My hands were shaking, my ears burning. Inexplicably, my right shoulder began to hurt. I had to take mental stock. Pull yourself together, I told myself. But the old fears welled up.

Toward the end of my marriage to John Richard, we had a fight in which I fell backward into an open dishwasher. My right shoulder was slit open by a protruding knife, necessitating stitches and a sling. While I was recovering, but before I could consciously acknowledge how bad things had become, I had a recurrent nightmare of being raped. The man in the nightmare was a famous regional tennis player named John. When the rape was over, a voice would say, "Call the plumber." Then with great clarity one morning I realized that John in the dream was John my spouse, and that it was my life which was draining away.

I filed for divorce, then threw myself into the catering work with the zeal of a lover. Though I'd finally gone back to school when Arch was in first grade to finish a degree in psychology, the food service offered the most immediate potential for financial security. The child support payments, when they came, took care of about a third of the house payment. New recipes, new bookings, keeping accounts, working in the kitchen, and most important, being financially independent of John Richard, all these I relished. My shoulder healed; my work was my love. My nightmare now, when I had one, was that the business would be taken away as my dream of a family life had been.

I took a deep breath. My heart beat in its cavity. John Richard was going to be here and I understood why Marla was staying away. He would act charming, do his handsome guy routine with the women. Then in a few moments he would come up and make some cutting remark. He wouldn't do anything to hurt me, in any event not physically, not here in front of all these people. I pressed my lips together. Go greet the guests, I told myself, but could not.

I looked through the kitchen drawers and found a pack of Kools, lit one, and inhaled deeply. Heavenly. I pondered the walls of the kitchen, which Laura had papered in a pattern of ice cream cones in Neopolitan colors. Just right for a teacher. But at least she smoked. Smoking is self- destructive. Laura Smiley was self- destructive, remember?

But she hadn't had an ex-husband showing up to taunt her, I reminded my inner voice.

How do you know what taunted her? asked the voice. I put out the cigarette and slipped into the living room. Maybe I would just take a look at that wall of photos during my break, see who had been the people in Ms. Smiley's life. But I couldn't take a break if I never started working.

"Trixie," I said to the backside of a tall, muscled woman.