She was great with Mae, though—made sure she was in bed on time, made sure she ate right and brushed her teeth and never crossed the street without holding her hand. She took her to children’s school shows and to the Children’s Museum and to playgrounds and did all the things that Grace didn’t have time for while working ninety-hour weeks.

We finished cleaning up after Mae and Annabeth and then curled up on the couch and tried to find something worth watching on TV and failed. Springsteen was right—fifty-seven channels and nothing on.

So we shut it off and sat facing each other, legs crossed at the knees, and she told me about her past three days in ER, how they kept coming, the bodies stacking up on gurneys like cordwood in a winter cabin, and the noise level reaching the pitch of a heavy metal concert, and an old woman who’d been knocked over in a purse-snatching and banged her head against the sidewalk holding Grace’s wrists as silent tears leaked from both eyes and she died just like that. Of fourteen-year-old gang members with baby’s faces and blood sluicing off their chests like wet paint as doctors tried to plug the leaks and a baby brought in with a left arm twisted completely backwards at the shoulder joint and broken in three places around the elbow, his parents claiming he’d fallen. Of a crack addict screaming and fighting the orderlies because she needed her next fix and didn’t give a shit if the doctors wanted to remove the knife from her eye first.

“And you think my job is violent?” I said.

She placed her forehead against mine. “One more year and I’m in cardiology. One more year.” She leaned back, took my hands in hers, rested them on her lap. “That girl who got killed in the park,” she said, “isn’t connected to this other case, is she?”

“What gave you that idea?”

“Nothing. I was just wondering.”

“No. Just happens we took the Warren case around the same time Kara was murdered. Why’d you think that?”

She ran her hands up my arms. “Because you’re tense, Patrick. Tenser than I’ve ever seen you.”

“How so?”

“Oh, you’re acting real well, but I can feel it in your body, see it in the way you stand, like you’re expecting to get hit by a truck.” She kissed me. “Something’s got you wigged out.”

I thought of the last eleven days. I’d sat at a dinner table with three psychotics, four if you counted Pine. Then I saw a woman crucified to a hill. Then someone sent me a package of bumper stickers and a “HI!” Then I found the “don’tforgettolockup” note. People were shooting up abortion clinics and subway cars and blowing up embassies. Homes were sliding off the sides of hills in California and falling through the earth in India. Maybe I had reason to be wigged out.

I slid my arms around her waist and pulled her up on top of me, leaned back on the couch and slid my hands up under her sweater, ran my palms along the edges of her breasts. She bit down on her lower lip and her eyes widened slightly.