something else. Ralph thought that something else was recognition.
"Oh my God," she whispered. "The men in the park. The ones with the funny names... Clothes and Lashes, something like that... and one of them cut you. Oh Ralph, oh my God, what are you supposed to do?"
"Now, Lois, don't take on-"
"Don't you dare tell me not to take on." she shrieked into his face.
"Don't you dare." Don't you DARE.I" Hurry, the interior voice whispered. You don't have time to stand around and discuss this,somewhere it's already begun to happen, and the deathwatch you hear may not be ticking just for you.
"I have to go." He turned and blundered toward the door. In his agitation he did not notice a certain Sherlock Holmesian circumstance attending this scene: a dog which should have barked-a dog which always barked her stern disapproval when voices were raised in this house-but did not. Rosalie was missing from her usual place by the screen door... and the door itself was standing ajar.
Rosalie was the furthest thing from Ralph's mind at that moment.
He felt knee-deep in molasses, and thought he would be doing well just to make the porch, let alone the Red Apple up the street. His heart thumped and skidded in his chest; his eyes were burning.
"No!" Lois screamed. "No, Ralph, please! Please don't leave me!" She ran after him, clutched his arm. She was still holding her paintbrush, and the fine red droplets which splattered his shirt looked like blood. Now she was crying, and her expression of utter, abject sorrow nearly broke his heart. He didn't want to leave her like this; wasn't sure he could leave her like this.
He turned and took her by her forearms. "Lois, I have to go."
"You haven't been sleeping," she babbled, "I knew that, and I knew it meant something was wrong, but it doesn't matter, we'll go away, we can leave right now, this minute, we'll just take Rosalie and our toothbrushes and go-" He squeezed her arms and she stopped, looking up at him with her wet eyes. Her lips were trembling.
"Lois, listen to me. I have to do this."
"I lost Paul, I can't lose you, too!" she wailed. "I couldn't stand it! Oh Ralph, I couldn't stand it!"
You'll be able to, he thought. Short-Timers are a lot tougher that, they look. They have to be.
Ralph felt a couple of tears trickle down his cheeks. He suspected their source was more weariness than grief. If he could make her see that all this changed nothing, only made what he had to do harder...
He held her at arm's length. The scar on his arm was throbbing more fiercely than ever, and the feeling of time slipping relentlessly away had become overwhelming.
"Walk with me at least partway, if you want," he said. "Maybe you can even help me do what I have to do. I've had my life, Lois, and a fine one it was. But she hasn't really had anything yet, and I'll be damned if I'll let that son of a bitch have her just because He's got a score to settle with me."
"What son of a bitch? Ralph, what in the world are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about Natalie Deepneau. She's supposed to die this morning, only I'm not going to let that happen."
"Nat? Ralph, why would anyone want to hurt Nat?"
She looked very bewildered, very Our Lois... but wasn't there something else beneath that daffy exterior? Something careful and calculating? Ralph thought the answer was yes. Ralph had an idea Lois wasn't half as bewildered as she was pretending to be. She had fooled Bill McGovern for years with that act-him, too, at least part of the time-and this was just another (and rather brilliant) variation of the same old scam.
What she was really trying to do was hold him here. She loved Nat deeply, but to Lois, a choice between her husband and the little girl who lived up the lane was no choice at all. She didn't consider either age or questions of fairness to have any bearing on the situation.
Ralph was her man, and to Lois, that was all that mattered.
"It won't work," he said, not unkindly. He disengaged himself and started for the door again. "I made a promise, and I'm all out of time."
"Break it, then!" she cried, and the mixture of terror and rage in her voice stunned him. "I don't remember much about that time, but I remember we got involved with things that almost got