Twenty minutes later, Pete Sunday arrived at the grave site, explaining all our roles to the other police in a few sentences.

“When you’re wrong, you’re wrong,” I told him.

“I couldn’t agree with you more. Although I think that if I was faced with the same facts again, I’d make the same mistake again.” He rubbed his hands together. “She was very convincing.”

“She thought she was on the side of the angels.”

“I just don’t get the motivation. Your kid is dead. You know it was an accident, you didn’t mean to hurt anyone, the worst thing has already happened, no horrible consequences for you, but instead of fessing up, you decide to hurt someone else’s kid, and you wait until years later?”

Someone flipped on a spotlight, and Pete Sunday’s face gaped in horror. “Get an ambulance!” he yelled, whipping off his really great trench coat and pressing it to my left arm. “You didn’t tell me she shot you!”

I looked down. My arm was swollen, purpling and covered with blood, and for the first time, I experienced a hot ache, just above my elbow. Stefan was sitting on the bench and I glanced down at the whorl of his dark hair and then suddenly I was looking down on my own dirt-smeared face, my tangled hair, as if from a perch on a tree limb. I knew all about hypotensive shock and the blessings it confers on mortally injured creatures, but along with the surcease of pain came a pleasing sense of rightness and goodness, as if currents from the earth were joining currents in my veins, linking me to all the plants and grasses and even the people under this quiet ground. The new universe winked at me.

Stefan yelled, “She’s hurt, this way, help us!”

Her hands cuffed behind her, Jill was being hustled away. She glanced back over her shoulder and said, “Oh, Thea! I’m sorry.”

It was the last thing I heard. I remember waking up next to wonder how really sick people even managed to survive ambulance rides, much less their injuries, because the one I was in was bouncing like a carnival ride. The young paramedic on his haunches next to my shoulder said, “Well you can stop bleeding anytime you want, ma’am. You’re giving us a little too much drama here.”

I said, “Don’t put in one of those tubes. I’m even afraid of blood tests. It hurts too much.” He gently held up my hand for me to see.

“Already did it. I’m the hero of all IVs. Got one in an eighty-four-year-old gentleman the other day. My crew bet me three days of breakfasts I couldn’t do it.”