When he woke, with the first light of morning, he remembered the night as a sequence of dreams, all flesh and mouths and darkness, and crying too, for he remembered her crying once, coming long after he had come and almost perishing with it, sobbing, clutching him as if he were saving her from drowning. And he remembered the sleep and the waking, the feel of her hands trembling in dreams on his body and her voice softly crying no over and over, and then plea or please—he could not be sure which it was.

Now though it was morning, and he found himself lying on his side with one arm draped across her body and his face just inches from hers. And he was shocked at how young she looked in sleep, with her eyes closed and her mouth slightly parted, her face cleansed of its customary expression of fashionable hardness and cynicism. Just to look at her gave him a feeling of pleasure and self-satisfaction that was almost as palpable as the feel of her flesh against his under the covers. He looked down at her breasts and wanted to hold them again and kiss them. He wanted to take her in his arms again and penetrate her, fill her, possess her.

But along with desire, he felt guilt, for this after all was the woman who had cost his son his life. This warm and supple body, this sleeping beauty, had reached halfway across a continent and torn the heart out of his family, not intentionally perhaps, but in the end that hardly mattered. The fact remained that if it had not been for her, his Chris would still be alive. His family would still be whole.

And he wondered about what she had told him last night, which parts of it were true and which were not. That Chris had not taken his own life—that of course he believed, had known all along. But as for the boy’s death simply being an accident not involving Douglas or anybody else, that he could not accept, not yet anyway. He had been so convinced Douglas was involved, especially after yesterday’s incident at sea, that now he found himself unable or at least unwilling to let go of the idea. And then there was the problem of the cliff, the difficulty he had believing that Chris even drunk would not have been able to arrest his fall, dig into the chaparral, and crawl back up. It was possible of course. He had to accept that. And further he had to remember that Liz herself had been drunk last night, in no state really to do anything except stick with old lies or blurt the truth. And she had not stuck with the old.

Beyond these thoughts, however, beyond his guilt and pleasure, was simply practicality. Liz Madera was all he had going for him and he knew it. Until she agreed to tell Sergeant Rider what she had told him, he had nothing real, nothing that would change anything; Chris would remain a suicide. So for now he would have to be practical. He would go on just as he was. He would stay with her and try to keep alive whatever it was they had begun last night, even though he had no firm idea what that was, whether it amounted to no more than a night of love-making between a pair of semi-drunks or whether she had known what she was doing and saying and would feel the same way now, this morning, sober.