He had spent the first eighteen years of his life in this house, and sixteen of those had been happy. Relatively. Captain Kirk and Kojak had been more father to him than his old man, but he'd had his ma and Diana, and neither of his parents had ever washed his hands in drain cleaner or fucked him up the ass with the toilet plunger. He hadn't fallen asleep to the sound of his parents fighting over the kids and the bills, and he hadn't spent his nights covering his sister's ears so she wouldn't hear fist on jawbone. There had been food on the table and clothes on his back, and once in a while, there'd been the time and the money to take in a Rangers game at the Garden.

Then Diana had died in the fall of '93 and taken all the light in the house with her. He suspected it had been buried beneath six feet of graveyard dirt. Shadows massed in the corners and underneath the stairs and pooled at the foot of the basement stairs, where he often sat to escape the thundering silence of his sister's absence and his father's disinterest. The darkness had even stained the doors and kitchen cabinets, aged them with the corrosive touch of grief and unspoken anger.

There had been more money to do things after Diana had slipped off to heaven with no sound but the snapping of her neck, but no one had wanted to do them. He hadn't gone to a hockey for nine years after her death because the scraping of steel on smooth ice had reminded him of the grinding of bone, and the echo of a slapshot was the snapping of her neck as she stepped off the riser and into forever. He'd played lacrosse his junior and senior years of high school because it was hockey on grass, soundless except for the rustle of trampled grass and the jostling of teenage bodies; when he'd watched the Rangers on TV, he'd watched with the sound off so as not to awaken rotten memories.

When he'd finally set foot in a hockey arena again, it had been because Rebecca had begged him to take her, and he could deny her nothing. He'd spent the first period watching her watch the game and swallowing the bile in his throat, but when she'd kissed him during first intermission and slipped her frozen hand into his, the knot of guilty apprehension had uncoiled, and he'd been overwhelmed by a giddy euphoria. He'd bought her cotton candy and a large rainbow ice, and they'd cuddled for warmth, her wrapped in his leather trenchcoat and nestled against his suddenly-light chest. He'd bought her a Messier jersey at the souvenir stand on the concourse, and she'd worn it to bed that night. The fabric had been cool and soft under his hands and between their bodies as they'd moved together in sinuous, lazy rhythm, and to this day, to see her in it was sexier than expensive lingerie.

His father had loved baseball once upon a time, had taken him to his first ballgame when he was ten, but he couldn't remember the last time he'd gone to a game. He'd invited him to the ballpark one spring to tell him that he'd enrolled in the police academy, but the old man had never shown, and he'd wound up sitting alone in a cheap, plastic seat, eating peanuts that tasted of grave dirt and explaining the nuances of the game to Diana's ghost. He'd never called to ask why he'd never turned up, and at the time he'd told himself it was because he didn't care, but in truth, he'd been too afraid of the answer.

He and his father's limited communication had become non-existent after Diana died, smothered by disappointment and guilt. His father had stopped calling him Donnie like he'd always done, and when he shambled downstairs to breakfast, there were no hearty pats on the back or grunted inquiries about his plans after school. Just shuttered glances over ceramic coffee mugs and morose slurps of straight black Folgers. Diana's parting had severed all ties between them, and they had moved in separate circles within the same house. Ma had acted as the conduit and purveyor of paternal law from the on high of the La-Z-Boy in the den and done her best to pretend that the frosty silence that blanketed the dinner table was nothing more than the expected symptom of domestic bliss.

His mother had done the best she could after Diana's death, had taken off the black veil of mourning faster than either him or his old man. Not because she had wanted to, God knew; half of her had died that night with her daughter, and though her eyes were dry within two weeks of the funeral, they were red-rimmed and haggard for years afterward, and haunted by the emptiness of family minus one. Grief had shortened and withered her, hollowed her cheeks and belly and whittled her joints to sparse, jagged points with cruel, gouging fingers. Grief had touched her thick, chestnut hair and made it grey. Grief had used her up, and thirteen years after Diana died, she was still trying to fill the void with chatter and color and the frenetic chirp and clatter of dishes and tableware.

She had set her sorrow aside because there had been no other choice. Pop had spent all his time at the stationhouse, exacting his revenge on the dirtbags and junkies of the city, and on the rare occasion he came home, he stumped into the bedroom, closed the door, and pored over pictures of his dead daughter in the family albums, snapshots of one-dimensional perfection. He looked at them and told himself that such was the way it had always been, carefree and happy, never mind that Diana wasn't smiling for him in those pictures, and never had been.

Not that he'd been much better. He'd closeted himself in his room and vomited his aborted sorrow into the toilet every morning. He'd stayed out as late as he could after school, jerking around on the lacrosse fields or helping Mr. Fitch down the corner deli by bucking boxes until the sun set and turned the sky as red as Diana's favorite hooded sweatshirt and painted her bittersweet memory behind the clouds. Sometimes, Mr. Fitch would give him ten bucks for his troubles, and he'd buy a package of red licorice-Diana's favorite candy-and choke the cloying sweetness down in sticky gobbets on the front steps of the church. Most of the time, he loved her enough to swallow the pieces, but sometimes, he couldn't and when he spat them out, they glistened on the dirty, stone steps like blood clots.

The Roman Catholic boy who had sat dutifully through catechism had shuddered at the defilement of God's house, but it had been an act of petty rebellion. God had stolen his baby sister, punished her for his disobedience, and a bastard like that deserved no respect. So, he'd spat candy pieces on the steps and smashed them beneath his sneakers and left bloody footprints on the sidewalk to mark his path.

When he wasn't crouching on the steps with sugary blood on his teeth like a fallen gargoyle, he was inside the church, huddled on the front pew and staring at the cross mounted behind the altar. Jesus hung on it with his artfully bronzed arms outstretched and a meticulously rendered expression of Divine agony on his face. He wore a crown of thorns, but they were blunted and harmless, not sharp like the ones that sank into his chest and guts whenever he thought of the coffin that had once rested at the altar, covered in roses and baby's breath.

He'd sat in the pew with his hands fisted in his lap and the smell of rotten absolution in his nose. Sometimes, the nuns would slip into the nave and flit on the periphery of his burning vision like black rose petals, trailing lavender and old age behind them like perfume. They'd never spoken to him, and he had been glad of that because inside the church, the milk of kindness curdled in his veins, and all that was left were hollow bones and empty spaces.

Sometimes, Father Carmichael had emerged from the sacristy to sit beside him, and then the taste of red licorice was hot and cloying on his tongue. He would try to recoil from his serene presence, but respect for the clergy had been pounded into him since infancy, and he could only sit, cowed and miserable, beneath the gentle weight of his hand on his shoulder. He'd wanted to scream at him, tell him to stop thrusting his well-intended fingers into open wounds, but the words would never come, stayed by the aftertaste of candy and the horrified certainty that if he pissed off the priest, he'd be sent home, where Diana peered from the shadows and haunted his dreams. So he sat and tasted the sugar of sin and the salt of unshed tears until Father Carmichael had released him with a parting benediction and a soft goodbye.

He'd thought of those youthful tantrums on his wedding day. Father Carmichael had offered to restructure the ceremony so that they could exit smoothly through the rear of the church and down the accessible ramp, but Rebecca had steadfastly refused to start her marriage by skulking by the dumpsters and torn trash bags and marking it as an unworthy union in the eyes of God. So, he'd promised to take her down the front steps, and he had, offering her his body as support while she tottered and lurched to level ground, hands locked around his steadying arm. It had been a slow, patient process, and he'd painstakingly guided her wobbling feet onto solid ground and around his unwashed sins. He hadn't wanted her tainted by him so early in their marriage, her pretty dress marred by ancient bloodstains she couldn't see.

His mother had kept life running after the family had fallen apart. She had swept dust and Diana from the corners and scrubbed her from the floors and bathroom fixtures. He could remember entire weekends passed with the sound of her scrub brush on the edge of his consciousness. She had logged countless hours on her hands and knees, scrubbing the bathroom grout with a toothbrush to purge her lost child from every last nook and cranny of the house in which she no longer lived. She had used enough bleach and Comet to make his eyes water, and when she was finished and the water in the bucket was foggy with bits of his sister's yesterdays and unformed tomorrows, she had opened the windows and let her fly away on the fumes.

She had fixed his breakfasts and washed his clothes and not asked embarrassing questions about the stains that had sometimes stiffened the crotch of his shorts or the crumpled tissues she found crammed underneath his mattress. She'd remembered his birthday and stuffed his Christmas stocking with candy canes and mittens long after growing up had killed Santa Claus and left him to rot in a rat-infested alley with winos and broken dreams. She'd painted on a smile broad enough to obscure the two empty seats at his high school graduation and taken pictures to commemorate his graduation from the police academy while his father sat in stone-faced indifference beside her. She'd also made excuses for him when he'd left shortly thereafter. She had tried to love for two with half of a broken heart.

It was his mother he was watching now. She bustled around the small kitchen in the act of making him a tuna melt on toasted rye. She hummed as she plucked two slices of toast from the toaster, and then she scuttled to the nearby countertop for the bowl of chilled tuna.

"Be ready in a minute, sweetie," she called over her shoulder. "Oh, I wish you'd told me you were coming over. I'd've made something special. Look at you; you're skin and bones still."

"'S'okay, ma. I was just in the neighborhood an' thought I'd stop by. You don't have to go to any trouble on my account."

"Trouble?" she scoffed. "It's no trouble to feed my boy. That's what mothers do." She dolloped a spoonful of tuna onto a slab of toast and spread it with brisk efficiency.

He smiled in spite of himself, a wistful twist of lips that went all the way to his heart. She had been making his favorite sandwiches for as long as he could remember. He had watched her as a boy, seated at this same table with a glass of cold milk in front of him. The sandwiches had been peanut butter and jelly or bologna then, and she had painstakingly cut off the crusts and cut them diagonally across the middle. Sometimes, there had been two-one for him and one for his sister-and they had always been served with a kiss and a smile.

She dropped the knife into the sink with a clatter, topped his sandwich with the remaining slice of toast, and placed the sandwich on a small plate. She carried it to the table and set it in front of him, and then she bent and planted a kiss on the crown of his head.

"Such a handsome man," she said fondly. "So much better since you cut your hair." She glanced at the table and clapped her hands together. "Oh, I almost forgot."

"Ma," he protested. "You don't have to-," he protested, but she had already gone to the refrigerator and retrieved an enormous garlic pickle.

"Nonsense, I don't," she chided as she brought the pickle to him wrapped in a paper towel. "Someone should spoil you."

He decided to ignore the unpleasant implication of her declaration and picked up his sandwich instead. It was warm and crumbly in his hands. "Thanks, ma," he said, and took a prodigious bite.

She wiped her hands on a dishtowel and sat in the chair opposite him. "It's so good to see you," she said. "But you're so peaky, honey." She reached out to brush a phantom strand of hair from his forehead. "You need more iron in your diet. I'll give you some good recipes to take home, mm? God knows what Rebecca feeds you. Not much from the looks of things."

"Ma," he began, but she cut him off with a stern shake of her head.

"Don't talk with your mouth full. It's rude. I taught you better."

He dutifully chewed and swallowed his food. "Rebecca feeds me fine, ma," he said when he had finished. "We make dinner together five nights a week, and I grab takeout to bring home the other two."

"Hmpf, that explains a lot," she sniffed disdainfully. "All that greasy food is bad for your stomach, especially since-," She trailed off, and her chin trembled. "Your accident," she finished weakly, and studied the tabletop through rapidly fluttering eyelids.

His heart constricted at her obvious anguish and her valiant struggle to hide it.

Rebecca did it, too, he thought sadly. It's how we ended up here in the first place.

"Ma-,"

"Anyway," she said stubbornly, "that explains a lot, not least of which is why you're so pale and tired all the time. What is she thinking, having you cook dinner for her after you've been out on the streets? I've prepared all your father's meals for thirty-two years without any help. His and yours. And I cleaned the house and washed your clothes and did the shopping. She got you doing that, too? Wouldn't surprise me."

He took a deep breath and willed himself to remain calm. She was his mother, and love had made her afraid, and he wouldn't hurt her if he didn't have to. He dropped his partially-eaten sandwich onto his plate and pushed it away. His appetite had vanished.

"I know you did, ma, and I'm grateful, 'cause I wouldn't be here without you. But Rebecca does right by me. She gets my food on the table and takes care of my dry-cleanin' and makes sure I got a warm bed to come home to. She just has to do it a little differently, is all, and yeah, sometimes she needs help."

"There's a difference between needing occasional help and running you into the ground so that when push comes to shove, you can't look out for yourself," she snapped, and her hands curled into trembling, blue-veined fists.

His stomach and legs were suddenly leaden with stunned disappointment, and he slumped in his chair, his tongue numb and sour inside his mouth. "I don't believe it," he croaked. "Unfuckin'believable." A laugh that bore a perilous resemblance to a sob.

"Don? What is it? What's wrong?" She reached out a to stroke his forehead, but he flinched and evaded her solicitous fingers.

"She told me," he murmured. "She told me twice, but I didn't wanna believe her."

"I don't under-,"

"I didn't wanna believe that my mother, who brought me into this world and taught me everythin' that I know about bein' a decent fu-a decent human bein', would sit in a hospital waitin' room and tell my grievin', terrified wife that what happened was her fault."

"I was terrified for you," she protested, and tears filled her eyes. She reached for his hand, but he retreated and pushed his chair from the table with the balky scrape of wood on warped linoleum.

"And that gave you the right to blame her? What the hell is wrong with you, ma? When are you gonna get it through your head that she carries my heart in her tiny fu-tiny hands? You attacked her, but you might as well've been attackin' me."

"That's not fair," she wailed. She was ashen and gazed at him in stricken entreaty.

"You know what else ain't fair? It's havin' the people I trusted the most takin' advantage of me getting my guts blown out and rubbin' her disability in her face."

"How dare you?" she roared, and her complexion turned a deep, ugly maroon. "I would never- It was never about her. I didn't give a damn about her. You were my son, my baby, the only one I had left, and I-I-," Her chest heaved, and she dissolved into wracking sobs. "I wasn't going to lose you, too," she moaned. "I couldn't. Not because of her."

Well, ain't this déjà vu? said the father that lived inside his head as he sat frozen in his chair and watched his mother weep. You been here before. Sixteen and standin' in the doorway of your sister's room while she made the bed over and over again and smoothed the sheets with tremblin' hands. Watchin' her clean up for a just in case that was never gonna happen and drown in denial and misery. She was fallin' apart, and you couldn't help her 'cause it was all your fault, and a soul ain't a broken vase that you can put together again with steady hands and some glue. It's infinitely more fragile, and if you were havin' any doubts on that score, the summer you spent puttin' your guts and Rebecca back together dispelled 'em nice and neatly. You couldn't help her then, and you can't help her now.

The sense of déjà vu only increased as he rose from the chair on wooden, jointless legs and moved to enfold her. "'M so sorry, ma," he mumbled as she burrowed into him like a frightened animal. 'M so sorry for scarin' you. I didn't mean it, ma. She was right behind me, I swear, and I thought she was gonna be all right. 'M sorry for growin' up to be blown up in an apartment buildin' on Sunday mornin' because some whackjob got a bug up his ass about 9/11. 'M sorry for hurtin' you again.

I'm sorry. It was all he ever said anymore. The bombing had reduced his once varied and colorful lexicon to those two powerless words, and he said them on an endless loop. To the families of the six people he had not been fast enough to save. To Rebecca, who clung to him now with fingers of iron, and who now spent her days listening for the heavy knock of a white-gloved hand upon the door. To Mac, who blamed him for Truby, and to all the victims Truby's stink had robbed of justice. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Funny thing was that no matter how often he said them, their weight never lessened. In fact, they grew heavier with every utterance, soaked up the sorrow and recrimination of those he had sought to console until they stifled his lungs and crushed his heart inside his chest. Sometimes he was sure he was drowning on them, could taste them as they filled his mouth and nose, chlorine and silt, pool water and mud flats from the Hudson.

He began to rock to and fro as his mother sobbed. "'S'all right, ma. I'm still here. The bastard didn't get the job done."

"But he could have. He could have," she insisted shrilly, and clung to him all the more tightly.

"But he didn't. And even if he had, it wouldn't have been Rebecca's fault. None of it was. She loves me, ma, and she did right by me when it mattered. Even told me I was good-lookin' with a tube shoved up my nose."

"I never said she was stupid," came the peevish, watery retort from the vicinity of his armpit, and he bit the inside of his cheek to quash a bray of surprised laughter.

"Naw, she sure isn't," he said softly, and petted the soft wisps of hair that had faded to grey, dusted by time and too much unhappiness. "You taught me better than that, remember?"

She raised her gaze from the damp fabric of his shirt and offered him a sad smile. "I did, didn't I?" She patted his shoulder and stood on tiptoe to plant a salty, too-warm kiss on his cheek.

He dropped his arms, and she brushed past him and gathered his half-eaten sandwich and untouched pickle and glass of milk. "You didn't eat much, sweetheart. You sure you're all right?" She spared him a concerned, red-rimmed glance as she carried the leavings to the trashcan.

"My stomach's fine, ma. I just got a lot on my mind." He ran his fingers through his hair.

"Anything you want to talk about? You know I'm always here."

It was the perfect opening to broach the subject that had drawn him to this house of sour memories, but he hesitated. She was fragile, just as broken as Rebecca, and he had no desire to inflict more hurt. He opened his mouth, sidled from foot to foot, and closed his mouth again.

You don't wanna hurt her for the third time in your life, a three-strike felon with blood and spirit on your hands. You've tried to be a good son, to atone for the unforgivable mistake you made when you were sixteen and stupid, and for a while, you thought you were makin' progress. You got your diploma and your A.A. and graduated from the academy near the top of your class, and you got your shield three weeks after you came up for it. You were the youngest homicide dick in the history of the department, younger than me, and you came home the conquerin' hero. She was so proud'a you, and all that was left was to settle down with a nice girl and give her a few grandbabies.

And then you brought home Rebecca, and all the goodwill you'd built up started to evaporate. You'd brought home a girl-the girl of your dreams, as a matter of fact-but not only wasn't she the girl your ma had pictured, she was her bitterest disappointment. Visions of grandchildren that had been dancin' in her head since you called to say you were bringin' your girl for dinner withered behind her eyes and joined the dust that had settled over the spaces on the wall where your sister's school pictures had hung.

It was nothing she said; your ma never had an uncivil tongue in her head, and she'd rather die than be rude to guests in her house. It was in all the words that went unspoken and the way she looked at Rebecca when the latter was distracted with the bothersome mechanics of handling her salad fork. Disbelieving and wounded, like she couldn't believe you'd get her hopes up just to spit on them.

She tried to cover it for your sake, but you knew, and so did Rebecca. She never said a word about it, but she was quiet on the ride home, so quiet that you were afraid she was rethinkin' the whole engagement, that when you got home, she was gonna slip the ring from her finger and set it on the coffee table in concession of defeat. Two blocks from this house, she rested her hand on your thigh and flashed you a faint smile.

I'm sorry I didn't make such a good impression, she said. I guess I shouldn't have chosen Copernicus as my opening conversational gambit.

You suddenly realized you'd stopped breathin', and then you laughed because you'd been convinced that she was gonna say somethin' else entirely. Naw, doll, you managed between sniggers. You did outstandin'. I think they were just a little shocked, that's all. I never brought up your- You gestured dismissively in the direction of the trunk, where her surrogate legs made strange bedfellows with the spare doughnut tire.

She blinked. You never told them?

Didn't think it mattered. You drummed your fingers on the steerin' wheel while you waited for the light to change. I'm not marryin' you for your snazzy wheels. You made a show of lettin' your gaze travel over her legs. You do have some sweet legs, though.

She giggled. Liar.

Don't worry, doll. They'll come around.

But she never did come around, your ma. She spent most of your engagement tryin' to talk you outta takin' the long walk down the aisle, and when the big day came, she looked like she'd swallowed a mouthful of lye. You thought things would get better once you settled into marriage and she realized that done was done, but then came that first Christmas, when she told you Rebecca wasn't welcome to sleep in your old room with you. Like you were a pair of horny teenagers, and not properly wed in the eyes of the Church.

You hadn't even thought of fuckin' her under our roof until she brought it up, and then you were tempted just for spite. You gathered your beddin' and slept on the livin' room floor with her. You couldn't bring yourself to fuck her, but you did neck somethin' fierce, and sometime in the proceedin's, she wrapped her cool fingers around your hot prick and jerked you off.

Her fingers were so gentle, like she knew the violence of raw need was goin' too far, an insult she would not cast upon the house you grew up in. She could cuss like a sailor, your girl, and make it sound like music, but that night, she only whispered that she loved you, loved you dearest, while her hands worked their clumsy magic inside your boxers.

It was surreal and forbidden to be getting your rocks off on the same floor where you and Diana had watched Saturday mornin' cartoons and played Monopoly, and you felt a twinge of guilt when you thought of your little sister watchin' from between the branches of the Christmas tree. On the other hand, it had been a feverish fantasy growin' up, and more than once, you'd sat on the couch or lain in your bed and stroked it to thoughts of nailin' the girlfriend of the moment in our house.

And there was Rebecca, makin' it reality on Christmas Eve, bringin' you off under the baleful gaze of the plastic Santa your ma had set up by the coat rack. Maybe that was why it felt so good, and why you made so much damn noise. Or maybe it was because you got an ugly stab of rebellious satisfaction from the fact that you were lovin' your girl right under her nose and there was nothin' your ma could do about it.

Rebecca had to smother your grunts and gasps with hot, frantic, open-mouthed kisses while you pumped into her hand, and it wasn't enough when you came into the cup of her palm and between her coaxing fingers. You sagged beneath the sheets, boneless and light inside the skin, and traded breathless kisses with her while you came down and twitched in her sweaty palm. You used the edge of the sheets to clean off your thighs and her hand. She was a part of this house and the life you'd lived in it whether your ma liked it or not.

You were up with the sound of me shufflin' into the kitchen to turn on the percolator. Neither of you said mum about your doin's by the glow of the Christmas lights, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to put two bodies together. You were smilin' like the cat that ate the fuckin' canary, and Rebecca was far too happy for a woman who'd been told she couldn't sleep with her husband on Christmas Eve. You might'a gotten one over on your ma, but you didn't wanna subject Rebecca to the poisonous atmosphere of this house any longer than you had to, so you bundled her off not five minutes after the last present had been unwrapped. Your ma was convinced that was all Rebecca's idea, and so that was another mark against her.

But the worst and darkest mark against her has been the lack of grandchildren. You're comin' up on four years of marriage, and there still ain't been the patter of little feet. Since your baby sister died, your ma's been pinin' for another soul to fill the void, a piece of the future that burbled and walked and talked and chased away old pains. An empty vessel with your face to be filled with the knowledge she'd never gotten to pass to her angel. And with every month that Rebecca's stomach doesn't round with new life and renewed hope, her desperation and bitterness grows.

And then you go and get your ass blown up and almost leave both of them behind with nothing but an abundance of memories and scars.

Maybe it's best if you just let the mystery of the papers drop before you hurt them more.

Except he couldn't. He was sure that they held the answers to everything, the magic words that would undo the damage wrought by Lessing and his pussy bomb. His scars might be with him for the rest of his life, but he could sing the secret song that would slow Rebecca's frantically-beating heart and return the warmth and awareness to her eyes. She would stop looking at him like he was a dead man walking. He could kiss her and not taste blood and stifled terror. But only if he knew what was on those papers.

"Actually, yeah," he said at last. "Hawkes mentioned that while I was in the hospital, you asked Rebecca to sign some papers." Casually curious.

She froze, suddenly white as parchment paper. "Oh?" Strangled. She resumed her scraping of his sandwich plate, and the tines of his fork on cheap porcelain reminded him of the screams of a smack junkie coming off a high in central holding.

His cop instincts reared their head, feral and relentless, and his mouth went dry. Bingo. "What were they, ma?" he pressed.

Her eyes were raw and anguished inside her bleached face, and the fork stuttered in her convulsive grip. "N-nothing, sweetie. Nothing." She dropped her gaze to the trashcan and redoubled her efforts to clean the plate of every crumb. The fork wailed.

Are you erasin' me, ma, or tryin' to work the blood off your hands?

"Ma?" Louder now, and he closed the distance between them. His pulse pounded in his temples and the heavy flesh of his balls.

She recoiled. "It was nothing," she insisted shrilly, and the tines were a continuous, discordant howl.

"If it was nothin', ma, then how come you don't wanna tell me about 'em?" Calm, persuasive, the same tone he used to calm rabbity vics and high-strung suspects.

She gave a jerky shrug. "We've had a nice visit. Why ruin it with this unpleasantness?"

He swallowed a bitter laugh. There was nothing nice about this visit. This house and the people in it were tainted, haunted by a ghost despite their efforts to erase her from their lives. There were no pictures on the walls, and Diana's mementoes had been donated to Goodwill, parceled out to unsuspecting people who had plucked pieces of her from the bargain bin, but she lingered here. She had cursed the house with her absence and exiled him from it with the somnolent thump of sifting damp earth onto a coffin lid.

"Ma. I need to know. What was in those papers you asked her to sign?" He enunciated each word with clipped precision.

There was only breath between them now, and his abdomen brushed her elbow. The hard point grazed the wattled scar beneath his navel, and he instinctively braced himself for a bright point of agony even though there had been no pain in months, only phantom twinges conjured by an uneasy mind and easily brushed aside by love and willpower.

She huddled over the trashcan, the plate and fork now held like sword and shield in her hands. She was a small, cowed animal backed into a corner, and he loomed over her like pestilential shadow.

"What does it matter now? You're better."

Because I'm better, but my life is still fucked up. My wife is still fucked up, starin' at me with plastic eyes and livin' with a glass heart that threatens to shatter every time it beats. I can't go on pretendin' there's nothin' to see here, and I can't lose the one sweetness that gunpowder and street dirt hasn't soured. You're the only person that can help me now. I know you don't love Rebecca, but please, God, love me hard enough to be my mother one last time.

"Mama, please," he cajoled, falling back on a childhood endearment. He reached for her shoulders and gently pulled her upright. He cupped her face in his hands, and his fingers, recognizing the flesh from which they had been formed, cradled it with reverence.

She twisted from his hand with an anguished bleat, staggered past him with her face in her hands, and collapsed against the kitchen table.

He moved toward her, arms outstretched, and his heart thudded inside his chest.

I gave my ma a fuckin' stroke, he thought dismally. Won't Pop be proud of me now?

She rounded on him, face contorted with fury and anguish. "She owed me!" she shouted, and pounded on the kitchen table. "I'd already lost one child, and I wasn't going to lose you. If I was going to watch my boy die, then I was going to make sure I still had a chance, a part of him to tend. All she had to do was sign the papers, but she wouldn't, damn her. Selfish little bitch."

"Ma, what-,"

He trailed off, stunned and heartsick. He did not recognize the woman in front of him. She had been twisted into unrecognizable angles and serrated in unexpected places, reshaped by the blast like everything else in his life. His mother had birthed him and kissed his scraped knees and carried sufficient love for him to play mother and father all at once. Mother had been soft and safe and kind. But this was Mother 2.0, the distorted mirror-image that inhabited his world of After, and she was none of those things. She was hot wax and ground glass and salted wounds. She was terrible, the Queen of Hearts in mother's clothing.

Off with his head/, he thought.

A part of him to tend. The phrase struck a primordial chord in him that resonated in the dimmest recesses of his brain and inspired a dull, swooning dread that he could not name. It cramped the soles of his feet and greased his stomach and soured the spittle in his mouth. He told himself that he had no idea what she meant, but the panic tickling the roof of his mouth like the warning signals from an exposed nerve ending showed him for a liar, and he knew that if he thought hard enough, he would understand. He was not sure he wanted to.

Before he could press the issue, the kitchen door flew open, and his father filled the threshold, sports section of the newspaper clutched in one beefy fist. He looked from him to his mother, who leaned heavily on the kitchen table, palms pressed flat against the scarred surface to support herself. His bushy, brown eyebrows knitted themselves into a thunderous scowl.

"What the Sam fuckin' Hell is goin' on in here?" he demanded. His gaze settled on him and sharpened. "What'd you do, Don?"

Of course it's always me, isn't it, Pop? he thought petulantly, and opened his mouth to supply the equally childish reply of, "Nothin'."

His father's eyes narrowed. "For nothin', you're sure as hell stirrin' up a bunch'a shit." He turned his attention to his wife. "Ana, darlin', why don't you go upstairs now an' get some rest, huh? Go on, now. I'll be up in a few."

His mother gave a weak nod and shambled out of the kitchen without looking at him. His father moved to let her pass, and as she did so, he stroked her hair with swollen, arthritis-tortured fingers. It was a gesture of tender familiarity, and seeing it made his chest ache. He turned his head and watched the second hand make its inexorable circuit around the face of the Felix clock mounted above the stove.

It had counted fifteen paces when his father said, "Mind tellin' me what the fuck you think you're doin', comin' here and upsettin' your mother?" An authoritative rumble from the center of his chest, rough with nicotine and the memory of countless orders to freeze in the name of the NYPD.

Like I ain't done that enough already, right, Pop? What, with killin' my baby sister and getting my ass blown up? "I didn't mean to upset her. I just had a question about somethin' that happened while I was off my ass in the hospital. Some papers."

He braced himself for the inevitable diatribe about upsetting the domestic tranquility of his father's house and his reading of the sacred box scores, but to his surprise, his father's expression softened, and he stepped into the kitchen and shut the door behind him. He ambled to the counter, and the ancient linoleum bubbled and wheezed under his weight. He tossed the newspaper onto the table and proceeded to the cabinet above the stove hood.

"What, no lecture about how I ain't got the right to go upsettin' ma over some goddamn papers?" he needled incredulously.

His father took down a package of coffee and a fifth of brandy. "Nope," he grunted as he dumped heaping spoonfuls of the former into the percolator that squatted by the refrigerator like a territorial dowager. "Matter of fact, I'm kinda surprised it took you this long."

He mouthed helplessly for a moment. "You knew about 'em?"

"I'm not deaf or a dumbass," he said mildly. "I was there when they had their big hooraw. Coffee?" He turned on the percolator with the flip of a switch.

"Naw."

"Suit yourself. It ain't that stationhouse swill. It's Folgers," he announced, as though it were a coffeehouse exclusive and not available at any rundown joint with an inventory.

"Do you know what they were? What they said?"

"I ain't blind, either."

"So what were they?" he prodded relentlessly. He sensed discovery, and he teetered on the knife-edge of expectation. It was an agony of ecstasy, as the dead poets said, and it was-

Glorious. Like that breath before a perp spills his guts onto the interrogation table or that infinite instant before your hips buck and spill your hope into Rebecca's twitchin' cunt. It's the surety that in that fleeting moment, you'll hold the secrets of the universe in your hand and glimpse the face of God, turned askance as he resets the sun in the firmament.

His father glanced at him, lips pursed in surprise. "Rebecca didn't tell you? I thought for sure she would, pissed as she was."

"Yeah, well, I guess she didn't want me to worry." Especially not after dear old ma told her my bein' there was all her fault. Wouldn't wanna get me blown up /I and I stress me out.

"Yeah, they're good like that," his father mused, and his lips twitched in a fond smirk.

It took him a minute to realize that he meant his mother and Rebecca, women who had volunteered to live and love in the shadow of the shield. It struck him then that he had never known his mother before time and the demands of child-rearing had taken their toll. By the time his first memories of her had solidified, he had no longer been the sole apple of her eye; Diana had been screaming and fussing and ruling the roost with a chubby, newborn fist.

"She was somethin', wasn't she, when she was younger? Ma, I mean."

"You have no idea. Soon as I saw her kickin' the flat tire on that cab and cursin' that driver, I knew."

"Ma cursed? "

His father only laughed.

There was an awkward silence broken only by the gurgling hiss of the percolator, and then Flack said, "So, those papers?"

He father studied him. "You sure you wanna get into this?"

"It's not a question of wantin', Pop."

His father did not speak until the coffee was ready and he had poured himself a cup. He carried a second cup in his other hand and set it in the center of the table.

"Pop, I told you I didn't want any," he protested.

"So you don't. I'll drink it then." He plopped into his chair, grabbed the bottle of bourbon, and poured a jigger into his coffee. He set down the bottle, picked up his cup, and took a slurping gulp. He set the cup down with a grimace.

"Those papers," he began, and leaned forward, elbows propped on the table and coffee cup curled snugly in his palms. "The thing you gotta understand is, your ma's been crazy for a grandkid to spoil."

He snorted. "You gonna tell me somethin' I don't know, Pop? She's been after me since I graduated the academy."

"Yeah, well, you know. Since-," He stopped, and the thought hung in the air between them.

"Since Diana died, you mean?" he finished bitterly. "I killed her daughter, so I'm supposed to make up for it with a grandson?"

His father flinched as though struck, and his eyes were wide and disbelieving. "It ain't like that, Don. You didn't- She just wants to be a grandma, is all."

You didn't- The closest he had come to absolution in his life, and yet it was still far out of reach. He was Tantalus, reaching for a peach he would never taste, and disappointment burned on his tongue and made it sharp.

"Then why are my balls and what I do with 'em any of anybody's fuckin' business, Pop? Tell me that."

His father had no answer, only averted eyes and fidgety fingers, and that was answer enough.

"'S what I thought," he said dully. "The papers."

"She wanted Rebecca's permission, if you didn't make it, to harvest your, uh-," He shifted in his chair, took a fortifying gulp of coffee and cleared his throat. "Your, uh, y'know." He coughed. "I believe your friends on the Nerd Squad'd call it 'genetic material'," he finished at last.

"My semen," Flack said flatly.

His father blushed and studied the murky depths of his coffee. "Yeah."

"Let me get this straight." He was suddenly too hot inside his skin, and too light, as though he could leave his body if he closed his eyes. "My mother went to my wife while I was lyin' in a coma and asked her to let her take my jizz and freeze it so Rebecca could carry it later like she was some fuckin' brood mare?"

His father picked up the bottle of bourbon, unscrewed the cap, and poured four fingers into the second cup of coffee. "No," he said quietly. "Not exactly," and pushed the cup towards him.

It took him a moment to process the full implication of that denial, but when the penny dropped, he picked up the spiked coffee and drained it in a single convulsive gulp, never mind that it was black and gritty and cold and sour with booze. He set the empty cup too close to the edge of the table, and it fell to the floor and shattered. Dregs spattered the runnelled linoleum and scabby baseboards like castoff, but it wasn't new blood, evidence of fresh atrocity. It was old, pushed to the surface by new light.

"Don," his father said. "You have to understand-,"

"Fuck you," he said without looking at him. He scraped the dust and grit from his soles on the threshold of the front door when he left, and he did not look back.