"Sometimes I wish I had a mother-in-law."

George coughed a few times, then replied, "I misheard you. I thought you said you wished you had a mother-in-law."

Nancy, Bess, and George were having lunch at an Italian restaurant just inside the city. Nate and his father were taking care of the children for a few hours.

Bess tilted her head. "I am," she said. "I mean, that's what I said. And it's true. At least once Nancy has her baby, she'll have more than one option for childcare."

"Nate's dad doesn't like to take care of the kids?" Nancy asked.

Bess shrugged. "He's busy a lot," she said. "A Sunday afternoon for a few hours, fine. I don't even mind staying over there. But for a Wednesday night out or something? Nah."

George turned to Nancy. "So you'd give Edith up?"

Nancy paused, straw in her mouth, and thought about it. Since she and Ned had told his parents about her pregnancy, Edith couldn't have been nicer. "I'll put it this way," she said. "Once I actually have the baby, I think it's more like I'll be doing the childcare for Edith, not the other way around. The woman is practically salivating over the thought of her first grandchild."

"But doesn't she take you on shopping trips and buy you cool presents?"

Nancy shrugged. Then she thought about the shopping trips she'd taken with Ned and his mother, and smiled. "Ned and I usually manage to entertain ourselves when she's along."

Edith hadn't forgotten that Nancy had betrayed her son. And even though his parents had taken it as badly as her father, that fact seemed to have been conveniently forgotten. Mostly because, and Nancy was as sure as she had been seven years before, Edith thought Nancy had seduced Ned into marrying her. Not the second time, not the time they had stood up in the church with their parents and relatives watching, and had said their vows a second time, but before.

And Nancy could always feel that knowledge, whether Edith was making any allusion to it or not.

That night, after she had put on her customary camisole and flannel pants and slid into bed with her husband, she propped her head up on her hand and studied him in the artificial light.

"What?" he asked, without turning.

When she didn't reply he looked over at her, his chest bare, remote control cradled loosely in his palm.

"Is your mom still mad at me?"

"About what?"

"About-- before."

He didn't appear to have heard her. His face stayed static, the same blank, vaguely interested, expression, but it was frozen. He turned back toward the television.

She was reaching for his hand when he turned back to her.

"If I talk to you about this..." He looked away. "If I do this, then we're going to have sex until we pass out. I want that understood."

She nodded, wordless. He threw back the covers.

"Where are you going?"

"Downstairs," he replied. "You didn't say I had to be sober. Go pick out something cute to wear, I'll be right back."

Deciding on an outfit was nerve-wracking. Ned didn't go for verbal foreplay, like this. Ned went for a stroking hand resting just above her skin, some delicious whispered threat that ended in them making out wherever they were. Laundry room, shower, study, nursery, wherever. If the impetus was strong enough, he didn't stop long enough to carry her to their bedroom. But this, this was like foreplay in reverse, the stark statement, the look in his eyes...

She settled on a black slip, its hem striking the very tops of her thighs, covered in a nearly transparent long-sleeved robe that hit just back of her knees. She climbed back into bed, under the covers, comforter up to her chin, and waited.

He walked back in with an unopened fifth, a bucket of ice, an empty glass, and a 2-liter of soda, on one of the trays they had been given as a wedding present. He arranged them carefully on the bedside table, took a shot to start out, and found a movie playing on one of the pay channels. Nancy stayed under the covers, not talking, not touching him, painfully aware of his reluctance and her own fear.

He drank at a steady pace, as the movie progressed, as his cheeks colored in the darkness, but she knew him and she could read the signs that his mood was not letting him reach the stage of intoxication he wanted, the stage where he could talk to her and forget later what he had said, what he had been feeling as he'd told her. A few shots and he was beyond that; the movie no longer able to hold his attention, he let his head loll to the side, toward her.

"What're you wearing?" he asked, his voice deceptively clear. He reached toward her, peeled back the comforter, then rolled over onto his stomach, fingers sliding up to her shoulder to pull back the robe. She braced herself on her elbows and pulled herself up, and he drew it down her arm, kissed her shoulder.

"Too many clothes," he mumbled, "always too many clothes. Come here," and he didn't even bother to toss the robe off the bed once he'd pulled it off her. He shook his head. "Always too many."

His eyes were bright, and she had made love to him before when he was drunk, but not like this. Not while she was this stone, painfully sober, not when her attention was so terribly centered on him. She half-hoped he had forgotten, that he would reach toward her with customary lecherous intent, and as he crawled out of his shorts and pushed up her gown she almost let herself believe it.

"I'd never believe there was a baby in there," he said, a simple wonder on his face as he spread his flat palm over the breath-trembling surface of her abs. "I'd never believe it.

"Take it off," he said, in the same tone, cultivated disinterest.

When she came back to him he had the sheet draped over the lower half of his body, leaving his chest bare, and he drew her to him, over the sheet, so that the fabric remained between them. Her chest was warm and bare against his, her arms doubled and resting against him.

"She loved you," Ned said, his chin nestled against her scalp. "Thought you were the best thing ever invented. Dad thought you were great. Everyone thought everything between us would be great, fine, we'd get married after college. But it wasn't going to be for a while. We were too young to settle down."

She nodded, awkwardly, her face pressed against his chest.

"'It was for the best,'" he said, stumbling slightly, his voice harsh. "That's what they all said. 'They all,' as though everyone on earth was in agreement about us... it seemed like they were. That's what they said when you left. For the best. Everything worked out great. It was a mistake and it had never happened and we hadn't been on that beach together and I hadn't put a wedding ring on your finger and you and I had never, ever made love.

"Keeping that letter you wrote me in my wallet, looking at it, made me want to die."

She moved restlessly against him, but his hands didn't move, fingers interlaced, resting in a tangle at the small of her back.

"But I couldn't," he said. "I felt physically ill every time I looked at it. You gave me no closure, Nancy. I kept feeling like if I could see you, somehow, if I could make you listen to me, in person, on the phone, something, something, then we could... something could be okay again. Something. And my parents picked up on that, Nan, they knew I was frustrated, and the longer it went that I didn't hear from you. Nan, I was angry, and hurt."

"I know," she whispered into his chest, his grip tightening on her skin.

"You don't know," he hissed. "You don't understand it and you don't know how it was for me."

"Ned, I'm so sorry," she said. Tears pricked behind her eyes.

"'It was for the best,'" he repeated in mock singsong. "Mom set me up with other people. Mom called you an unfeeling bitch and she knew what you had done to me."

Nancy pushed herself up until her forehead was against his, her eyes on level with his, and took a gasping sob of a breath, her tears sliding down her cheeks to fall onto his, her knees planted on either side of his hips. He reached up, instead of smoothing her hair back, he laced his fingers in its strands and held on tight.

"Ned."

"Screw you," he said. "How dare you ask me if she still hates you, when I hated you then, I hated you, I had never hated anyone that much. And I still loved you, and that made it worse. You left me, you betrayed me--"

She kicked the covers down, from between them, put her hand against his face, felt his shuddering breath against her lips. "You did that to me, you did that to all of us," he said, his voice softer now, softened by the sudden moisture on his face.

"I loved you so much," she whispered, blinking tears off her eyelashes. "That last night with you, Ned, God..."

"But it didn't matter, did it," he said. "None of it mattered."

Her hand still resting against his cheek, she buried her face against the side of his neck, her expression tortured. "It mattered," she whispered. "I never forgot anything that happened when I was with you and I never spent a day I didn't wish things hadn't gone differently."

He curled his fingers against her scalp, and she slipped one of her knees just between his thighs, their bodies tangled and flushed in the darkness.

"We were too young."

She reached up and wiped her face, leaned back so she could regard him with shining blue eyes. "Maybe I was," she said. "I had a lot of growing up to do before he raped me."

In the space of a breath he had kicked the rest of the covers away and rolled over with her, so that her head rested on her pillow and he on top of her, his hands still at her face, eyes still wet. "Is that why you were afraid I was going to do that to you?"

"I don't know," she whispered. "I don't know. You didn't. I never...I was never afraid you were going to do that. Being with you was exciting, and scary, but not, not because I thought you would force me. You're not like that."

He traced her lips with his finger. "You afraid right now?"

She kissed his fingertip. "I've already said yes."

"What could I have done to stop him?"

"Nothing," she replied, her voice breaking. "I was there and I couldn't stop him."

He traced the side of her face, the pulse in her neck. "While I burned for you--"

"I thought about making sure I could never be hurt again. I lost my best friend the day I lost you. I thought I'd lost everything and he took away even more."

"You never lost me."

"When I closed the door, it was over," she whispered. She leaned up to kiss the side of his neck. "He made sure of that, he told me you'd never take me back, there was no use in trying..."

"And he was wrong, wasn't he."

She searched his eyes. "Sometimes I think he was right," she said. "After what you said tonight. There's no way you could take me back. I was the one who walked out, not him. I was the one who decided that how strongly I felt about you just wasn't enough."

"Do you still think that's true?"

She closed her eyes as he brushed her hair back from her face. "If I could go back to that day I would," she said. "I would have lived off ramen noodles and helped you study, I would have gotten my licensure and cheered at your football games. I would have been there to see you graduate. I would have made myself good enough to walk through your parents' front door and have them call me their daughter in law without remembering me as the bitch who hurt their son." She reached up and drew his face down to hers, until only a breath separated them. "I would have defied anyone, your parents or my father or anyone else, to tell us we were wrong."

"Are you proud to call me your husband?"

Nancy blinked up into his filling eyes. "I always have been," she whispered. "Sometimes I think that's what stopped me from ending it, even after him, even after he had turned me inside out and violated me, that remembering what you and I were was enough."

"I thought about it too," he said. "Because never in a million years did I think we would ever be together like this again."

--

Ned was still asleep when a small trapped moan escaped her throat.

"Nancy--"

The paralysis loosed and she drew breath with a sob, pushing away from the movement as the fear bled into full-throated screams. She was almost to her numb feet when a hand closed around her wrist, and her wide eyes rolled toward it, her mouth falling open.

"Nancy!"

She sank to her knees on the carpet, still pushing at the grasping hand with the heel of her own. Her screams faded into frustrated, desperate moans. As his other hand grabbed her arm she pushed herself to her feet again, tugging at him like a five year old.

"It's me! Nancy! What the hell, Nan--"

The fight left her then. She allowed him to pull her back onto the mattress, back into his embrace. She shook, startled by his every movement, and he stroked her hair back from her face, pressed his lips to her forehead.

"What's wrong," he breathed against her skin, sliding his hand down to her back, the other cupping her cheek. "Nan, are you all right?"

She swallowed against her dry throat and nodded, dully. "I'm okay," she breathed.

"What happened?"

"He was..." She reached up and ran her hand through her hair, then put her arm around him, held him close to her. He could still feel her shaking. A tear slipped down her cheek and onto his forearm. "He was in his cell and he was free, he was coming out for me..."

"Him?"

She nodded and took a sharp breath. "He's never done that before."

"What are you talking about," he said, his voice low.

She told him. With her arms up around his neck and her face against his shoulder she told him about the dreams she thought his presence would mute, but she had been wrong. He made her tell him about all the dreams she'd had, the ones while he was in Germany, and the more she said, the tighter his jaw became.

"Ned," she whispered, her face wet now, her skin damp where it touched his.

"Why didn't you tell me," he said, and his voice was so cold.

"You didn't ask for this," she replied. "You didn't sign on to be tied to some lunatic for the rest of your life. They're just dreams. Just bad dreams."

"If they're just dreams then you could tell me," he replied.

To that she had no answer.

--

When they woke the next morning she seriously considered calling in sick to work. She felt numb and incredibly tired, tears having dried hard onto her cheeks.

Michael, she remembered, and tossed back the covers, scowling. She couldn't miss her replacement's first day.

Sleet and snow had been falling steadily all night, and the dim light making its way through the curtains was muted and sullen. She dressed in black, wrapped a wool duster around her, and tramped through the slush out to her car.

She had read over his file and was fully prepared to dislike him. According to the reports of his supervisors he was good but inclined to cut corners, just cocky enough for his abilities as a field agent. The nature of their cases forbid such behavior.

She heard a tap and looked up, into Roberts' warm eyes. "He's here," he announced.

She smoothed her hair back under the barrettes, set her shoulders, and walked out to meet the guy who might very well replace her, if she did decide to go on permanent maternity leave.

The mug shot attached to his file had not done him justice. She felt her mouth go dry when she realized his gaze was centered on her. Whatever words of introduction Roberts was speaking fell against deaf ears.

He was gorgeous. Dark, but not quite black, hair, eyes the color of caramel, just taller than Roberts and dressed in charcoal grey suit and red tie. He took her hand and--

Whatever she'd been feeling, as she shook his hand, slowly faded. The confidence in his grasp, the dismissal of the wedding rings prominent on her finger... she felt her lip curl faintly.

He wasn't Ned.

At least, not under good lighting.

--

Stone was watching from his own desk, knowing at the back of his mind he shouldn't be staring but finding himself unable to stop. Nancy looked utterly taken with the new guy, at least until Roberts had left and the two of them had started talking to each other.

He found himself wishing she'd stare at him that way, and then remembered the stroke of her hand down her husband's cheek on the half-lit deck.

He smiled. Maybe Michael needed to see his competition.

--

Nancy didn't connect the gleam in Ellison's eye with her insistence that Nancy and Michael go out to lunch, until much later, after the two of them had been seated in booths a little too intimate for her liking, at a sandwich shop downtown.

"You seem like you're on top of your game," he said, arm stretched across the back of the booth, the expression on his face inappropriately relaxed for someone she had known so short a time. "Why are you training me to take your place?"

"Didn't Roberts tell you I'm pregnant?"

He shrugged. "Guess he thought it'd be better coming from you."

Her cell phone rang, and she answered it hurriedly. "Hey."

"Sorry it took me so long to get back to you," her husband said. "Did you still want to go out? I think I can get--"

"No, something came up," she replied. "I'll tell you about it later, and I'll definitely take a raincheck on lunch."

"Anytime," he said easily. "Love you."

"Love you," she replied.

Michael tilted his head. "That the guy who knocked you up?" he asked, after she hung up her phone.

Nancy stared at him for a minute. "Yeah," she replied, her voice icy. "That was him."

"How long do we have until you're on leave?" he asked, then smiled up at the waitress who brought their drinks.

Way too long, for my liking. "About five months," she replied. "Give or take. We're adopting a baby who's going to be born a little before this one."

"You really are a glutton for punishment, aren't you."

--

She walked into their house, fumbling for her ringing cell phone. His car was already in the driveway. She was an hour later than usual. Nothing thawing on the counter, she'd been too tired to remember dinner at seven o'clock in the morning.

Ned was seated indian-style in front of the crackling fireplace, in an old ivory sweater she remembered very well. The land phone was cradled to his ear. When he heard her entrance he turned, lips parted slightly, and ended the call; her phone chirped angrily to let her know she had missed it.

"Are you all right?"

She bolted the door behind her. She had looked down at the phone a dozen times, a lie trembling on her lips, but no strength in her to tell it. Her fingers danced across the keypad and the alarm system was activated.

"I'm fine," she replied, meeting his eyes. "Sorry I didn't call."

"I was getting worried."

He watched as she approached him, unbuttoning her jacket, draping it over the back of the couch. She unzipped her pants at the side and stepped out of them, folded them over the jacket, and walked to the kitchen in a grey silk camisole, long cream-smooth legs bare. Her fingers brushed against his on the way.

silk muted in the moonlight, her hand in his

His breath caught.

"What do you feel like?"

He followed her into the kitchen. The fingers of her left hand were fighting the air, one knee bent, foot crossed behind the other ankle, her hair tumbling down her back as she gazed into the sterile light of the refrigerator. Toenails stained rose pink.

He raised his chin. "Takeout Chinese." A challenge in his voice, but it wasn't that much of a gamble.

She turned her head and regarded him from over her shoulder, did not break his gaze as the door glided back into place. She was smiling faintly. "Takeout it is," she said. "You order. I'm going to take a bath."

Her fingers were still fighting the air.

--

She felt sore. Sore and exhausted, as she watched Ned fall asleep. The sight made a wordless dread rise in her, but just before she followed him, she murmured, "Ned, hold me."

He put his arm over her, and his hand rested over their child.

--

When he woke the next morning, Nancy had curled away from him, his chest to her back, his right arm looped over her torso so that his hand was resting against her still-flat abdomen. Her right arm was resting over his, her fingertips resting between his fingers.

He stretched and rolled onto his back, and Nancy made a faint protesting noise in her sleep as his hand moved. He rubbed his left fingers over his face and yawned, his eyes heavy with exhaustion. The last time he had collapsed to the mattress, the swimming neon letters of the clock radio had read some time after 4.

Something dark on her neck. He brushed her hair aside.

A hickey.

He vaguely remembered inflicting it, his face buried against her neck, wordless pressure rising in him, the sound of her laughter. He hadn't given her a hickey since he was seventeen, she sixteen, and her father had forbid them see each other for a week after that. And after, from fear and then force of habit, he did not mark her as his in that way.

Secret places, perhaps.

He rolled out of bed, leaving her to the intrusion of the promised alarm as he climbed into the shower.

He didn't think he'd had that many beers but the night before was all blurred motion and shadow and--

He groped a hand over his back, and felt a sudden sting when he scratched. When he emerged from the shower and wiped the condensation from the mirror, livid red scratches showed down his back, the dried track of her nails.

she was on fire last night, and i was breathing gasoline

He grinned, to himself.

He walked back into the bedroom, towel snug about his waist, as she was beginning to respond to their blaring alarm clock. The sole of his foot passed over something smooth, and he looked down to see a tangle of scarves on the floor. Nancy put her palms over her face and the lines of her wrists were faintly red.

He felt his mouth go dry.

She accepted the kiss he leaned down to give her, but when his movements became more deliberate she moved back. "Have to take a shower," she said, blinking, faint smile on her face, and she kicked the covers aside and shut the bathroom door behind her.

--

Another morning. The alarm went off. Nancy smacked it with her hand and put her head back under the covers, groaning.

Ned had almost sunk beneath the surface again, falling back into blissful sleep, when he heard Nancy mumble "I don't wanna go..." She sat up and dry-washed her face a few times. "Hey."

"What," Ned replied, softly, not wanting to move.

"I'm gonna call in sick today."

"Good," he purred, reaching over for her. She relaxed back down to the mattress and into his embrace, then pressed a kiss against his cheek.

"Why don't you call in sick too?" she asked.

Ned opened his eyes and looked up at the ceiling, considering. "Let me call in," he said. "Maybe I could swing it."

--

"I love you," she told him suddenly.

They were downstairs, on the couch, her feet tucked under his leg, halfheartedly watching something. She was gazing at him with such intensity that he was momentarily startled. The audience laughed on the television and Ned thumbed the volume down.

"I love you too," he said, reaching over for her. She was so rare to initiate. At the touch of his skin on hers she climbed into his lap, traced her hands over the lines of his face, her eyes searching his. She laced her fingers behind his neck.

"I mean it," she whispered. "Thanks for staying off to hang out with me."

"Hey," he replied, running his fingers down the side of her face. "It's all right, baby."

She leaned in and rested her face against his shoulder, his touch still trailing over her skin. Her fingers against the back of his neck.

They didn't move from that tangle for a while, and Ned felt a curious sort of protectiveness about her that he couldn't quite explain, but when he suggested a movie she extricated herself anyway and climbed to her feet. They dressed warmly, had lunch at a tiny Indian place, hit the earliest movie they could find, and went for ice cream after. The movie hadn't been particularly engaging, but the seats in the theater were easily joined and they had made out like teenagers. Nancy was still gazing at him with that bright, flushed look when her cell rang.

He was licking the back of his spoon at the time, and when he looked up at her it was like someone had flipped a switch. The color had drained out of her face, the expression in her eyes was resigned and disappointed. "I have to take this," she said, and answered it quietly as she walked just out of the ice cream shop.

Work, he thought, and took a more determined spoonful of his dessert. He watched his wife pace back and forth, one hand to her forehead, as she apparently remonstrated with whoever was on the other end of the line. Maybe her trainee was throwing a fit, or something. From the way Nancy talked about him, Ned saw Michael as, in turns, a patronizing and arrogant jerk or someone she could occasionally lower herself to put up with.

When she walked back in he smiled at her. "All taken care of?"

She appeared to make some sort of decision, then, and her eyes turned thoughtful as they caught his. "Yeah," she said, and smiled at him. "All taken care of."

When they arrived back at the house he installed himself on the couch to do some paperwork for the next morning, and Nancy went into the kitchen to make the preparations for some lavish evening meal, promising she'd make something she didn't normally have the time or energy to do. When she read off the menu he looked up at her, their eyes met, and his murmured praise trailed into nothing as she walked, with thinly veiled intent, to him from across the room, and he tossed the papers onto the coffee table and took her into his arms as she climbed into his lap.

They were making out again. Like they used to do when she still lived with her father and

before, that was the only word, the only reference

they were alone in the house, Hannah gone and Carson not expected back for hours, the television lighting their faces on as some half-apologetic alibi. She kissed him hard and he found his way under the layers of warm clothing to the shocked expose of skin just above the small of her back. But the lines which had frustrated him were gone now, and she was pushing him back to the cushions, onto his back, her hair falling forward and brushing his cheeks.

A timer went off. In a blur of limbs and murmured apologies she was suddenly gone, the living room had faded in the twilight, and Ned was left staring at the ceiling. He ran a hand through his hair, swallowed, and as he turned his head Nancy was coming back to him, her arms out to him, and he abandoned all pretense of doing any work for the rest of the night.

--

Another Thursday.

She hadn't called to say she was skipping her session, and Ned didn't like to return to an empty house, so he was spending that time in a bar, with his friends, halfheartedly watching ESPN and shooting pool.

Scott had just stepped up to the dartboard when his cell phone burred quietly in his pocket, against his chest. The bar was so loud that he wouldn't have been able to hear it ring. He made a dismissing gesture to his friends and walked out onto the street, where the wind was blowing through the fabric of his coat and shirt, straight through to the bone. When he flipped open his cell, their house number greeted him.

"Nan?" he answered. "Sorry, I lost track of time."

Maybe because his stomach usually led him home, to see whatever she'd cooked, but the guys had ordered a few plates of potato skins and that had been enough to stave off the worst of it. And the guys had been expressing their condolences that he had to put up with a pregnant wife for the next few months.

She cleared her throat, and he winced against the imagined force of her epithets. But her voice, when it came, was soft.

"I know I don't usually do this," she said. She sniffed. "Can you come home?"

"Of course," he replied, immediately, pressing the phone against his ear, against the howling wind. "Are you all right?"

"I'll be okay when you get here," she replied. Then she took a breath. "I love you."

"Love you too," he replied.

The guys groaned when he told them. Steven Hyer said this would be it, the last time they'd see him until the baby's eighteenth birthday, and they should buy him another round. Ned shrugged it off and walked out. He had visions of their house ransacked and Nancy on the floor, bleeding, the phone still cradled in her fist. All the lights on, broken dishes and smashed appliances and rent fabric on the floor.

He shook his head. She would have told him, and called the police besides.

There were no police cars out front when he pulled up, barely stopping to pull his parking break before he climbed out of the car. The keypad glowed but the house itself was dark. He took the steps by twos and opened their bedroom door, his heart pounding.

Fear and adrenaline etched the scene into his mind. She was sitting up in bed, a lamp illuminating her features, a book open but forgotten on her lap. She wore her customary cotton sleeping shirt and pants, but a heavy terrycloth robe over them. Her eyes were startled, staring at him as he pushed open the door.

"Ned," she cried, breathless, pushed the covers back, the book falling to the floor. He opened his arms and she was in them in the next second, her heart pounding against his, face buried against his shoulder.

"Hey," he said, reaching down to push her hair back.

"I'm just so glad you're home," she said, and he was startled to see tears in her eyes.

"Are you all right?"

She reached up and dashed the tears from her eyelashes. "I'll be okay," she murmured. She kept an arm looped around his waist, though.

"I'm sorry," he said again, lamely. No broken dishes, no shattered glass, no blood on her face. But her voice, he could have sworn, in her voice...

"Did someone try to break in?" he asked. "Was that what made you afraid?"

She shook her head, not meeting his eyes. "I held off calling you as long as I could," she said. "I don't know what was wrong, but I think it's okay now."

"Did your session with the doctor go okay?"

She nodded, but he saw her mouth turn down slightly, and wasn't sure she was even aware of it. "Went fine."

"All right."

He took his clothes off and washed his face, made himself ready for bed, the entire time with Nancy near him, her hand in his, on his shoulder, against his skin. Sometimes she moved away from him, as though ashamed at maintaining such intrusive physical contact with him, but he would always retrieve her hand and watch her face relax ever so slightly.

When they went to bed she curled up close to him, and he put his arm around her, watching her breathe in the grey wash of faint light. Her eyes fluttered closed, finally, the tension ebbing from her muscles.

Only when he could hold out no longer did he finally ease himself under the covers, and Nancy was immediately against him, as though afraid that only contact was keeping him in bed with her. He didn't sense anything wrong, he kept telling himself; only the alarm Nancy's call had wakened in him. That was all. Just some remnant of their time apart.

He brushed a kiss against her forehead, and she stirred slightly, eyes closed.

"It's started," she breathed.

--

She said she'd be home.

What he felt at first wasn't fear, not really. He felt lazy and she didn't have anything obviously thawing for the evening meal, so he ordered out for pizza and saved her plenty, the entire time waiting for the lock to click back, for her to walk through the door. But she didn't.

Usually when she went over during sessions she would call and let him know. But he was loathe to interrupt them; maybe she and Strathman were having a breakthrough and he would just destroy their concentration with a phone call.

He was seated on the couch, facing the television, but had not heard a thing coming through their five-point-one-channel stereo system since he'd turned it on. He thought about going upstairs, playing a game on his console, but realized that he could not move. Literally could not.

He had to see her walk through that door.

He looked over at the land-line phone, charging on its base, and thought again about calling her. The worry had spread from nonexistent and easily dismissed to a nagging impossible to ignore. She had never been this late before. Something had to be wrong. Last time this had happened he had called her, and she had appeared, as though willed into existence by his resolve. Ned stood and was halfway to the telephone when he heard her key in the lock.

"Nan?"

"Man, I'm famished," she said, hair loosely swept back from her face, lips curved in a wide smile. She looked out of breath. Her eyes overbright, sparkling.

The sudden suspicion bloomed and he shoved it from his mind without another thought. She wouldn't, she had sworn, she would never. She and the doctor had had a good session and he was...

He almost felt jealous.

"I got us some pizza," he said, for lack of anything better to say, watching her drape her scarf over the back of the couch, remove her gloves finger-by-finger and place those in her coat pocket. She breezed into the kitchen, heels clicking on the lineoleum, and walked back out with a slice in her hand and a bite in her mouth. She sat down opposite him and wolfed down a few more bites before she turned to him, inquisitve look on her face.

"Still hungry?"

Any further appetite he'd had was gone. "Go ahead," he said, gesturing vaguely. Once she finished the slice she produced a napkin, wiped off her fingers, removed her shoes. He half-watched her, waiting, but his patience wore thin.

"So, where were you?"

"The session ran over," she called, from the kitchen. "I would have called, but you know how it is."

He bit back a reply. "Sure," he called back. She walked back in carrying a canned caffeine-free soda and a few more slices piled on a paper plate.

"Anything good on?"

And, like that, the subject was dropped. Once she finished her meal she scooted closer to him on the couch, rested her head on his shoulder. They watched in silence for a while.

During a commercial break he turned to her, kissed her gently. "Love you," he said, his eyes searching hers.

"Love you too," she said, lightly, and reached up to kiss him back.