Shakespeares Counselor Page 0,65

it in the state.

I hadn't checked this morning to see if Gerry McClanahan's death had made the paper, but I figured it hadn't, since it had occurred so late. At any rate, Wash didn't bring it up, so neither did I.

Wash wanted to know if I'd known the health center murder victim.

"No."

"There can't be that many women in Shakespeare, Lily."

"I didn't know her."

"What was she doing in that building, I wonder. The paper didn't make that clear."

"She was coming to attend an evening self-help group."

Wash was astonished. He said, "How do you know that?"

I shrugged, sorry I'd said anything at all.

"Did you see her?" he said. Wash had the usual prurient desire to hear secondhand about blood and death. If he'd ever happen to see it close up, he'd lose that in a jiffy.

"Yes."

"What did she look like? Was she really impaled?"

I looked longingly at the door.

"Don't talk to me any more," I said. I began to look at a rack of cameras, the kind that did everything but snap their own buttons. That was my kind of camera. I liked photographs, as aids to memory and as art, but I was not interested in taking them myself.

"Because I'm black? Huh?" And there he was, right in front of me again, determined to bother me. It's like people don't understand English, sometimes.

"It doesn't have a thing to do with your skin. It has to do with your obnoxious character," I said, my voice still under control but inevitably rising.

Big Pete interposed. I felt the presence of Jack behind me.

"Something wrong, here?" Pete was trying to sound calm.

"She's treating me like trash, ignoring me and calling me names," Wash said, though his voice was not as full of righteous wrath as it might have been.

"I can't imagine Lily doing that," Pete said.

Explaining. People always want you to explain. I yearned to walk out speechlessly, but this was one of Jack's favorite places.

"I don't care to discuss crime scenes and how this woman died. The woman who was killed in Shakespeare."

Pete stared at his son. "Wash, you want to talk about dead bodies, remind me to show you some pictures of things I saw in Viet Nam."

"You got pictures, Dad?" Wash sounded stunned and happy.

" 'Scuse us, Jack, Lily. Wash and I got some talking to do."

Jack and I left in a hurry.

I tried to figure out if I needed to apologize to Jack, but no matter how I looked at it, this little run-in was not my fault. However, Jack wasn't talking, and I wondered if he was angry.

"It's really weird, isn't it," he said suddenly. "You'd think nice people like Pete and Marietta, his wife, would have such great genes their kids couldn't turn out bad. And then, look at Wash. He has to learn every lesson over and over, lessons he shouldn't even have to be taught. Things he should know by ... instinct."

Where had that come from? I followed the trail of that thought for a moment. Genetics. Kids turning out differently from their parents. Okay.

"Do you want a baby, Jack?" We'd been dodging this conversation ever since I'd lost the baby.

"For the life of me, Lily, I don't know." It was clear he'd only been waiting for me to open the subject. "If you had kept the baby, if everything had gone okay, I would have been proud to have a baby with you. When the baby ..." He hesitated.

"Miscarried," I supplied.

"When the baby miscarried, I guess you could tell how sad I was. But the next day, I maybe felt a little relief, too. What changes that would have made in our lives, huh?"

I nodded when he glanced over to check my reaction.

"Can you tell me how you feel?" he said.

"Like you."

"No elaboration on that?"

"It surprised me when you cried. It made me love you more." If we were going to say things, we might as well say everything.

"I hated to see you bleeding and weak. It scared me to death. And I would have loved to have been the father of our baby."

"Didn't ever want to be the dad of Lindsey Wilkerson's baby?" I asked, keeping my face poker-straight. I was able to dodge Jack's hand when it slapped in my direction, because I was waiting for it.

"The world's best argument for birth control," he said.

I didn't laugh out loud, but I smiled. His sideways glance caught it, and he grinned at me, that wicked look I loved.

Tamsin and Cliff came over that night. They