We’d parked behind the house, and I turned to him questioningly, my hand on the car door handle.

“Yes,” Bill said. “He was doing his best to provoke Eric to act, so that he could kill Eric without having to justify it. It’s only because of superior planning that Eric has survived and Victor has not. I know that you love Eric.” His voice remained calm and cool as he said this, and only the lines around his eyes told me how much it cost him. “You have to be glad, and maybe tomorrow you will be glad, that this situation has ended the way it has.”

I pinched my mouth together for a second while I formed my response. “I’d rather Eric be alive than Victor,” I said. “True enough.”

“And you know violence was the only way to achieve that result.”

I could even see that. I nodded.

“So why the second-guessing?” Bill said. He was calling me on my reaction.

I let go of the door handle and turned to face him. “It was bloody and ghastly, and people suffered,” I said, surprised by the anger in my voice.

“Did you think Victor would die without bleeding? Did you think Victor’s people wouldn’t do their best to prevent his death? Did you think that no one would die?”

His voice was so calm and nonjudgmental that I didn’t get angry. “Bill, I never believed any of those things. I’m not naïve. But seeing is always different from planning.”

Abruptly, I was tired of this topic. It had happened, it was done, I had to find a way to get over it. “Have you met the Queen of Oklahoma?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he said, a definite note of caution in his voice. “Why do you ask?”

“Before he died, Appius sort of gave Eric to her.”

This did shock Bill. “You’re sure?”

“Yes. He finally told me after Pam did everything but stick her hand up his ass and wiggle her fingers to make him talk.”

Bill turned away, but not before I saw the smile he was trying to suppress. “Pam’s very determined when she wants Eric to take a particular course of action. Did Eric tell you what he intends to do about this situation?”

“He’s trying to get out of it, but evidently Appius signed something. When Appius told me before he died that I’d never keep Eric, I didn’t know that was what he meant. I thought he meant Eric wouldn’t want to fool with me when I got old and wrinkled, or that we’d quarrel and break up, or that . . . Oh, I don’t know. Something would happen to separate us.”

“And now something has.”

“Well . . . yes.”