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“What are you saying?”

“Fuck Bernardo. Give your body what it needs. You don’t have to go back to the monsters to get laid.”

“I cannot believe you said that to me.”

“Why not? If you were having sex with someone else, wouldn’t it be easier to forget Richard and Jean-Claude? Isn’t that part of their hold on you, especially the vampire. Admit it, Anita. If you weren’t celibate, you wouldn’t be missing them as much.”

I opened my mouth to protest, closed it, and thought about what he’d said. Was he right? Was part of the reason I was still mooning over them the lack of sex? Yeah, I guess it was, but it wasn’t just that. “I miss the sex, yeah, but I miss the intimacy, Edward. I miss looking at them both and knowing they’re mine. Knowing I can have every inch of them. I miss Sunday after church and having Richard stay over to watch old movies. I miss watching Jean-Claude watch me eat a meal.” I shook my head. “I miss them, Edward.”

“Your problem, Anita, is that you wouldn’t know an uncomplicated fuck if it bit you on the ass.”

I wasn’t sure whether to smile or be mad, so my voice was a little amused and a little angry. “And your relationship with Donna is so uncomplicated?”

“It was at the beginning,” he said. “Can you say that about either of yours?”

I shook my head. “I’m not a casual person, Edward, not in anything.”

He sighed. “I know that. When you give your friendship, it’s for life. When you hate someone, it’s forever. When you say you’re going to kill someone, you do it. One of the things making you squirm about your boys is the fact that for you, love should be forever.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

He shook his head. “Sometimes I forget how young you are.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means you complicate your life, Anita.” He raised a hand before I could say it, and said it for me. “I know I’ve screwed up with Donna, but I went into it meaning to be casual, meaning it to just be part of the act. You always go into everything like it’s life or death. Only life and death are life and death.”

“And you think that sleeping with Bernardo would fix all that.”

“It’d be a start,” he said.

I shook my head. “No.”

“Your final word?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Fine, I won’t bring it up again.”

“Great,” I said and looked into that blank, Edward face. “Being with Donna has made you more personal, more warm and fuzzy. I’m not comfortable with the new Edward.”

“Neither am I,” he said.

Edward went back to his side of the table, and we both started reading again. Usually, silence between us was companionable and not strained. But this quiet was full of unsaid advice: me to him about Donna, and him to me about the boys. Edward and I playing Dear Abby to each other. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so sad.

21

AN HOUR LATER, I’d finished the witness reports. I stretched my lower back while still sitting in the chair, just bending slowly at the waist until my hands touched the floor or almost touched the floor. Three stretches, and I could press my palms flat to the floor. Better. I got up and checked my watch. Midnight. I felt stiff and strange, estranged from this quiet room and the peaceful surroundings. My head was filled with what I’d read, and what I’d read hadn’t been peaceful.

Standing, I could see Edward. He’d moved to the floor, lying flat on the floor, holding the reports up in front of his face. If I had lain down, I’d have been asleep. Edward always did have a will of iron.

He glanced at me. I got a glimpse of what he was looking at. He’d moved on to the pictures. Something must have shone on my face because he placed the pictures face down on his chest. “You finished?”

“With the witness reports, yeah.”

He just looked at me.

I went around the table and sat in the chair he’d started the night in. He stayed lying on the floor. I would have said like a contented cat, but there was something more reptilian about him than feline; a coldness. How could Donna miss it? I shook my head. Business, concentrate on business.

“The majority of the houses are isolated ones, mostly