"How did you deal with it as a couple?" the doctor asked. "Focus on each other? On Mattie?"

Renee pondered the different responses. The truth was not an option. "Jacob threw himself into his work. He pulled away from me, but we each drew closer to Mattie. I took her to visit my parents for a week, and then we took a cruise to the Cayman Islands. The water's so blue there."

"Jacob wasn't with you?"

"No. That subdivision deal--"

"The Realtor balked," Jacob said. He sounded sober now, as if the hard hammers of business considerations had knocked him awake. "We had a nice row of tract houses, half of them pre-sold. The realty company said we were charging too much, that we were cutting our own throats because we were trying to turn over some upscale houses on the other side of town. The company undercut us and siphoned off some of our buyers, and we took a bath on the mortgages. Never build on spec in this town unless you own the bank."

"But what about Mattie?" Rheinsfeldt said, nonplussed by Jacob's pa.s.sionate diversion. "How did you relate to her after Christine's death?"

"I don't know," Jacob said. "I just felt so helpless. My old man would have told me to pull my b.a.l.l.s out of the sand and keep them swinging. When you get a raw deal, you turn it around. So we--me and my partner--decided it was a good time to buy if it looked like prices were dropping. So we went in on a few lots around town, high-end commercial s.p.a.ce."

"He gave me money instead of himself," Renee said.

"I figured the best way to focus on Mattie was to spoil her like crazy," Jacob said. "And it took money. The cruise, riding lessons, Disney World, shopping trips to Charlotte."

Renee didn't like Rheinsfeldt's reaction. The counselor's lips curled as if valuing money was somehow distasteful. She had no comprehension of what it meant to be a Wells.

"It isn't unusual to throw yourself into practical pursuits when faced with an emotional tragedy," Rheinsfeldt said. "But how did you feel on the inside?"

"Inside?" One of Jacob's eyelids twitched. "I don't have any inside anymore."

"Please, Jake," Renee said. "Don't change into...you know."

He stood, paced, stopped at the window. For a moment, it looked as if he were going to s.n.a.t.c.h up the potted geraniums and hurl them against the wall. He turned, fists clenched. "You could never understand, not in a million G.o.dd.a.m.ned years."

Renee wasn't sure whether Jacob was addressing her or Rheinsfeldt, because his eyes kept swiveling in their sockets. She figured the words were meant for her. She'd heard them plenty enough.

Rheinsfeldt didn't flinch, just sat in her chair with professional poise. "How did you feel on the inside?" she repeated.

"Like my guts were on fire. All the time. I had stomach trouble, diarrhea, pain so intense that Tylenol couldn't touch it."

"Guilt, perhaps?" Rheinsfeldt's tone was that of a game show host whose contestant was coming up short in the final round.

"No, the guilt was all mine," Renee said. The tears were hot in her eyes. She didn't try to hold them back. d.a.m.n, she was getting good at this. "I'm the one who put Christine down for the nap, I'm the one who arranged the blankets. I'm the one who brought her into this awful world."

"Do you really believe it's awful? If so, you wouldn't have had any children in the first place."

"Mattie was an accident," Renee said, and Jacob stopped pacing by the window.

"An accident?" Rheinsfeldt sniffed blood in the psychological pool. "So perhaps that contributed to Jacob's desire to spoil her. Maybe he didn't think--"

"He didn't think. That's the point. We had it all planned, get the business going and get settled, acc.u.mulate some wealth, and then talk about having a family."

"How old were you then?"

"Twenty-two," Jacob said.

"Twenty-one," Renee said. "We know which night we got pregnant." She looked at Jacob and the pain in his face was worth millions. "Tell her, Jakie."

He turned to the window again. The sky was dull and blue, limitless, like her love.

"We always used condoms, even after we were married," she told Rheinsfeldt, though she was really talking to Jacob, delivering the words as if they were nails in flesh. "The pill gave me migraines, and the diaphragm and foam were so messy. One night in August, Jacob had gone out for drinks with one of his old college cla.s.smates--yes, he'd started drinking again around that time. I think it was the fear of success, but that's a whole other story. Anyway, I don't even know who these cla.s.smates were, but it must have been some party, because Jake came in at about four in the morning. It was dark and I was half asleep, but he crawled on me like an animal. I tried to push him away. I'm no prude but I like a little foreplay, plus he didn't put on a condom. He forced himself in."

"Jacob?" Rheinsfeldt interrupted, as if fearing that Renee was gaining control of the session.

"She liked it," Jacob said to the window. "It was probably the best night of her life."

Renee squirmed. Jacob had been more pa.s.sionate that night than any other, almost as if he knew he was planting a baby inside her. Almost as if he wanted a child. And some small part of her had accepted it, had pulled him more deeply into her.

The s.e.x hadn't been as intense even when they were deliberately trying for the one that would be Christine. Stinking of whiskey and sweat, tongue like an attacking viper, and body like a weapon, his excitement had swept her up and over the edge of the universe. And she hated his causing her loss of control.

And here he was, about to do it again: make her lose control. She forced herself to think of Christine, small and blue-skinned against the blanket. And Mattie, lost amid the big fire that had burned away the last bridge that connected her to their happy past.

"Three times," Renee said. "You wanted to make sure, didn't you, Jake?"

"You didn't fight it," he said.

"I'm not supposed to fight it," she said. "You married me, remember?"

"Everybody makes mistakes."

"We made them together."

"A Wells never fails."

Renee swallowed hard, trying to push the anger down her throat. It lodged there, making each breath an effort. The sudden silence in the room was thick and oppressive. Rheinsfeldt edged forward with serpentine ease.

"Obviously, you loved each other enough to carry the baby to term," the doctor said. "And Jacob is a successful businessman. It sounds like you two were getting everything you wanted. What part of your common dream didn't work out?"

"After that encounter, Jacob wouldn't touch me for weeks," Renee said. "Like I was the dirty one, or maybe he was embarra.s.sed by his pa.s.sion. He was gone when I woke up and didn't come home until the afternoon. We fought a few times, threw things, nothing too physical, mostly yelling, then him storming out."

The doctor nodded as if such behavior were perfectly normal. "Why did you behave that way, Jacob?"

"I was afraid she was pregnant."

"Why was that so frightening? Was it the responsibility?"

"No. The bloodline. I was afraid I would be a lousy father, just like I was taught."

"Taught?"

"By my own lousy father."

"Jacob, this sounds like an issue we'll need to work on privately. But for today, let's see if we can understand this one little piece of the puzzle."

"He sobered up when I missed my period and we got the test results," Renee said. "He was the perfect husband, worked hard all day, phoned me before and after lunch, showered me with attention when he got home. It was like being newlyweds again."

"And the honeymoon ended?"

"Mattie was a quick delivery. She looked so much like Jacob. Not in the features, maybe, since she got my eyes, but in the way she smiled and laughed. The way her eyebrows scrunched when she was upset."

"She was beautiful," Jacob said, heading toward the door. "Better than we deserved. I'm done."

"I hate you," Renee said.

Jacob kept walking.

"We need something for you guys to work on," Rheinsfeldt said to Jacob's back. "Something to build on for the next session."

Jacob went around the corner and was gone.

"See?" Renee said. "It's impossible."

Rheinsfeldt pulled a tissue from the box on the table and held it out to her. Renee took it but didn't wipe the tears away, didn't stanch the thin streams of mucus running down her nostrils. She knew she looked a wreck, cheeks blotched, eyelids swollen.

Rheinsfeldt put a rea.s.suring hand on her knee. "Considering Jacob's history, you might be forced to commit him involuntarily."

"History?"

Rheinsfeldt's compa.s.sionate expression melded into an impenetrable mask. "You didn't know."

CHAPTER NINE.

Jacob left the building and hurried past the playground, afraid he would see the vision of Mattie again. If the hallucinations started, the carefully constructed wall inside his head might crumble, brick by brick. Already, darkness broke through the c.h.i.n.ks. And the things inside the darkness might slither out if the gap widened.

The session was a mistake. Nothing had changed since his teens. You couldn't trust them. You couldn't trust her.

He turned the corner and headed down Buffalo Trace Lane. The county historical society said the street had once been a path where buffalo traveled to the high grazing lands in the summer. The Cherokee and Catawba hunted there, put up temporary meat camps, and moved into the valleys when the frost came. Now all the buffalo were gone, slaughtered in order to build the roads that bore their name. Jacob's throat was raw from the bout of vomiting. The air of the town tasted like old coins. A bank's neon clock said 4:37. Back in his old life, Jacob would probably have an appointment somewhere, with a developer or tenant or maybe a loan officer. In his old life, he would be running late.

Back in Rheinsfeldt's office, Renee was probably crying. Rheinsfeldt would swallow it all in her eagerness to help, and Jacob would be "the problem child" again. Now that he was gone, they could conspire against him. Just like always.

Renee loved that story about the night Mattie was conceived. He'd been drunk. He wouldn't have remembered it at all without her help. But once she'd reminded him, it had been burned into his mind forever. And Mattie was the result, and she was also burned.

Forever.

He needed some cash. The credit card was nearly topped out. He didn't have a postal address so he couldn't apply for another. The way all the financial and credit inst.i.tutions were tied together, you couldn't slip through the net if you were carrying heavy debt.

He moved like muddy water down the sidewalk as Kingsboro dragged him toward its heart. The town his father had helped nurture now bristled with concrete menace, the old three-story buildings blocking the surrounding mountains. The hardware store where his grandfather bought cut nails and hand tools now sold polyvinyl bird baths and plastic signs that said things like "Forget the dog... beware of the OWNER." A girl sat on a bench by the door, Kingsboro's version of a Goth, tiny swells of adolescence on her chest and black lipstick smeared by the cell phone she was holding. She rolled her eyes at Jacob as if he were of a different, dangerous species.

He was.

Three men stood outside the drugstore, one of them smoking. They laughed at the idle afternoon, fingering their pockets in the shade. Jacob recognized the middle one as a roofer who had held some M & W contracts. The man's left arm was in a sling, and Jacob wondered if the injury was accompanied by a workman's compensation claim against one of his fellow developers.

"Howdy, Jacob," the roofer said. Jacob ran through a mental list of names, trying to match one with the face. His father had taught him that showing interest in workers as human beings made them more productive. That meant better profit margins. Warren Wells' philosophy was built on the idea that every person had a role in his empire. "Hi, fellows," Jacob said, deciding to include them all. He used their native tongue, that of the Southern mountain boy. He'd perfected it as a youngster, though it never came as naturally to him as it did to Joshua. "Nice afternoon, ain't it?"

"Yep," the man in the sling said. "We been missing you at church."

The roofer was a member of the choir. Jacob had to mentally remove the stubble, comb his hair, and press him into a suit and tie, but he could picture the roofer praising the Lord, singing about trading this house for a mansion in the sky, a mighty fortress is our G.o.d, worthy is the lamb, grace that is greater than all our sin, it is well with my soul, I surrender all. And the blood. Lots of hymns about the revelations of cities charred with fire, oceans boiling with blood, a coming judgment spelled out against the dark, gathering clouds.

"I know," Jacob said. "I've been missing it myself."Father Rose had stopped by several times while Jacob was in the hospital. Jacob had at first refused to talk to him, then asked the preacher the question that had no answer. Why did G.o.d let the innocent suffer? When the standard answer came, of the Lord knowing best and that all was in His blessed hands, Jacob had become so angry that he wanted to strangle the old man. He'd shouted and cursed at the priest until the nurse came and gave Jacob a shot. The priest was gone when Jacob came back from the dark grotto. No doubt Father Rose hadn't mentioned the incident to the congregation, merely asked the church members to pray for Jacob's and Renee's acceptance of their loss.

"The Lord's always there to help you heal," the roofer said.

The Lord had too many agents of healing, that was the problem. From Dr. Masutu to Rheinsfeldt to Father Rose, Jacob was bound for glory no matter what. G.o.d probably needed a developer to help house all those angels. Real estate followed the universal law of supply and demand. When the value went up, only the richest could buy.

"I'm getting better," Jacob said to the roofer. His chest hurt and he was thirsty.

"Terrible thing, to lose a daughter like that."

"The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away." Jacob wondered if those words were actually in the Bible, or if they were like most religious uttering and simply repeated until they became meaningless, a hollow mantra, an oral admission of helplessness and resignation.

"That He does," the man with the cigarette said. The wind rose and the American flag on the pole in front of town hall snapped to brisk attention. A woman came out of the drugstore carrying an orange-and-white-striped prescription bag. Jacob recognized her as also being a choir member. Her face was twisted as if it had been kicked by a horse. She nodded to Jacob and went to stand beside the man in the sling.

"We're praying for you, Mr. Wells," she said. "You and the missus."

"It can't hurt none," Jacob said.

Nothing could hurt, not anymore. Not when his skin was new and his heart was encased in emotional scar tissue. Prayers and arrows could not penetrate. He looked at his bare wrist as if he had an appointment, then said good-bye and hurried away. He went past town hall, a brick building that bore a portrait of his father in the lobby. Next to town hall was the downtown fire station. He glanced at his reflection in the gla.s.s door and saw a hunched, sickly man.

Then the door swung open and the fire chief, Davidson, came out. Her belt was too tight and her stomach strained against the waistband of her pants. Her thick biceps were tight against her short shirt sleeves. Sweat darkened the blue shirt beneath her armpits.

"Mr. Wells, I've been trying to get hold of you," she said.

"I've been trying to get hold of me myself."

"The report came back from the SBI. I did the initial scene, and I didn't see anything that set off alarms. But when there's a fatality, we have to give it a closer look. The spalling and the depth of the charred remains suggested that it started near the sliding gla.s.s door by your computer."

"My wife already told you that."

"There was some question about why it spread so fast. The state lab did a gas a.n.a.lysis and didn't find any trace of an accelerant. When a house gets eaten up in less than twenty minutes, you would expect to find some lighter fluid, gasoline, or something as simple as the impression of a matchstick."

"You're talking arson."

Davidson gave a dutiful nod of the head. "That's why we asked about any enemies, problems at work, that kind of thing. And of course there was the autopsy..."

Jacob turned away and looked at the skyline, the tarred tops of buildings, a transmission tower glinting silver on a distant hill. He couldn't think of Mattie lying cold on a stainless steel table, black skin peeling and flaking like that of an overly toasted marshmallow, the sharp blades of strangers probing into her scalded organs. Easier to see her as four pounds of ash, dust, and bone bits resting in a ceramic urn in Renee's apartment. She was part of the sky now, he tried to tell himself, up there in a Catholic heaven singing about mighty fortresses and worthy lambs.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Wells. But we had to look at the lungs for signs of smoke inhalation."

"I told you she was still alive when I reached her. And I couldn't G.o.dd.a.m.ned save her."