"Why is she here?" asked Barbara when she arrived for the divorce proceedings. Monica sat in the hallway, feeling her self-confidence and helpfulness being sucked out of her 26-year-old body.

"Because I need a friend here today. Because my wife has decided that I mean nothing to her any longer."

Barbara sized up Monica with a particularly steely gaze. Monica set her jaw. She had to be strong for John.

"I just came to give him support."

"I can't believe you would bring your girlfriend. I thought you were a better man than that. I thought you would spare me, but instead you want to rub my nose into it?"

"I'm not the other woman. I'm not his girlfriend, nor his mistress, nor anything but a friend, and I wish you would quit making me out to be otherwise." She rose to her feet and stood before Barbara. "Whatever happened to your marriage had nothing to do with me, so please do not use me as a scapegoat any longer."

Barbara left without another word and walked into the courtroom.

"Maybe you ought to wait out here," said John. Monica nodded and took her seat again.

She was relieved to learn that Barbara did not cite her anywhere in her grounds for divorce. Still, when she rushed out the courtroom with her parents and lawyer, she wouldn't even make eye contact with her.

Seven years later, when John convinced his ex-wife to come in to look at the suspect's in Luke's case, Monica purposely kept out of her way and didn't try to speak to her. She wanted to say, See, seven years later, and I'm still not sleeping with John. We are still just friends. I never meant you any harm.

But she couldn't. Because by then, there was no doubt in her heart that she loved him, that she was fated to be with him. Perhaps Barbara had understood that before either one of them. She wondered if she would hate her all the more, now that she was his wife and had given him another child. She wondered even more how Barbara was doing after Luke's case was finally solved. Had she continued to move on with her life? Was she married too? Children? A new happiness to replace the old?

Vera started to stir and Monica's thoughts were interrupted by more immediate realities of clean diapers and morning feedings