"Do you want coffee or not?" she asked sternly.

  "Don't much care about coffee," he said.

  She turned around and kissed him and he held her, body to body. She was soft and yielding, and his hands discovered that there were no straps or elastics underneath the frock she wore. Her own hands were pulling his shirt out of his trousers, and then they were cool as they glided over the skin of his back, up to his shoulders. They parted, but only by an inch or two. "Screw the coffee," she said. "It's too much like cooking, anyway."

  Where does this lead? thought Don. What next? He'd only slept with one woman in his life, and there had never been a love scene in the kitchen. Maybe if there had been... but that wasn't a line of thought he wanted to explore. He took her hand and led her through a swinging door into the dining room, then around into the living room. "Where are we going?" she asked. In reply, he sat down on the untouchable couch, tossed the pillows onto the floor, and pulled her down beside him.

  "Here?" she asked. He could see that she was a little annoyed.

  "Who were you saving this room for?" he asked.

  "For me," she said. "To come in and see it perfect and not have to do anything to clean it up." The annoyance was in her voice now. He tried to kiss her. She turned her face away.

  "Sorry," he said. "I just thought—"

  "You just couldn't leave a perfect room undisturbed," she said.

  "It wasn't perfect until you were in it," he said. "This couch wasn't perfect until you were sitting there." He took the hem of her frock and spread it out across the fabric of the couch, showing more of her tanned thighs, making her look as posed as a model. "The only thing wrong with the picture is me," he said. "I should be standing over there, in the entry, looking at you with longing. The unattainable beauty of Cindy Claybourne."

  She laughed, but she had to turn her face away from him. Embarrassed? He got up from the couch, walked to the entry, and stood there leaning against the front door. She really did look sweet and young and lovely. Heartbreakingly so. "Cindy, are you as sad as I am?"

  "Are you sad?" she said. "Right now?"

  "The picture's too perfect. I don't want to spoil it."

  She reached out her arms to him. "I want you to."

  He knew he should walk into the room, sit down beside her again, take that frock off her, make love to her. That's what she wanted. That's what he wanted, too. Yet he stood there, trying to make sense of the woman, of the room. How she fit with the house. Why this room had to be so perfect. Why she barely lived in her own house, cooking nothing, touching nothing. Of course that probably wasn't true upstairs. For all he knew, clothes were strewn around her bedroom and her sink was covered in half-empty bottles and tubes. And besides, what business was it of his?

  Yet for some reason he had to ask a question, one whose answer he didn't even care about, and still he had to ask. "Have you ever been married, Cindy?"

  She looked at him for a moment, then lowered her arms. "Yes."

  "Kids?" he asked.

  "Does it look like it?" she asked, sounding a little defiant.

  "Does what look like it? Your body? No."

  "What, then?"

  "This room looks like a place of refuge for someone who's sick of cleaning up after other people."

  Why had he said that? It was a stupid thing to say, precisely because he was almost certainly right. She looked away from him, her eyes filling with tears. She swung her legs up onto the couch and hugged her knees. The skirt of her frock draped away so he could see the entire curve of her naked thigh and buttocks, and he was filled with longing to hold her, to please her, to take pleasure from her. But when she lifted her face from her knees, her eyes were brimming over with tears. So when he strode to the couch and sat beside her and put his arm around her and gathered her against his shoulder, it was not to make love to her, but to comfort her. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to cause you pain."

  "You didn't cause it," she said.

  "I meant to love you," he said. "I wanted to try to love you."

  "That was your mistake. You should have settled for making love to me."

  "You do have children," he said.

  "Three." She clung tightly to him, and he could feel her convulsive sob as she began to cry in earnest.

  "What happened?" he asked, dreading the story, because he knew it would only make him think of his own loss.

  "I left them," she said. "My shrink said it was because I was a caretaker child. My father ran off with his secretary when I was eleven and from then on I was the mom of the house while my mother worked. I cooked every meal, I cleaned, I did laundry till I hated my mother for being a lazy bitch even though I knew she was working her brains out to make ends meet and I hated my sisters and my brother because they wore clothes that had to be washed and left things lying around and complained whenever I asked them to help in any way and finally I couldn't stand it anymore. If I didn't get out I'd kill somebody or maybe myself, so I married my poor husband Ray and we had three babies, pop pop pop, and there I was again, cooking and cleaning up. I realized I had only traded one house for another and I thought I'd go crazy. I loved my kids but I found myself one day holding a pillow and wanting to press it down on my baby's face so she'd just stop screaming for a half-hour so I could get some rest. Only I wasn't even tired. It wasn't sleep I needed. I took the pillow and put it in the garbage and then I took the garbage bag out to the garage and jammed it into the trashcan because I had actually thought of smothering my own baby, that's how crazy I was."

  Don was sick at heart. He still held her, still felt her breath warm through his shirt, but all desire for her was gone. He knew it wasn't fair. She had stopped herself, hadn't she? She had faced a terrible moment of madness and had triumphed over it, but he knew he would never be able to get rid of the imagined picture of Cindy with a pillow approaching a baby's crib, and the baby crying, only it wasn't an infant he imagined, it was his own daughter when he last saw her, almost two years old, and it wasn't Cindy, it was his ex-wife. Just one more nightmare for him to remember when he woke up in the middle of the night.

  Yet he still held her.

  "Do you hate me?" she whispered.

  "No," he said.

  "I knew I had to get out," she said. "I loved my children, I could never hurt them, but for their sake and my husband's sake and my own sake I had to get out before I got carted off to the loony bin or I killed myself or whatever desperate thing happened that should never happen. So I left. And I went to a shrink. And I got my real estate license and worked hard to get enough money to buy a house that has a room for each of my children even though I know they'll never come to see me, I'll never have them living here with me, but I have a room for each of them upstairs, and a bed that's never had a man in it but it's made for a husband. You're a husband, Don. That's what you are. I wanted you in that bed with me."

  His body wanted her; his hands wanted to slide down to the bare skin of her hip and seek the body under the frock. But his heart was no longer in this room. Desire wasn't reason enough to share his body with this woman. He could never love her as she needed to be loved. He had too many problems of his own, too many fears, too much history. What she had told him would be impossible to forget.

  "Don," she said, "you have to forgive me."

  I'm not a priest, he thought. I'm not Jesus. I can't even get forgiveness for myself, how can I get absolution for you? "You didn't do anything wrong," he said. "You gave up everything to protect your children."

  "They'll never understand that," she said. "I left them motherless."

  "Someday you'll tell them and they'll understand."

  "You don't want me anymore, do you," she said softly.

  "You don't need a husband to take you on that bed, Cindy" he said. "You need a father to tuck you into it."

  She burst into sobs as he slid one arm under her legs, the other behind her back, and rose from the couch holding her. She wasn't all that small or light, but he was strong and it felt good to carry her up the stairs, to have the stamina to do it without panting for breath, without even feeling tired. It felt good to have some strength to give to someone who needed it. He carried her to the master bedroom, with its kingsize bed; not a feminine room at all, but a masculine one, a man's bedroom. No frills, a bold pattern in the bedspread, earth colors instead of pastels. He set her down on the edge of the bed. "Where do you keep your nightgowns?" he asked.

  "Second drawer down, left side," she said.

  "Take off that dress," he said. He took the top nightgown from the folded stack and brought it back to her. She sat there naked and forlorn, the frock tossed onto the floor. Her body was still sweet but he had no desire for her. He took the nightgown and gathered it around the neck, as he had so often gathered his daughter's tiny gowns and dresses, and slipped it over her head. She reached her hands up and he guided them into the sleeves like a child's hands. Then, as the nightgown dropped over her breasts and down to cover her lap, he turned down the covers of the bed. He picked her up again and laid her down on the sheets, helped her slide her feet down under the covers, then drew them up to her shoulder and tucked them in. Tears were flowing from her eyes onto her pillow. "Don't cry," he said softly. "You're a good person and you've done right." He kissed her cheek, patted her hand. "Don't go back to work today. You've earned a little rest."

  "I've lost you, haven't I, Don, before I even had you."

  "You didn't need a lover, Cindy, you needed a friend, and you've got one."

  "What do you need?" she said.

  "I need all the friends I can get." He kissed her cheek again. She raised a hand to touch his cheek. Maybe she was thinking of trying to kiss him like a woman. Maybe she was thinking of making one last try to get him in the bed beside her. That's how the moment felt to him, anyway. But she saw something in his eyes, saw something as she searched his face, and she didn't try to kiss him, just stroked his cheek and said, "You're too good for me."

  "Not good enough," he said. "But sometimes you just have to let somebody cry herself to sleep."

  He walked out of the room, down the stairs, and out the door, making sure it was locked behind him. He stood on the porch for a moment, looking for his car. But of course he didn't have one. Never mind. His truck was parked at her office, and it wasn't more than three-quarters of a mile to walk. A neighbor in a car was watching him as he walked down the driveway to the street. Don stared back at her defiantly. None of your damn business, he said soundlessly. The woman started her engine and pulled away from the curb. Don walked on down the street. It wasn't even noon yet, and maybe autumn had broken the back of summer, because the day was still cool and there was a breeze even though the sun was shining and there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

  9

  Helping Hands

  It was hot inside the cab of his truck, and now that he'd worked up a little sweat walking in the sunlight, he wanted a drink of something. They'd put in a new McDonald's up at Friendly Center and a Coke would do as well as anything.

  Cindy Claybourne. He ached with sympathy for her, and, to be honest, sympathy for himself as well. He remembered one of his contractors quoting an old saying: "Never eat at a place called Mom's, never play poker with a man named Doc, and never sleep with a woman who's got more troubles than you." Till today he never would have thought there could be such a woman. But now he knew. At least he had never even thought of raising a hand to harm his own child. At least he hadn't been the one to abandon her. He had done everything that he could do short of murder to get his little girl back. So no matter how much pain there was in thinking about her, he was better off than Cindy. Maybe.

  He had come so close. To what, he wasn't sure. To sex, of course; he hadn't realized how much he missed that part of his life until Cindy Claybourne woke his body up again. But it would have been more than that, and when he chose to walk through her front door, it wasn't a roll in the hay he was looking for. Not just a roll in the hay, anyway. Turned out Cindy needed a friend a lot more than she needed a lover. But what did Don need? Was Cindy right? Was he the kind of man who was just naturally a husband?

  Not to hear his ex-wife tell it. Whatever it was that Cindy thought, whatever it was that he himself had unconsciously wanted when he led Cindy to the couch in her living room, he was certain of this: He was not ready to get back into the whole marriage business all over again. The last time had only built him up in order to tear him all the way down to nothing. It wasn't going to happen again.

  At the McDonald's drive-up, it occurred to Don that maybe the girl back in his house would like a Coke, too, so he ordered a couple of large ones. He thought of getting something to eat, too, but he wasn't hungry. Still working off last night's feed, probably. Maybe the girl was hungry. He should get her something. So he ordered a Big Mac and fries and only snitched a couple of them on the way back to the Bellamy house, and then only because the smell of them was so strong inside the cab of the truck even with the windows rolled down. That must be deliberate. They must have figured out a way to make the french fries give off a hunger drug that you absorbed through the nose.

  When he got to the house, the Helping Hands truck was already backed right up to the porch, with a ramp stretched like a bridge from porch to truck. A couple of black guys made the ramp bounce as they carried a couch across. They were only a few hours early. The guys were coming back out of the truck by the time Don got up the steps.

  "Hey," said one of them, which instantly branded him as the driver. "You the owner?"

  "Mick got you guys going early," said Don.

  "Yeah, well, your wife told us take whatever look good as long as we don't take any of your tools."

  Wife? It took a moment for Don to realize that they couldn't possibly be referring to his dead ex-wife. The homeless girl must have let them in. It irked him that she would dare to pass herself off as his wife. But there was no reason to explain the whole business to these guys. "She did, huh?"

  "Be nice when you get your water hooked up, won't it? You both lookin' like you could use a shower." The driver smiled, big and toothy. He knew he'd put Don down, and Don wasn't altogether sure it was without malice. But Don didn't mind, especially considering that the comment was true. His revenge, if he had needed any, was the way the driver and his assistant looked at the sweating cups of Coke Don was carrying into the house.

  It was the assistant who spoke up. "You gonna drink both of those?"

  "Just the bottom half of this one," said Don. "Already drank the top half. Where is my 'wife'?"

  "In the kitchen," said the assistant. "Thirsty work out here."

  "Sure is," said Don. "Wish the water was on, I'd offer you some."

  "You cold, man," said the driver.

  Don grinned at him. "I'll be back with something for you guys. I didn't know you were gonna be here, so I only got something for her and me, you know how it is. Less you want to finish mine." He offered his half-empty Coke.

  They both held up their hands to ward it off. "No, no, just teasing, man."

  "I'll get you something. Whatever you want."

  "Nothing, man, we just teasing."

  Don shrugged and went on into the house.

  In the parlor he took a quick inventory, purely by habit—he'd never had the Helping Hands people take anything he needed, but his new "wife" was complicating things. All his tools were there. But something felt out of place. It nagged at him for a moment. Maybe it wasn't in the parlor. Something he'd seen outside? He'd check it later. He carried his half-drunk Coke and her full one and the bag of food into the kitchen. There she was, looking into the open cupboards. As soon as she heard him, she turned and took a step and touched the massive kitchen table.

  "I didn't know if you wanted them to take this," she said. "All the other kitchens have cheap crummy furniture like landlords buy, but this one might have been here when it was a real house. Solid."

  It was solid, all right, but had no other virtues to recommend it. Plain as a board fence, that's what it was. "House has to be empty," said Don. "I want everything gone." He slid the full Coke and the bag closer to her. The sight of her there, prowling through the cupboards, "helping" with decisions, infuriated him. He knew, in the back of his mind, that his rage was completely unreasonable. That she had had the full run of every cupboard in the house for months, maybe years, for all he knew. That he was mostly angry because of his frustration over the whole business with Cindy. Because for a few minutes today he had actually thought maybe he was ready to start looking for a wife, but the venture had ended in failure, and now this waif presumed to call herself by that title. As if a wife of his would ever be so hungry-looking, so ill-provided for.

  I want everything gone, he had said, and now, with firmness, he added: "Including you."

  She took a step back from the table. "Aren't you glad I was here to let them in?"

  Might as well tell her the truth, personal though it was. "Not when you tell them you're my wife. My wife's dead."

  She looked at him with disgust. "I never told them I was your anything. I found them opening the door and looking around and calling for Mr. Lark and I told them to come on in and get started and don't touch any of Mr. Lark's tools in the front parlor. If the place were cleaner they might have assumed I was your housekeeper."

  Of course that's the way it happened. Of course they'd jump to that conclusion. He felt embarrassed at his anger. Now it seemed stupid to him. And yet some of the anger remained. She was still trying to destroy his solitude. If he couldn't have a woman like Cindy Claybourne, why did he have to put up with a girl like this? "I brought you a burger and fries."

  "I'm not hungry," she said coolly.

  "And a Coke. Drink it and go." He hated himself for being so rude. But this had gone on long enough.

  "That was nice of you," she said. There was not a trace of irony in her voice. But that didn't mean it wasn't snide all the same.