“Honey?” Tolliver said. I turned to him, startled. He’d never called me that before.

“Do you want dessert?” he asked. I realized that the waitress was waiting, smiling in that pained way that said she was being so, so patient.

I almost never eat dessert. “No, thanks,” I said. To my irritation, Mark ordered pie, and Tolliver got coffee to keep him company. I was ready to go; I wanted to get away from all this remembrance. I shifted a little to a more comfortable position, stifling a sigh.

When Tolliver and Mark resorted to talking about computers, I was once more free to think about other things.

But all I could think about was Cameron.

Three

Three

WHEN we were back in our room, we were both reluctant to start talking about Mark’s perfidy in renewing contact with their dad. Tolliver booted up the laptop and went to a fan website that tracks my activities; he monitors it regularly because he’s worried that I might acquire a crazy stalker. I never look at it, because there are posts from guys who want to do things with me and to me; and that’s scary, not to say repellent. Now, I was worried that Matthew might be reading it at the same moment Tolliver was; he’d be looking for clues on how to find his son.

A nagging pain interrupted my worry session.

I rummaged through my medicine bag to unearth some Icy Hot to rub into my right leg. That’s where I feel the long-term effects of getting struck by lightning most of all. I pulled off my shoes and jeans and sat on the bed, stretching out the aching muscles and joints. My right thigh is covered with a tracery of red lines—broken capillaries or something. It’s been like that since I got hit, when I was fifteen. It’s not pretty.

I worked the cream into my skin for a while in silence. I rubbed hard, trying to get the muscles to give up the discomfort. After a few minutes of massage, I felt some relief. I lay back on the pillows, telling each muscle group to relax in turn. I closed my eyes. “I’d rather be out in the snow finding a corpse than talking to Iona and Hank, just in general,” I said. “And sometimes talking to Mark is just as hard.”

“Last night at Iona’s . . .” Tolliver said, then paused. When he resumed, he sounded cautious. “Hank pulled me aside while you were in the bathroom and asked me if I’d gotten you knocked up.”

“He did not.”

“Oh, yeah. He did. He was serious, too. He was like, ‘You gotta marry her if you got her pregnant, boy. If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.’ ”

“Great perspective on marriage and fatherhood.”

Tolliver laughed. “Well, this is the guy who calls Iona his ‘ball and chain.’ ”