Silently, she cursed the day Karim had met Jacqueline. And yet, to be fair, she understood that his attachment to the girl wasn’t simply a symptom of rampant teenage hormones. The two seemed to be genuinely close, bonded not only by a common Arab identity but also by a mutual sense of loss. Karim believed that his father was dead. Jacqueline had not seen her mother in years. An American graduate student who met, married, and eventually tired of Professor Hamid, the woman had simply walked out one day. At last report, according to Karim, she was living with a television producer in Australia.

Undoubtedly, that explained some of Jacqueline’s bitterness toward “Western” ways and women’s liberation. In therapy, it would stand out like a flashing light. But Jacqueline wasn’t a patient. She was Karim’s new constant companion. And in that context, she was a royal pain.

O

Karim’s fascination with Jacqueline wasn’t the only sign of his struggles at the border between childhood and manhood. As his voice had cracked and deepened, as his bones and muscles thickened, he had begun to question, argue, sulk, rebel at every turn. It was typical teenage behavior, but like Jacqueline’s, it was a pain.

There was the night when a call came from the Sanctuary, the battered women’s shelter where Jenna worked as a volunteer.

“It’s Tabetha Coleman,” said Liz Ohlenberg, the shelter’s hotline opera- tor, also a volunteer. “She’s under arrest, or at least being detained. The story was kind of cloudy.”

Jenna recognized the name of a former client, a young woman who hadn’t appeared at the shelter for several months. “What happened?” “She shot her husband.”

“Dead?”

“No. In the leg. I gather he’ll be okay.”

“Why did she shoot him? I mean, what were the circumstances? The last I heard, she’d moved out of their house.”

“She says that he showed up at her new apartment drunk and demanding to be let in. She called 911, but he started breaking down the door before the police arrived. She’d got a pistol somewhere—didn’t say where—and shot him right through the closed door. Says she only meant to scare him off.”

“It sounds like self-defense.”

“I don’t know. As I said, she wasn’t very clear. I get the impression that the gun is a problem. It’s illegal, naturally.”

“Does she have a lawyer?”

“I left a message on Lou Leahy’s machine. If he doesn’t get back to me soon, I’ll try Angela Trosclair. But Tabetha asked specifically for you. I know it’s not one of your nights, but do you think you could go down there?”

“Yes. Yes, of course, I’ll go. What precinct?”

When Jenna hung up, Karim was standing there. Apparently, he’d been listening to her end of the conversation.

“What was all that about?” She summed it up.