Shakespeares Trollop Page 0,46

of our life together and in the weather outside. The spring morning was just warm enough, and the sky was bright and clear. I hadn't felt this way in years. I hadn't even come close. I was so happy it almost hurt, and I was scared to death.

After we'd gone a few blocks, I began telling Jack about Deedra. I told him about the new sheriff, and her brother; about Lacey asking me for help, and the embarrassing items I'd found in Deedra's apartment; about Becca and Janet and the funeral, and the fire at Joe C's house; about the will Bobo had read when he was prying in the rolltop desk.

"Joe C's not leaving Calla anything?" Jack was incredulous. "After she's taken care of him for the past fifteen years or however long he's been too frail?"

"At least fifteen," I said. "According to what she's told me. He's leaving the more distant kids, the great-niece and great-nephews - Bobo, Amber Jean, and Howell Three, the Winthrop kids - an item of furniture apiece. Of course, that's probably not going to happen now, though there may be something worth saving in the house. I don't know. And the direct descendants are going to split the proceeds from the sale of the house."

"Who are the direct descendants again?"

"Becca and her brother, Anthony," I began, trying to remember what Calla had told me weeks before. "They descended from - "

"Just give me the list, not the begats," Jack warned me. I remembered Jack had gone to church as a child; I remembered that he'd been brought up Baptist. I wondered if we had some other things to talk about.

"Okay. Also there are Sarah, Hardy, and Christian Prader, who live in North Carolina. I've never seen them. And Deedra, who's out of the picture."

"And you think the house and lot are worth what?"

"Three hundred and fifty thousand was the figure I heard."

"Seventy thousand apiece isn't anything to sneer at."

I thought of what seventy thousand dollars could do for me.

In the newspaper, almost every day, I read about corporations that have millions and billions of dollars. On the television news, I heard about people who are "worth" that much. But for a person like me, seventy thousand dollars was a very serious amount of money.

Seventy thousand. I could buy a new car, a pressing need of mine. I wouldn't have to scrimp to save enough to pay my property taxes and my gym membership and my insurance payments, both car and health. If I got sick, I could go to the doctor and pay for my medicine all at one time, and I wouldn't have to clean Carrie's office for free for months afterward.

I could buy Jack a nice present.

"What would you like me to get you when I get seventy thousand dollars?" I asked him, an unusual piece of whimsy for me.

Jack leaned close and whispered in my ear.

"You can get that for next to nothing," I told him, trying not to look embarrassed.

We'd walked to the front of Joe C's house, and I pointed, drawing Jack's attention to the blackened front windows. Without commenting, Jack strode up the driveway and circled the house. Through the high bushes (the ones that hadn't been beaten out of shape by the firefighters) I glimpsed him at different points, looking up, looking at the ground, scoping it out. I watched Jack's face get progressively grimmer.

"You went in there," Jack commented as he rejoined me. He stood by my side, looking down at me.

I nodded, not quite focusing on him because I was assessing the damage. The upstairs looked all right, at least from the sidewalk. There was debris scattered on the yard, charred bits of this and that. When the breeze shifted direction, I could smell that terrible burned smell.

"You went in there," Jack said.

"Yes," I said, more doubtfully.

"Were you out of your fucking mind?" he said in a low, intense voice that gathered all my attention.

"It was on fire."

"You don't go in buildings on fire," Jack told me, and all the anger he'd suppressed this morning erupted. "You walk away."

"I knew Joe C was in the house!" I said, beginning to get angry myself. I don't like explaining the obvious. "I couldn't let him burn."

"You listen to me, Lily Bard," Jack said, starting down the sidewalk almost too swiftly for me to keep up. "You listen to me." He stopped dead, turned to face me, began waving a finger in my face. I stared down