March 25th

"I want to go to Dad's grave."

They sit in the SUV parked outside Sarah's aunt's house. It's been an eventful afternoon, and it looks like the fireworks aren't done yet. Greg chances a sidelong look at Sarah. She sits in the driver's seat, head bowed slightly, but there is nothing humble in her attitude. She's more like a wire with too much current run through it, as Roz would say. Her hands rest on the steering wheel; they shake slightly.

"Yeah, because he'll hear you better there than anywhere else," he says, and puts just the right amount of scorn in his words. "Haven't you had enough of your family yet? I sure have. I've got my own relatives to drive me crazy, adding yours is just not fair."

"My aunt just told me all kinds of things I never knew about Dad," she says quietly, but he hears the hard edge of determination in her voice. "I need to talk to him."

"So, what—you're going to piss on his headstone?"

She doesn't crack a smile. "Maybe."

"Oh, swell," he mutters. She turns her head to look at him.

"You don't have to come with me, you can wait in the truck. I just . . . have to do this." There is no plea for understanding, no expectation other than his presence along for the ride; she's let him know what her next action will be, period. He doesn't say anything. After a moment she starts up the engine, and they're on their way.

The cemetery is small, run-down, and some of the tombstones are cracked and faded. But there are fresh flowers here and there, and a large shade tree presides over the center of the property, with new leaves just begun to pop. Sarah parks the vehicle to the side and unlocks her seat belt, gets out in silence, shuts the door. Greg watches her walk away, down the narrow, pockmarked bitumen track that serves as a road. She knows exactly where she's going. He leans his head back and thinks of the last two hours. It's not like he wants to do that, but he has no choice.

("Your father was a bad seed from the beginning, Sarah Jane. It looks like you're the only one who didn't follow in his footsteps, thank goodness."

May Corbett reminds him of his own mother—small, neat, unassuming, with the same red-gold curls and sea-green eyes as Sarah's, though the older woman is has grey mixed into the red. A pair of reading glasses sits perched on top of her head. She still wears her Sunday best with a pristine white apron over her good blouse and slacks, a not-so-subtle reminder that they impose on her; no doubt she's at work on dinner. She has not offered so much as a glass of water to either of them.

"'Bad seed'?" Sarah asks quietly.

"You've never had children of your own, have you?" There is a touch of dismissal in that level voice, something that says good old Auntie May knows Sarah's history but won't speak of it directly because that's not polite—and anyway, that isn't how this game is played. "Sometimes they're no good right from the start."

"He was a bad child?" Greg recognizes that neutral tone. Sarah uses subtle tactics on May, works to draw her out, get information while she remains polite. She knows this game too; deference to her aunt's automatic assumption of superiority will earn her a few more crumbs than she might receive otherwise.

"Always," May says. "Our parents had a terrible time with him. He was openly defiant, questioned everything, never could accept that he wasn't going to make anything of himself because of his unwillingness to work hard . . ." She sighs gently. "He had a bad fight with Allen when they were just children, nearly put his brother in the hospital."

"What did they fight over?" Greg can feel Sarah attuned to every word despite her impassive façade. May shrugs.

"Chores, I think. Allen did have a habit of slacking when it came to getting up on time, but he was a delicate child who tired easily. It's understandable after he had that bout with rheumatic fever. He would never have made a farmer anyway, he was college material." The recitation is old and polished, a treasured bit of propaganda passed down from Mater and Pater, no doubt.

"Uncle Allen was the only one who ever went on to get a degree, wasn't he?" Sarah sounds suitably impressed.

"Well, yes. Howard and Robert went into farming, and I married Ted when he left the military. In those days women weren't encouraged to further their education, it was more important to settle down, raise a family." That dig is a lot less subtle. Sarah doesn't rise to it however—she's much too wily a fish to go after such a cheap and garish lure.

"Why do you think Dad was so much trouble?" The question is gently put, but it's quite plain Sarah expects an answer. May makes a gesture with one hand, a sort of helpless little flutter.

"Really dear, I'm sure I don't know. He was several years older than me, so he was out of the house by the time I was old enough to understand the things he did and said . . ." She pauses in apparent distress, a nice effect. "Mother and Father tried to find something for him to do that he'd be good at . . . I just barely remember clarinet lessons, but he was so awful. It was quite amusing to listen to him practice. We used to tease him about it at dinner. It was obvious he'd never be any good at it, or anything else for that matter."

Sarah nods, though it's clear to him at least that she doesn't agree as much as acknowledge her aunt's opinion. "Did he ever try other things?"

May thinks about it. "I remember I caught him drawing once. He was supposed to be doing his homework, but he was doodling . . . just a sketch of the mailbox, nothing special. When he realized I was watching him, he tore it up. After that—" She shakes her head.

"I see." Sarah gets to her feet. "Thank you, May. You've been a great help. We've kept you long enough, my apologies for the imposition."

May colors at the faint little sting embedded in that last word. "You're more than welcome, dear. Give my love to your husband.")

Greg watches Sarah trudge down the path, shoulders hunched. He has a pretty good idea of how this will play out, but the magnitude of the pain involved keeps him right where he is. There's nothing he can do to help, nothing he can say to avert what's ahead. He's here for emergency purposes only, and that doesn't involve a pat on the back and a 'there, there' speech, something he sucks at anyway. When Sarah disappears from view he digs his phone out of his pocket and calls Roz. She answers promptly.

"Hey, amante." She sounds pleased to hear from him.

"Hey yourself." He relaxes into the seat a bit and rubs his thigh, partly out of habit, partly because it aches—nothing serious, just a little over-exertion. "What are you up to?"

"Just finishing supper," she says. "You're hurting. Are you all right?"

"How do you know that?" he demands, intrigued.

"I can hear it in your voice," she says simply. "Do you have your meds with you?"

She persuades him to pop a couple of breakthrough-pain tabs, something he hasn't had to do in a long time. The action brings back memories of the times he dry-swallowed Vicodin, something he'd really rather not recall at the moment.

"What's going on? Tell me," Roz says.

"Impending meltdown," he says. "Sarah's, not mine."

"Can you get help if you need to?"

"Huh," he says, amused and alarmed by the sudden knowledge that he doesn't know the answer to that question. "Better hope she won't freak out."

"Where are you?" Roz says.

"Cemetery. We're visiting dear old Dad."

"This can't be easy for you either," Roz says quietly. There is no sympathy or attempt to comfort, just a statement of fact—something she does with him frequently. She doesn't play him, but she knows what he needs and she offers it without expectations. Greg relaxes a little more.

"It isn't my dysfunctional family we're dealing with," he says. "For once."

"She may need your help. Can you do that? If not, I'd say give Laynie a call."

"We're to hell and gone from Norman," Greg says, and realizes what Roz points out—for good or ill, he's Sarah's on-site rescue team. "Nice. Thanks a lot."

"I can talk to her too, you know. Phones work for more people than the person who owns them." Now she's amused, damn her.

"I may take you up on that." He sighs. "Guess I have to go after her before she rips the place apart."

"She won't expect you to do anything," Roz says. "So your showing up will help a lot more than you think it will."

He takes that with him as he gets out of the truck and starts down the same path Sarah took. He's glad for once he has the cane with him; his leg lets him know he's pushing the new muscle through the first gate of its limits. He takes note of the warning and continues his walk.

Several minutes later he finds her. She stands in front of a grassy plot and a simple stone that says only CORBETT in block letters. As he approaches she goes down on her haunches, a slow, hesitant movement that tells him she's in pain too. She puts her hand on the ground. Her head is down; her curls spark and gleam in the slanted rays of sunshine. Greg stops several yards away. Whatever will happen, he doesn't want to be involved. It's bad enough he has to observe.

"I think I understand now," she says after a long silence. "You were the second son, the scapegoat. You were the one who carried everyone else's misery and pain, the one who always got compared to the oldest son, the golden child. He could do nothing wrong, and you could do nothing right. I get it now." Her fingers dig into the grass, knuckles white. "It was cruel of them to put you in that position. You had so many things you wanted to do, and they took it all away. They stuck you in a cage and laughed when you tried to find a way out. So you gave up, didn't you? You decided to accept the sentence. It was easier than . . . than fighting all the time. Because you never won, not once, not until you left home. And then you didn't know how to function . . ." Her voice shakes on the last word. "You had all that pain and rage inside you, and it had to come out."

To his surprise she raises her arm, pushes the sleeve up to reveal her scars. "You did this to me because they hurt you," she says. There is tight anguish in her voice now, but there is also something else—a rising fury. Greg swallows on a dry throat. Here it comes. "I bet you don't even remember doing it. But then why should you? It wasn't your pain, was it?"

She sits there for a moment—and then she pounds the ground with her fists, not a wild flailing but a hard, steady rain of blows, so powerful Greg flinches; she'll have bruises later. She keeps it up for a long time, she grunts with the effort but there is no other sound, just her assault on the grave. At last she stutters to a halt. She is hunched in on herself, her back rounded, hands on the flattened grass. "Do you know what you did?" she says finally. "Do you have any idea? All those years . . . so much time spent trying to numb the fear and pain and rage, because of you. I couldn't trust myself or anyone else. I was scared to death of my own damn shadow, terrified I'd end up like you, nothing but poison to everyone around me. Even after I married the man I love it didn't stop. You stood there in the chapel beside me, and I was the only one who could see you laughing when we said our vows. You told me then I wouldn't be able to keep them, because you couldn't keep yours. But you never even tried."

She is silent for a long time. Then, "You bastard." The last word is a hiss. "You stupid miserable bastard." She smacks the ground with another bone-jarring thump, and Greg knows it's because she can't get at her father any other way. "You hurt me." Her voice rises. "You hurt me on purpose! You deliberately hurt Mom, you hurt Matt and Ben and you enjoyed it! You tried to put us in the same damn cage with you even when you knew how horrible it was! And I loved you anyway! I—I didn't want to, but I did! You were my Daddy, you were supposed to love me back and take care of me and you HURT me!"

Slowly she moves to sit on the soft grass, and folds in on herself. She starts to rock, just a slight movement. After a while she makes a soft, wavering high-pitched noise, a sound of utter anguish and grief. Keening, Greg thinks. It scares him, this intensity of emotion; he's never known how to deal with it in himself or anyone else; almost every attempt he's ever made to try has been a disaster of massive proportions. And he understands all too well what she feels, what she's endures. He remembers his father's funeral as he stood at the lectern, looked out at the faces and felt such a powerful, baffled anger at the expectation that he'd say nice things about an utter bastard, but he couldn't disappoint them because it would hurt his mother, the only family he had left.

So he stands there, trapped between flight and paralysis, and waits for the storm to pass. It takes forever, but at last Sarah falls silent. After a few minutes Greg decides discretion is indeed the better part of valor and turns to go, only to come to a halt when he hears something he hadn't expected.

She is laughing.

He turns back and there she is, full out on the ground, arms and legs spread like a hit-and-run victim. Her face is wet with tears, her eyes swollen and red, but she's smiling. It's a small, shaky smile, barely there, and for all that it's amazing.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he blurts out before he can stop himself.

"It's all bullshit." She sounds breathless. "All of it. All the pain, the memories . . . all just a bullshit story." She puts a hand over her eyes, but the laughter swells. "Oh my god. I've been so goddamn stupid."

Greg just stands there, speechless. Of all the reactions he'd imagined, this was not among them. Sarah moves her hand and looks at him. "I haven't gone crazy," she says. "I just get it now."

"Get what?" he snaps, and feels an unaccountable anxiety.

Sarah levers herself upright. "This!" She flings out her arm. "All of this! This whole idiotic history I've made up for myself!"

"But . . . that history happened," he says, really afraid now that she's become delusional. "You're saying it didn't?"

"No, that's not what I mean." She brings her arm down and leans back a little. "The facts happened, all of them. All those terrible things . . . but the story I made up about why they happened, about myself, my family, my dad and mom . . . that didn't happen. That was just a story. What happened, happened. It wasn't because I was bad, or unworthy, or for some purpose . . . it was just me being born into a messed-up family. Good old random chance." She looks up at him. "Do you see?"

Greg studies her as if she's suddenly revealed a second head. Hasn't he told her this for ages? "Well . . . yeah."

Sarah laughs, and this time it's that clear, musical sound he's come to know and secretly cherish. "I know, I know. I get it now. Hot damn," she says. The last word comes out in two syllables: day-yum. She struggles to find her feet. With reluctance Greg comes forward to help her. She takes his hand, and then she gently puts her arms around him, holds him close. "Thank you for putting up with all this nonsense, with me," she says. "Thank you so much. You're a good friend."

Slowly he returns the embrace. As always her small, slender body is the essence of both strength and frailty; he feels that baffling mixture of exasperation and deep affection for this woman who has done her best to face her own flaws and weaknesses, her self-deceptions and revelations, in fearful but ultimately total honesty. He respects her search for truth even when it shatters her world; she picks herself up and goes on. There is no greater testament to her true strength. "You know this doesn't change how your family will treat you," he says. She rubs his back, just a little circular touch, a comforting and familiar act.

"Doesn't matter," she says. "My real family is standing right here. And back in New York."

"So what the hell are we still doing in Oklahoma?" he dares to say, pleased beyond all reason by her reply. She laughs.

"Damn straight. Time to go home." She gives him a little squeeze. "I'm takin' us all out for gyros and beer at the Greek House tonight after we change our return flight date."

Greg limps back to the car with her as he dreads the ordeal of the long drive ahead. Even with the breakthrough meds, he'll still have trouble with spasms; it doesn't happen every day the way it used to before the new muscle began to grow, but it's not an uncommon occurrence. He stops by the door to find Sarah watches him. Without a word she walks to the back of the truck, opens the hatch and rummages around; she and Laynie have all kinds of emergency first and secondary aid supplies stockpiled for storm-chasing mishaps. When she returns she has a large thermal patch, some extra-strength ibuprofen, a bottle of water and two packages of cookies. She shifts everything into the crook of her arm and reaches out to put her hand on his shoulder, pats him gently. It is an apology, all the more potent for being wordless.

"Better get going," he says after a moment. She nods, and with that they're on their way home.