Tish nodded slowly.

“Did you tell Peter?” Serena asked her.

“No, he had no idea it was true, but it scared me to death to have the rumor out there.”

“So you knew back then?”

“I knew.”

“Are you still in the closet?”

“I don’t hide it, but it’s not like I wear a T-shirt that says ‘pink and proud.’ ” Tish blew smoke out of her mouth.

“I’m sorry if this makes you uncomfortable,” Serena said.

“It doesn’t, but you have no idea how ugly and hateful people get over homosexuality. The same people who tell me that Jesus loves me would stone me to death if they could.”

“Not everyone feels that way.”

“Enough do that I’m still careful about who I tell.”

“Is there someone in your life?”

Tish crushed her cigarette in the ashtray. “Not anymore. I lived with Katja, a photographer I met in Tallinn, for five years. She was getting too close, so I ran away. It wasn’t the first time for me. Lesbian relationships crash and burn a lot. We get emotionally close, and then you put the physical attraction in the middle of it, and a lot of times, it flames out.”

“Did Laura know you were gay?” Serena asked.

Tish’s face glowed with dew from the humid air. “We didn’t talk about it.”

“Not even with your best friend?”

“You have to remember the times, Serena. It’s bad enough today, but being gay was dangerous back then. This was when Anita Bryant was on the rampage about homosexuals. You didn’t advertise being different. You kept the closet locked up tight.”

“What about Laura? Was she gay?”

“I told you, we didn’t talk about it.” Tish stood up, shutting down the conversation. “I think you should go.”

“If that’s what you want,” Serena said.

“I do.”

Serena stood up, too. “Can I ask you about something else?”

“What?”

“What happened to your mother?”

Tish folded her arms over her chest. Her eyes were angry. “If you’re asking a question like that, you must already know.”

“I heard she was shot. She was a hostage who died in a bank robbery.”

“That’s right. Why do you care?”

Serena wasn’t really sure why she cared, but it was a detective’s curiosity. “When someone’s life is touched by violence more than once, my instinct is to look for a connection.”

“There’s no connection,” Tish insisted. “The robbery has nothing to do with any of this. It was years before I even met Laura. My mother was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“It must have been hard to be left alone at that age,” Serena said.

Tish shrugged. “It’s hard to be left alone at any age.”

30
___________

Stride was stretched across the leather sofa in the great room of the cottage when Serena arrived home near midnight. He was sleeping, with a paperback novel still in his hand. One leg had fallen off the sofa, and his bare foot was on the carpet. Sara Evans sang on the stereo. Serena let him sleep while she undressed and got ready for bed. The windows were open, with the curtains blowing like sails, and the night air was humid and hot. She slept in a loose tank top in that kind of weather. Back in the living room, she turned down the lights, switched off Sara, and made herself a cup of pear tea, which she sipped in the love seat opposite Stride. Rose fragrance blew in from the bushes near the porch. Her eyes got lost in the shadows and felt heavy. When she put the teacup down, she leaned back into the folds of the sofa, and soon she, too, was dreaming.