Divided in Death

She rose, went to the coffeepot. “I shouldn’t have a second cup of this. I’ll be buzzing around driving De

“You don’t have to tell me this. I get the picture. I’m sorry.”

“No, I’ll finish it. Though I’ll shorten a long story for both our sakes.” She set the coffeepot down again, and spent a moment just tracing her fingers over the purple pansies that decorated it.

“The first time he touched me, I was shocked. Outraged. He warned me that she’d never believe me, that she’d send me away. I’d been in a little bit of trouble. Acting out, you might say.” She smiled, sat again. “Won’t go into that. But my mother and I were at odds, very much at odds. He was convincing, and frightened me. I was young, and felt powerless. You understand.”

“Yeah.”

“She traveled quite a bit. I think-well, it came out later, that she’d realized she’d made a mistake, marrying him. But she’d already had one marriage fail, and she wasn’t going to give up so quickly. She focused on her career for a time, and he had many opportunities to molest me. He used drugs to keep me… quiet. It went on for a very long time. I told no one. In my mind, my father had deserted me, my mother loved this man more than she loved me. And neither of them cared if I lived or died. I attempted suicide.”

“It’s hard,” Eve managed, “really hard to feel like you’re alone in all that.”

“You were alone. But yes, it’s equally hard to feel alone, and helpless, and guilty. Fortunately, I bungled the suicide. My parents, both of them, were in my hospital room, at their wits’ end. It came spewing out of me, all of it. The rage, the fear, the hate. It all came out, two and a half years of rape and abuse.”

“How’d they handle it?” Eve asked when Mira fell into silence.

“In a most unexpected way. They believed me. He was arrested. Imagine my surprise,” she murmured. “That it could be stopped, just by speaking of it. That saying it out loud could make it stop.”

“That’s why you became a doctor. So you could make it stop for other people.”

“Yes. I didn’t think of it then. I was still angry, still hurt, but yes. I had therapy-individual, group, family. And sometime during that healing period, my parents found each other again. They mended what was ripped. We don’t often talk of that time. I don’t often think of it. When I think of my parents, I think of them as they were before things began to unravel, and as they’ve been since they repaired the damage. I don’t think of the bitter years.”

“You forgave them.”

“Yes, and myself. They forgave each other, and me. We were stronger for it,” Mira added. “And I think I was drawn to De

“How do you find the way back? How do you find the way when a marriage crumbles under you, and you turn away from each other? When it’s bad, so bad you can’t talk about it, or think about it?”

Mira reached out, laid her hands over Eve’s. “You can’t tell me what’s hurting you, and Roarke?”

“I can’t.”

“Then I’ll tell you the simple and most complex answer is love. It’s where you start, and where, if you work hard enough, want hard enough, you end.”

Chapter 20

She didn’t want to go home. It was, Eve knew, evasion at its worst, but she didn’t want to go home to a houseful of people. She didn’t want to go home to Roarke.

The answer couldn’t be love-simple or complex-she didn’t see how that could be it. She couldn’t find her way through this thing that was strangling her marriage. And if she loved the man any more than she did, she’d burn up from it.

She didn’t see how the answer could be evasion either, though it helped at the moment. Walking in the city on a balmy evening, the familiar ground, the familiar sounds of irritable traffic, the smell of overdone soy dogs, the occasional whoosh through the vents of a train zooming by underground.

Clutches of people, ignoring each other-ignoring her-as they went about their own business and thought their own thoughts.

So she walked, and it occurred to her she never did this anymore. Never simply walked around the city when she didn’t have a specific destination, a specific purpose. She’d never been the meandering sort. And she sure as hell wasn’t interested in browsing from window to window to study whatever was being sold.

She could’ve rousted a couple of the sidewalk grifters hawking knockoff wrist units, PPCs, fake python handbags-all the rage this season-but she didn’t feel quite mean enough to bother.

She watched two women shell out seventy dollars each for snake bags complete with fangs for fasteners and wondered what the hell was wrong with people.

More because it was there than because of hunger, she dropped some credits on a glide-cart for a soy dog. The stink of the cart’s smoke followed her, and the first bite reminded her how disgusting, and oddly addicting, the fake meat on a stingy bun could be.

She watched a couple of teenagers weave through pedestrian traffic on an airboard. The girl riding pinion had her arms around the boy’s waist in what looked like a death grip, and she was squealing in his ear. From the expression on his face, he didn’t seem to mind. Probably made him feel like a man, Eve decided, to have some girl holding onto him and pretending she was afraid.

Not bothering to pretend anything was why she’d been so lousy at the mating rituals, she supposed. Then, with Roarke, she hadn’t had to pretend.

A messenger droid whizzed by on his zip-bike, risking smashed circuits and vehicular madness as he threaded through the breath of space between two Rapid cabs, then buzzed the bumper on another. The cab driver responded with a vicious blast of horn, which set off several other horns like dogs howling together at the moon.

“I’m driving here!” The driver shouted with his head and upper body popping out his side window. “I’m driving here, you asshole!”

But the red cap and boots of the messenger droid were only a blur as he cut through the light on the yellow, and kept jetting.

She heard snatches of conversations as she walked-bits and pieces of sexual, shopping, or business escapades-all delivered with the same passion.

A licensed beggar squatted on a rag of blanket and played a mournful tune on a rusty flute. A woman with a python bag and matching boots glided out of a shop trailed by a uniformed droid carting several glossy bags. She slid into a shiny black limo.

Eve doubted she’d heard the flute-she’d bet the beggar wasn’t even on her plane of existence. People didn’t pay enough attention, she decided, and tossed a couple of credits into the beggar’s box as she passed by.

The city was awash with color and sound and energy, with petty mea

And if that was some sort of subconscious metaphor for her marriage, it was time to ditch the rest of the soy dog and get back to work.

She saw the bump and snatch. The man in the suit, carrying a briefcase who crossed toward the curb to hail a cab. The boy of about twelve who bumped against him, the quick exchange of words.

Watch it, kid.

Sorry, mister.

And the fast hands, very fast, very light, that nipped into the pocket of the suit and palmed the wallet.

Still munching her soy dog, she strode toward them just as the boy turned to melt into the crowd. She caught him by the collar.

“Hold on,” she said to the suit.

He sent her a look of irritation as the boy struggled against her hold. “I’m in a hurry.”

“You’re going to have a hard time paying for that ride without your wallet,” Eve told him.

Instinctively he patted his pocket, then whirled. “What the hell is this? Give me back my wallet, you little bastard. I’m calling the cops.”