“The killer spent the last ten years planning how to kill. Father O’Reilly spent the last ten years planning how to forgive.”

“They say time heals all wounds,” Smithson said.

“Yeah, but wounds leave scars.”

She glanced at him curiously. “What scars do you have, Mike?”

“What makes you think I have any?”

“You’re alone,” she said. “A man your age should either be on his third affair or his second marriage. You’re not on either, and the psychologist in me wants to know why.”

Coletti shook his head. “I saw my parents’ marriage. It’s not for me.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Actually, it was that good,” Coletti said. “Mom was soft-spoken, but she kept my dad in line, even though he was the most stubborn SOB I’ve ever met. He worked long hours and had strict rules and I never once heard him say I love you, but he didn’t have to. We saw it in his eyes.

“The two of them together were a perfect match. Right up until the time I left for the army, my dad was her protector and she was his right hand. But when I got back four years later, everything was different.

“My dad had been hoarse since that June. He said it was nothing, but by September his voice still hadn’t come back. By the time my mom convinced him to go to the doctor, the tumor had almost closed his windpipe. Two months later he died from throat cancer. After that I watched my mom’s heart break a little bit more every day. She was dead inside a year.”

“Sounds like she loved him very much,” Smithson said. “Some people spend their lives trying to find that.”

“Yeah, they do,” Coletti said soberly. “But I never want to need somebody so much that I can’t live without them. I guess that’s why the relationships I’ve had over the years have crashed and burned. I’ve spent my life trying to avoid becoming my parents.”

Smithson didn’t respond. She was absorbed in her own thoughts.

“So what about you?” Coletti asked. “Why aren’t you married?”

“I guess I’m trying to find myself.”

“I can help you with that,” Coletti said. “You’re sitting right there.”

She punched him on the arm with enough force to make him swerve.

“Ouch!” he said, grabbing the wheel with both hands. “You’re stronger than you look.”

“That’s what you get for teasing me,” said a laughing Smithson. But then the laughter faded.

“My parents’ marriage turned me off, too,” she said. “They got along fine when we were little. In fact, our lives were like a fairy tale. We lived in a small town. We had this big, Irish Catholic family. Our house had a picket fence. Our parents seemed so in love.