranded in the wilderness. Fill me in."

"Just camping stuff," Maryl shrugged. "Swimming, hiking, talking, camp fires, roasting marshmallows, swatting bugs. The usual. One day they wove little baskets out of gra.s.s and another day they picked berries for a cobbler."

"They?" Janelle's eyes concentrated on her. "What were you doing?"

Maryl opened the refrigerator and pulled out a couple of sodas. She shook one up and slid it across the table to her friend. "I went for a walk."

"I know that look," Janelle grinned. She slipped a finger under the tab and pointed the can at Maryl. "Don't make me mess up your kitchen. You've got a secret lover and you will tell me all about it. Which one was it?"

"None." Maryl ducked and held up her hand. "I swear!"

"Then who? I thought you were going someplace isolated."

"We did."

"But?"

Maryl pulled out a chair and sat down opposite Janelle. "There was a campground a couple of miles downstream."

"No way." Janelle's eyes were huge. "So, who is she? What's she like? How did you meet? When are you going to see her again?"

Maryl wondered how long it would take to stop tearing up every time she thought about Robin.

"Hey," her friend said with concern. "Hey, what happened?"

Maryl tried to smile as she brushed a tear away. "I fell in love."

"But that's great, isn't it? How does she feel about you?"

"She loves me, too, but it will never work out."

"Why? Is she married? Dying? What?"

Maryl shook her head and stared at the soda can between her hands. "Nothing like that. She's perfect. But it would never work between us and we agreed not to see each other again. It's for the best."

"Did you sleep with her?"

Memory ambushed her with a s.h.i.+ver. "Yes."

"You just met someone camping and went to bed with her."

Maryl was uncomfortable with the way that sounded. "It wasn't like that."

"Well?" Janelle crooked her fingers as if beckoning her.

"We talked and went for walks and swam and played mostly. I've never felt so safe or relaxed with anyone before. Making love was just an extension of what we felt."

"How long did you spend with her?"

"Most of four days."

Janelle's face tightened with concentration. "If you love each other, why did you decide not to see each other again? Whose idea was it?"

Mine. "We talked about it, Janelle. We decided together."

Janelle buried her face in her hands and groaned. "Oh, Maryl. What if she was The One?"

"You don't even believe in The One, Janelle." Maryl felt the need to justify herself. "You tell me that all the time. You laugh at me for hoping. Don't start giving me a hard time because this time I got smart." Maryl was on her feet and in spite of the fact that she was crying, she felt angry. "This time, I left. And I did it when everything was good. They were the best four days of my life and she can never take them away or call them a lie or make them ugly. She let me go because she understood. Not because she doesn't love me. She does love me, d.a.m.n it! She does!"

Maryl's anger vanished and she ran to her room. She slammed the door and fell to her bed weeping. A few seconds later, Janelle crawled over her and took her in her arms. Maryl buried her face in her shoulder, grateful for a sympathetic place to express her anguish.

"You stupid little twit," Janelle soothed. "What am I going to do with you?"

"She does love me," Maryl insisted.

"I believe you. I just...never mind. Cry it all out and then you can tell me how wonderful she was."

Getting back to work helped her make the final transition from fantasy to reality. It took most of the first week back to straighten out the confusion left by her absence and Janelle ran a discreet screen for her so no one would delve too deeply into her trip. But even when she was most distracted, her body and spirit remembered Robin. She felt tired all the time and was worried at first that she was coming down with something, but she finally decided it was emotional and knew that it would pa.s.s eventually.

She was prepared for the nights to be the most difficult in terms of loneliness and despair, but to her surprise it was the mornings that were hardest. At night she would fall into bed, throw an arm over Rupert and lose consciousness almost immediately. She woke up in the mornings, however, with a feeling of excitement that withered as soon as she realized that Robin was gone forever. Crying through her shower became a new morning ritual.

She thought she had a handle on it, but 12 days after returning from the mountains, one of the doctors pulled her aside and offered to give her a physical and run some blood tests. Maryl had not been aware that her emotional distress was a visible phenomenon. She rea.s.sured him that she would be fine and he reluctantly backed off, but as a wake up call it was extremely effective. She had been ignoring Janelle's pestering about eating and when she stepped on the office scale to discover that she had lost 14 pounds, she was horrified. Looking at her face in the mirror she realized how gaunt she had become. All of her bones seemed to be more prominent and she was embarra.s.sed that she had let it come to this.

When she started eating again she began to feel better. Her evening runs with Rupert stopped being debilitating and her mind became clearer. She still missed Robin something terrible, but the memories no longer seemed to be eating her alive.

At the last minute she decided to attend group. It wasn't that she felt that she was getting a lot out of it, but just having the support available to her made her feel better. Most of the evening was devoted to a new member, Paula, whose longtime companion had recently died of pancreatic cancer. She seemed to be in shock, not quite convinced that tragedy had come knocking at her door. Maryl was glad to hear that she was also going to a therapist and had come to their group just to be around other people instead of sitting alone in her empty house.

Before the evening broke up, Kirsten fixed Maryl with a concerned stare. "You've lost weight."

"I've already gained some of it back," Maryl said easily.

"Were you sick?"

It was far easier to smudge the truth than explain. "Yes. But I'm feeling much better now."

"And emotionally?" Eva asked. "Are you sorry you left her up in the mountains?"

Maryl's heart screamed Yes! "I do miss her more than I expected," she admitted. "But I did the right thing."

Driving home afterwards, she realized that listening to someone else's bereavement had lightened some of her own. She wasn't sure whether to feel bad about gaining some peace of mind from Paula's loss or not. Considering that she had not taken any pleasure from Paula's story, she decided that she was probably pretty normal and left it at that.

The next two weeks were better. Her health improved and she stopped feeling so tired. An echo of sadness accompanied her at all times and she still woke up with the agony of loss, but she seemed to have the strength to handle it. The first time she laughed at something in the office, Janelle got tears in her eyes and hugged her.

"I've missed you," she whispered.

"Have I been that bad?"

Janelle's face was fully open to her. "Yes."

That a simple chuckle would bring such a response from her dearest friend made Maryl feel terrible.

"I've seen you pick up the pieces of your life more times than I can count," Janelle said quietly. "This is different. You're doing all the things you're supposed to do, but you..." Janelle poked at her chest. "You never came home."

Janelle went back to work and Maryl shuffled papers, unable to concentrate on anything. She felt vaguely angry, but she knew her friend was right. She had left something important on that small beach and she didn't want to admit it. I just need more time. It'll pa.s.s.

The next group meeting came and Maryl sat quietly on Eva's couch. Something seemed different and after a time she realized that it was Noreen. She seemed to be watching everyone with a secret smile. They began to keep an eye on each other and even though Maryl knew that something was about to happen, she was still surprised when Noreen spoke into a moment of silence.

"I'm not coming to group anymore. It's time for me to move on."