Guilt

'Tops,' he said.

'What are you guys talking about?'

They were both shaking their heads, but it was Susan who said it. 'You'll find out.'

Finally summoning the nerve, Christina walked out into the backyard. He was standing now in the dappled sunlight under the budding elm, and she thought she had never seen a more magnificent face.

Not the face per se, but that it so clearly reflected the man beneath, that was what was so magnificent. It was all there – the agony he was in, the strength to bear it, the grace, eventually, to rise above it.

He was deep in conversation with a priest who wore a black cassock with a purple lining, but when he saw her, it was as though he bestowed some benediction on her, pulling her forward, to him. Almost physically, she felt her steps grow light. Welcome, even now.

Taking both her hands, he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. 'Thanks for coming.'

'I couldn't not have.'

They were still holding hands. Suddenly, realizing it, he gave a brief squeeze and let go. 'Well…' Remembering, turning back to the priest. 'I don't know if you've met the Archbishop of San Francisco, James Flaherty. Christina Carrera. Christina's one of the firm's future stars, Jim.'

She shook Flaherty's hand, heard him uttering the usual commonplaces, kept her smile in place. But her eyes and mind stayed on Dooher.

He was holding up, his own eyes elsewhere – within – crushed by the weight of his loss. He caught her watching him, then, and tried to smile, an apologetic turn of the lips for having caused her, even briefly, to glimpse the pain he was feeling within. He did not mean to show it, to wear it on his sleeve. He was a man. He would be all right. It wasn't anyone else's problem. He was alone and he would survive.

She thought her heart would break.

Seeing her ex with another woman – of course younger, that's what they all did, wasn't it? – had gotten under Lydia's skin. Not that she was romantically interested in Wes anymore – heaven forbid! – but it skewed her vision of her own importance.

How dare he!

So after Wes and Sam had gone, Lydia decided she deserved a couple of drinks. Then, in the kitchen, she'd gotten to talking with the kids – she was godmother to Susan, 'Aunt Lyd' to Jason – and they traded Sheila stories – laughing, crying, laughing again. Rituals.

The two children left when their father had finally come in from the backyard, after nearly all the other guests had said their goodbyes. The kids' departure wasn't exactly abrupt, but it wasn't leisurely either. After the exodus, Lydia had exchanged one of those 'what-can-you-do' glances with Mark, then picked up the bottle of gin on the counter.

'How about one?'

His shoulders sagged. From Lydia's perspective, Mark had held up like a trooper all day, making the required rounds, having to listen again and again to how sorry everybody was, to the advice and the sympathy and the anecdotes. He had been endlessly patient, as he always appeared, under tight control. That was Mark Dooher, after all.

Although, just for a moment, the final abandonment by his children did seem to take the resiliency out of him. Then he bounced back, smiled, nodded. 'Hit me a good one,' he said.

She was sitting on one of the barstools, and when he came over, she rubbed a hand across his back. He straightened up, leaned into it. 'That beats the drink,' he said. But then he took the drink, too.

She'd stayed to clean up. She knew the house, was good with the caterers. It was a help having her there. Everybody else had gone by 6:00, and she went back into the kitchen and though they certainly didn't need it, poured two gins on the rocks and brought them out to where he sat in the living room, in his black suit, his hands shading his eyes, at one end of the chamois-soft white leather couch.

They clinked glasses. 'Long day,' she said. 'Why don't you take off your coat and stay awhile?'

'I guess I should.'

As though she were his valet, she helped him out of it. On the way over to the closet to hang it up, she caught sight of herself in the large gilt hall mirror.

Stopping there, she had to think again that Wes was an idiot. She was slightly out of focus, but she looked terrific. In her own black tailored suit, her high heels and black hose, she could have been ten years younger, trim, toned, her hair lightened to ash, cut a la Princess Di.

Well, screw Wes and his girlfriend.

She hung the coat in the closet. The day was still warm and suddenly the top of her own suit felt binding. She unbuttoned it, shrugged out of it, and hung it next to Mark's. Her black blouse, too, was tight at her neck, and when she came back to him, it was undone to the second button.

He handed her her glass, and she stood in front of where he sat as they chinked them again. She felt him looking up at her as she drank.

'God bless gin,' she said. 'I don't think I've had anything but wine for six months. But sometimes you need a real drink, don't you think?'

'Here's to that.' He tipped his own glass back. 'To quote the great Dean Martin, that sometime is now.'

'Get you another one?'

He drained his drink and handed her up his glass. Back in the kitchen, she grabbed the silver ice bucket and the bottle of Bombay and brought it out with her, setting them on the coffee table, building two fresh ones.

She was standing in front of him again.

'Here we are,' he said. 'Who would have thought it?'

She stepped out of her heels. 'How are you, Mark? Really?'

He took a thoughtful sip, rotated his head, brought his hand up behind his neck.' Tell you the truth, I'm tight as a drum.'

Putting her glass down, she walked around behind the couch and put her hands on his shoulders. 'Close your eyes,' she said. Take a deep breath.'

As her thumbs dug into the muscles around his neck, he let out a small groan of relief. 'You've got a half-hour to cut that out, Lydia.' His head fell back against the couch and he slumped down.

She stopped. 'Now your angle's all wrong.'

'That's what she said.'

'Down on the floor,' she said. 'On your stomach.'

He was stretched out as she'd directed, arms folded now under his head. She knelt at his waist, reaching up, and began to knead his shoulders, his neck, down his backbone.

Reaching across, then, over the broad back, another bad angle. She straightened up, hitched her skirt up, and straddled him, her hands moving, pushing, rubbing. Pulling the shirt out, then, going under it. Up his backbone with her thumbs.

Another sigh of pleasure.

She reached to her side and undid the button then, unzipped, stood and stepped out of her skirt, her nylons. Dooher still lay on his stomach, unmoving.'Turn over.'

His eyes were closed, his hands crossed behind his head. The belt, then, the button. Zipping slowly over the bulge.

He still didn't move.

Sam and Wes were on the roof of his apartment building, sitting barefoot in beach chairs, holding hands, watching the sunset. Bart lounged between them. A small pot barbecue smoked and Sam had turned Farrell's boom-box radio to a country music section, which he barely knew existed until six weeks before.

Now he was worried that he was getting hooked on the stuff. Something in him rebelled at the idea of a middle-aged urban professional like himself relating to this corn, but dumb as they were, about every fourth song seemed to bring a tear to his eye. A couple of tunes over the past weeks – Tim McGraw's Don't Take The Girl and Brooks & Du

When he'd been alone, painting.

But all of 'em were about those country things – old-fashioned values, Mommy, Daddy (sometimes Grandpa), true undyin' love, God, beer, dogs and trucks.