"Excuse me?" she said. Her voice retained some of the authority of the elementary school teacher she'd been before her retirement. "Excuse me, sir?"

He kept his back to her, kept shoveling, kept inching backward.

He heard the door creak open wider.

"Excuse me, sir," she said. "I appreciate your shoveling off my walkway, but do I know you?"

Only a couple of feet from the porch, he spun around.

Aunt Betty stood in the doorway, bifocals perched on the edge of her nose. She wore a white sweatshirt and matching pants and held a coffee mug.

When she saw his face, the cup slipped out of her fingers and shattered on the porch steps.

"I'm a little offended, Aunt Betty," he said. "How could you ever forget me?"

"Dexter . . ." Terror had knocked her breathless.

"Long time no see, bitch," he said, and slammed the shovel blade against her head.

Chapter 11.

At Belle Coiffure, Rachel was cutting a client's hair when a sharp pain burst in her head, as if she'd been bludgeoned.

Her client was a regal, forty-something black woman named Maxine. Maxine was a principal at a high school in College Park, and she had a standing weekly appointment with Rachel to get her hair washed and styled, or trimmed.

Rachel had been Maxine's stylist for over a year, and they had developed an easy, though superficial, camaraderie. That afternoon, they were discussing holiday plans-or rather, Maxine was discussing her plans for the holidays. Rachel kept her own business private, an ingrained habit, but she listened closely and asked good questions.

Although Rachel's listening skills made her a client favorite, she had difficulty following Maxine's stated worries about planning Christmas dinner for her extended family. Rachel was consumed by her own troubles: worry about her ever-growing number of lies to Joshua, natural worry about her pregnancy.

Most of all, worry about him-the man from her past whom she refused to think of by name, as if doing so would conjure him out of the atmosphere like an evil spirit.

Surfing the Web late last night, she'd confirmed his recent release from prison in Illinois. It didn't require psychic talent to predict that he would be looking for her.

He blamed her, after all, for his incarceration.

Although she'd heard that some people who went to prison learned forgiveness, he did not possess a heart that had the capacity for such an emotion. Actually, she was convinced that he didn't possess a heart at all. He was as cold and soulless as an android in a sci-fi movie: a machine that mimicked humanity, but didn't hold genuine feelings for anyone.

Except to hurt them.

"-and I was hoping you could give me your recipe before I leave today," Maxine said.

"Recipe?" Rachel lowered her scissors. She'd missed Maxine's last few sentences. "Recipe for what?"

There was a wall-length mirror in front of them. Maxine frowned at Rachel's reflection in the glass. "For your pound cake, girl. Of course."

"Right." Rachel laughed. "Sure, I can-"

Then the pain hit. Like a mallet cracking against her skull.

Rachel gasped. Her scissors popped out of her fingers and clattered to the floor.

Maxine twisted around in the styling chair to look at her. "Are you okay?"

The salon had fallen silent. Every stylist and client looked at Rachel, alarmed.

Rachel felt the area of her head where the pain had erupted. She glanced at her fingers, expecting to see blood. But there was none.

It's not me. It's Aunt Betty.

The knowledge rose in her, and she knew it was accurate. She been exposed to such phenomena her entire life and had learned to accept it without question.

In seconds, the ache passed, but it left behind questions. Was the pain a premonition of something soon to befall her aunt? Or had Rachel experienced the pain in real-time?

She wasn't sure, but of one thing she was certain: he was responsible.

"Rachel?" Tanisha came to her side. She touched Rachel's arm. "What's wrong?"

"I'm sorry. I need to go in the back. Can you get someone to finish Maxine's cut?" She glanced at Maxine, who stared at her, concerned. "I hope you don't mind, Maxine, and I promise to get that pound cake recipe to you soon."

"I'll take care of it," Tanisha said. "You sure you're okay?"

"Migraine," Rachel said. "Hit me all of a sudden. I'm going to take an Advil and lie down for a little while."

Although Tanisha frowned, clearly disbelieving her story, she didn't question Rachel further. Rachel made a beeline to the back office and shut the door, locked it.

Hugging herself, she sat at her desk. Stared at the telephone.

One of the rules of running away and starting a new life was simple: never contact the loved ones you'd left behind, except under the most carefully controlled conditions. For three long, lonely years, Rachel had managed to abide by that critical rule.

She'd last spoken to Aunt Betty earlier that year, on her aunt's seventieth birthday. She'd phoned her aunt with a calling card she'd had one of her stylists purchase while on vacation in Orlando. Rachel had used the card only once, and then she'd cut it up. Being super careful had become a way of life.

But she didn't have time to take those extreme precautions. Her aunt was-or soon would be-in grave danger, and every second was crucial.

She closed her eyes and whispered a prayer. Then she reached for the phone.

Chapter 12.

The office of Rachel's OB-GYN was located in College Park, just off Old National Highway. Joshua's parents lived less than ten minutes away, so he decided to visit them before he met Rachel for her two o'clock appointment.

His growing awareness of her deception simmered in the back of his mind. He wanted to do something about it-but he wasn't quite sure what he could do without creating a more troublesome situation.

Old National Highway, the city's main drag, was a winding, four-lane road of strip malls, fast-food joints, nightclubs, pawn shops, currency exchanges, barber shops, hair salons, and liquor stores. The dome of a mega-church rose in the distance, resembling a pro sports arena.

Farther along the highway, retail gave way to residential development. Builders had recently discovered the area and were busy erecting the same sprawl of cookie-cutter subdivisions that consumed much of metro Atlanta.

Joshua's parents lived in an older section of town, in a neighborhood of Craftsman bungalows, ranches, and old Victorians. Oaks, elms, and maples stretched bare branches into the cloudy afternoon sky.

He parked in the driveway of their ranch house. Although it was mid-day, his parents were retired, and usually home.

The garage door was open, so he went in via that way. His father had his head stuck under the hood of a yellow Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight that looked as if it hadn't burned gas in a decade.

"Hey, Dad," Joshua said.

His father slid from under the hood like a man extricating himself from the maw of a whale. With skin the color of aged oak, he was a small, compact man, standing about five-six; Joshua had inherited his size from his mother's branch of the family.

A dirty cotton towel peeked from a pocket of his dad's jumpsuit, and he grabbed it and wiped off his hands. He had used to work as a mechanic at the local Ford plant before it closed, and though he had retired four years ago, he wore the oil-stained gray jumpsuit almost every day. It was a family joke that he would be buried in the uniform.

"What you know good, boy?" Dad asked in his gruff voice. A toothpick dangled from the corner of his mouth, dipping up and down when he spoke.

"I was in the area and wanted to stop by to say hello."

Dad grunted, used the same soiled towel to blot sweat off his face. He nodded at Joshua's Ford Explorer, brown eyes shining. "How that truck holdin' up? 'Bout time for an oil change, ain't it?"

Joshua visited his parents every couple of weeks, and every time he saw them, his dad suggested that it was time for an oil change. The mechanic in his father couldn't resist the compulsion to fix every car he encountered; Joshua was certain that the Oldsmobile his father was currently diagnosing belonged to someone in the neighborhood.

"I'll bring it by soon for you to work on," Joshua said.

Dad grunted, and his eyes dimmed. "Mama's inside," he said, turning back to the car.

It was an ordinary exchange with his father. Beyond the subject of automobiles, they never had much to talk about.

Joshua went inside the kitchen. A gigantic pot seethed on the stove, filling the house with the delicious aromas of chicken, broth, dumplings, and vegetables.

Curious, Joshua lifted the lid off the pot-and hissed when the heat stung his fingers. The lid slipped out of his grasp and clanged onto the floor.

"That must be my baby in there," Mom said, coming around the corner. "Clumsy as ever."

"Hi, Mom." Joshua kissed her on the cheek, which required him to barely bend at all. His mother was a shade less than six feet, her body as thick as a tree trunk. Gray-haired, she wore a shapeless blue house dress, an apron, and threadbare slippers. A pair of reading glasses suspended from a lanyard rested on her broad bosom.

Without the glasses, though, her dark eyes were as sharp as ever. They cut into Joshua with the precision of surgical scalpels, and he felt himself weakening under her gaze, swiftly regressing in age from thirty-two-to twelve.

"Pick that lid up off the floor, boy," she said. "And don't be a dummy-use a mitt this time."

Obediently, Joshua grabbed the oven mitt off the counter and used it to pluck the lid off the tile.

"Wash it off 'fore you put it back on my pot."

Joshua took the lid to the sink, rinsed it with cold water, and then carefully placed it over the pot.

"Come in my kitchen snoopin' and messin' up," Mom said. "Shoot, if you kept in touch with me like a good son should, you'd know I was cookin' chicken and dumplins. Sit down."

Joshua sat at the end of the kitchen table. Mom shuffled to the stove, lifted the lid off the pot, and stirred the soup with a big spoon.

"I was in the area and wanted to stop by to say hi," he said.

"Wanted to stop by to say hi? Like we just acquaintances or somethin'. You ain't been by here in a month."

"It hasn't been that long, Mom. I visited last week."

"Maybe you did. But I ain't seen that heifer you married since Thanksgiving. That's plain disrespectful. You come to see us, but she can't?"

Normally, Joshua defended Rachel whenever his mom started dogging her out. Today, though, full of his own doubts about his wife, he couldn't summon the will to speak up for her.

"Wouldn't trust that heifer as far as I could throw her," Mom said, hands on her wide hips. "What kinda wife talks her husband into quittin' a good job so he could go out there and be unemployed and strugglin'?"

Mom had been against Joshua leaving his job to start his business. Although he was earning more money and was happier being his own boss, in his mother's mind, he was jobless and broke. She blamed Rachel for it, of course.

It was another point that Joshua typically disputed. But he kept quiet.

"She ain't an honorable woman," Mom said.

"Why do you say that?"

"She just ain't. I feels it right here." Mom touched her breast. "But you ain't listen to what I think, oh no. Mama done lived sixty-some years but don't know nothin'!"

Joshua was quiet. Eventually, her tirade would run its course.

She ladled some soup into a bowl and plinked a spoon inside. "Come here and take this."

Joshua got up, took the bowl, and returned to the table.

"Blow on it, first, boy, that's hot," she said.

He blew on a spoonful, and then tasted it. "It's delicious, Mom."

Mom nodded, and shuffled to the garage door. She opened it and yelled at his father: "Earl, get from up under that car and come in here and eat!"

Shaking his head, Joshua swallowed another spoonful of soup. Mom usually had to yell at his father three or four times before his father gave up the joys of automobiles for the company of his family. Theirs was an odd marriage, seemingly devoid of tenderness, but his parents had been together for thirty-five years, a milestone that few members of Joshua's generation would ever reach.

Although if he was trapped in a marriage like the ones his parents had-who would want to stay?

Mom poured a glass of sweet tea and plopped it on the table. "Drink that."

He took a sip. "Wow, that's really sweet."

"That's how I always make it, boy. You done forgot? What that heifer been givin' you to drink-wine?"