I followed him in. As I picked up the photographs, broken glass cut my fingertip. Drops of blood fell to the floor as I went into the kitchen and put my hand under the faucet and stood there weeping till I turned the faucet off, and I found I could not breathe. I had to think about breathing. In and out. In and out like the waves.

Terrence came up behind me, put his hands on my shoulders, turned me in his arms, held me. “Look at the mess they’ve made of what we had, Liza Jane.”

“They didn’t! They can’t!” I moved to kiss him, but he drew back. “Don’t pull away from me, baby. Please. They don’t matter. Let’s go make love, honey. Make love like we mean it! Like we mean it forever and ever. Don’t give them the power to hurt us.”

“We’ve lived with that power every day. I’m surprised it took this long, really. We never had a chance.”

“Yes we did! We do! We—”

“Don’t you want to know why the key was on the desk?”

“What?” I ran my hands roughly over my face. “It wasn’t on the desk. The key was on the floor.”

“Don’t you want to know why it was on the desk before the fight?” He spoke slowly. Carefully.

“I don’t care why. I don’t care, baby. I don’t care about anything except you.”

“I was returning it to you. I was about to write you a note when your boyfriend, Charlie—”

“He’s nothing to me!”

“—saw me from the porch, and came bursting in to save the white girl’s house from being robbed by a black criminal. That’s his first thought. Any of them, that’s the first thought. Criminals. It’s still the same old story. No matter what. No matter where. What happened here tonight has happened before. And it will go on happening. It will never change. This was Charlie being white and me being black. This was the Wilburs being white and me being black. They been waiting for this day, ever since they first saw us together. They loved seeing that cop cuff me, rough me up.”

“They are bastards and they can go to hell!”

Terrence shook his head wearily. “That’s why I gave you back your key, baby, because even before Charlie burst in and attacked me for a thief, before that sonofabitch sheriff beat the shit out of me, I knew it’ll never change.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“You really don’t have any goddamned idea what I’m talking about?”

“I love you, Terrence. What else matters? You love me. We can—”

“No, we can’t.”

“We can!”

“Are you really going to tell me you have the strength to fight this shit on a daily basis?”

“Yes.”