“Pris! Why you here?” She stooped to help the girl up, but Priscilla’s face was a strange blue-gray, and she was cold. A little trickle of blood leaked out one ear and from the side of a small cut at her temple. Martha ran for a washcloth. “S’just blood, Pris. Normal. Happens every time. Here. Clean you up.” She sat down with Priscilla’s head in her lap and scrubbed at the dried trails until they came clean.

Morning sunlight was coming through the shattered windows when Leon opened his eyes. His head boomed with the light, with his pulse. Shaky fingers sought out the lump like a golf ball on his forehead. Slowly his vision cleared and he remembered Leslie and Priscilla the night before. He raised his pounding head and looked around. The gun was under the coffee table; glass was everywhere. Where was Martha?

Slowly, carefully, he got to his feet, dizzy, every muscle aching, his head feeling like it would either explode or roll right off his shoulders. He stumbled to the bedroom.

He leaned at the doorjamb. Martha was sitting at the dressing table, her back to him. Priscilla’s legs stuck out from under the end of the bed.

“Martha?”

She seemed to be humming, putting on makeup. He walked around the edge of the bed.

“Martha?” God, was she all right? “Martha?”

Martha turned to face him, her slack mouth reddened with lipstick and fashioned into a warped smile.

“Leon!”

He took one look and ran for the bathroom, falling to his knees and throwing up everything, his life, his love, his faith, in great heaving gobs of bile. When there was nothing left to come up, he looked toward the door and saw her feet standing in the doorway. He couldn’t look at the face. He couldn’t look at the face, but in spite of himself, his disbelieving eyes betrayed him and they went directly to her face, to her nose, that huge atrocity that dominated her face, and that thing that hung on it.

He stared, revulsion sweeping him again.

“Leon? Whose sofa?” she asked as she turned to look into the living room.

He retched again, sobbing, crying, not understanding, feeling he’d been cheated in life, cheated out of everything worthwhile, he’d never be the same, never look at things through fresh eyes, he’d been changed, he’d been tainted, he’d been . . .

She kneeled next to him and handed him a tissue to wipe his mouth.

Was it really? He couldn’t look. It couldn’t be, but his damned eyes again moved directly to her face, and there it was.