Nora hadn't liked coming home, after Bill died. The apartment seemed empty, too cold and sparse. Work was easy, and she threw herself into it with a vengeance, tackling small and monotonous tasks that she normally would have farmed out to grad students. She could ignore it all there, pretend that Bill was only off on another story and she was working late, that they'd see each other in a day or two like they usually did. When she came home every day and the lights were off and the ice cream in the back of the freezer was uneaten and his laptop was closed and cold, she could no longer ignore his persistent absence. Some part of her had finally accepted it back in that New Mexico canyon, where she'd let him go under a waterfall, and then that part of her had gone numb.

She knew that she was coping during the day. If she was irritable sometimes, it was only from lack of sleep; if she sometimes sat at her desk and stared at nothing, let an hour slip by without realizing it, it was because she had so much work to do and needed to recharge.

The only time she felt anything besides boredom or irritation seemed to be at night, when the shadows crept in. She'd lie in bed, watching the light from the moon or the streetlamps filter in through the slats of the blinds, eyes flicking back and forth. She saw little movements out of the corner of her eyes, and could not tell if they were insects, ghosts, dead bodies come back to life, or the mirages of sleeplessness. When she did sleep, her dreams were filled with rotting faces and scenes of endless peril--flash floods, avalanches, the people she loved drowning or falling from great heights. She phoned her brother twice at five in the morning just to make sure he had not been trampled by a moose.

One night, she woke up with her heart pounding, her mouth dry. She did not know what time it was, but it was dark and too quiet, and the walls seemed to be closing in on her. She got out of bed and slipped on her sneakers, grabbed her wallet and her keys, and went outside. The air outside was chillier than she had expected; it was fall, and winter was coming. Her thin cotton pajamas were less protection against the chill than they had been in the stifling heat of her apartment, but she did not want to go back inside for anything.

~o~o~

Nora showed up at D'Agosta's apartment at three in the morning, in her pajamas. She didn't say anything when he opened the door in his boxers and ratty gray tank top, just stared at him with wild, red-rimmed eyes.

"Are you okay?" he asked, and immediately regretted it. Of course she wasn't okay. "Come in," he said, and she slipped inside, darting a nervous glance over her shoulder.

He sat her on the couch and got a bathrobe out of the hall closet, wrapped it around her shoulders. She was shivering, and he sat down beside her. "What happened? Somebody follow you here?"

She shook her head. "No," she said, "nobody followed me. I just--I couldn't stay there, not tonight. I had this nightmare..." The noise she made was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "It's so stupid. I'm sorry for bothering you. I don't know what's wrong with me."

"It's okay," he said, and put a hand on her shoulder. "You can stay here as long as you need."

She sat hunched in the bathrobe, looking small and fragile, and he put an arm around her. She leaned into him, resting her head on his chest. It felt so good to hold her; she was warm and soft next to him, and her breathing seemed to be slowing, the flutter of her heartbeat less frantic. After a while, her eyes closed.

He let her sleep on him until he felt himself start to grow sleepy again, and then he slipped out from under her and went to bed, a vague sense of guilt gnawing at the pit of his stomach. After the business with the "cult" in Inwood Park, he and Pendergast had been trying to take care of Nora, drop in when they could, make sure she was okay. But things had happened, and she'd gone off to New Mexico and come back looking so much better, acting like everything had been settled, like she'd moved on.

He got up and grabbed his blanket, laid it over her sleeping form, and went back to bed.

~o~o~

Nora drifted in and out of sleep, and for the first time in weeks she dreamed of nothing except for warmth and darkness. When she awoke at last, the room was dark, and she was surprised to realize that she knew exactly where she was. She pulled the blanket up to her nose; it still smelled like D'Agosta, a comfortable mixture of sweat, soap, and something else she couldn't quite name.

She thought of rising from the couch, going into D'Agosta's room, watching him sleep. Crawling into his bed. Putting her arms around him. He was larger than Bill, solid and heavy and powerful (in more ways than one, as she'd noticed as he'd stood in the door in his underwear, still blinking from being woken up)--she usually wasn't attracted to those types of men. Once she'd started to love Bill, she'd been attracted to his energy, the odd grace of his awkward, sometimes hyperkinetic movements, the slimness of his frame that never filled out no matter how much he ate.

She wasn't sure that she desired D'Agosta so much as she wanted to curl up next to him, to have him wrap around her like a blanket. She thought about having him anyway, feeling a little ashamed, but not enough to care. He would be sleepy if she woke him up, she decided, and would take a while to arouse. He wouldn't be delicate with her, but he would be gentle, easing himself into her slowly. She liked the idea of it, and as she dropped off to sleep she imagined herself lying next to him, running her fingers through the dark, coarse hair on his body, listening to the rumbling sound of his breathing.

When she awoke again, the apartment was light and D'Agosta was gone. It was nearly noon. She went into his kitchen and made herself a cup of coffee, more out of habit and for something to do than because she needed it, and she lay back down on the couch, holding the blanket against her face.

She left before he came back, knowing that if she was there when he came back, she would not want to leave that day. It was in some ways easier to go back to her apartment, even knowing the terrors that lurked in the shadows for her.

As she walked back still chilly in her pajamas, she imagined that Bill would be waiting at home for her.