“You finally see, don’t you?” Viola said. “It was just a dream. Every time we made love, we were just children pretending. This is the truth, right here. My torn genitals. That dead man on his way to the morgue. My brother running for his life. And you going back to Peggy and your babies. That’s the truth, Tom. There ain’t no place for me in that picture. I’m on my own. I always have been.”

“Please tell me what I can do,” he said uselessly.

She stood, wavered on her feet, then straightened up. “Nothing. There’s nothing in your power.”

He walked around his desk, but she held up a warning hand, just like a traffic cop. “A hug won’t help.”

“What do we do now?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Pray, I guess. Can murderers pray?”

“That bastard deserved what he got. Don’t think about him anymore.”

“He deserved worse,” Viola said with venom. “I won’t lose no sleep over that trash. I just … I guess I don’t know what to do next, either.”

“One day at a time,” Tom said, hating the impotence in his voice. “That’s all we can do. And pray the worst is over.”

But it wasn’t over. Not by a damn sight—

“Tom?” Peggy moaned, sitting up in bed, then shielding her eyes against the reading light she’d left on.

“What’s the matter, honey?” he asked.

Peggy rubbed her eyes until she was more than half awake. “I had a nightmare.”

“Are you all right?”

“I don’t know.” She felt along the bedside table for her water glass, then took a gulp. “We were at a funeral.”

“Whose funeral?”

Peggy blinked, still bleary with sleep. “I don’t know. I saw the casket there, and I was holding Annie’s hand, and she was crying.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. It was just a dream.”

“It felt so real. I’m trying to remember who was sitting with us. I want to know.”

You want to know who was in the casket, he thought. “You said ‘we’ when you woke up. Was I sitting with you?”

Peggy’s eyes widened suddenly. “Oh, Tom. I think it was one of the kids. Penn or Jenny. Dear God.”

He laid his hand on her forearm and squeezed. “It doesn’t matter who it was, Peg. That was just a dream.”

She stared at him with almost frightening intensity. “I’m telling you, it felt real. Like it means something. It couldn’t, could it?”

“No. It’s just the stress of today, and tomorrow. Premonitions of death are a normal human feeling during times like this.”

Peggy took his hand and fixed her eyes on him with solemn deliberation of a priest. “Tom … I want to talk to you about last night.”

He felt his defenses go up. “Peg—”