"Nothing."

"You don"t confide in her?"

"No, I don"t."

"Do you want to?"

"She"s a wh.o.r.e, Billy. I don"t pay her to listen to my troubles. Besides, I don"t go there anymore."

"You don"t? Why not?"

"I guess I"ve ... well ... I don"t know why."

He looked at me with genuine puzzlement, then said, "Cal, who do you talk to?"

"I talk to you."

"No, you don"t. Not really. Not anymore." His gaze became oddly tender. "At least not about yourself."

"Then n.o.body," I told him. "If not you, then n.o.body."

He glanced about, suddenly agitated, like someone trapped in his own mind, scrambling to leap free of the web it had become, gray and knotted, a tangle he could not escape. Then something shot into his brain, so that he abruptly focused his attention upon me again.

"Do you talk to Dora?"

"No."

"Does she talk to you?"

I shook my head.

Again he lapsed into silence. I waited, not wanting to draw him out on so disturbing a subject.

"Dora doesn"t talk to me either," he said finally.

I faked a laugh. "What do you want her to tell you? Some deep, dark secret? Maybe she doesn"t have one."

"I think she does." Again his mind seemed to flutter about. "Do you remember what Mother used to say, that everyone wants at least one thing in life that doesn"t change?"

I remembered it very well. She had said it during our last visit before her stroke. "And that we want that thing to be love," I said.

"Yes, love," Billy said thoughtfully. He paused, then added, "Dora doesn"t confide in me, Cal. If you love someone, you confide in them, don"t you?" He didn"t wait for an answer. "She"s hiding something, Cal. Something she"s afraid for me to know. But there"s nothing that would change the way I feel about her. Nothing at all." He looked at me imploringly. "I love her, Cal."

If I"d ever doubted the depth of my brother"s love for Dora, any such doubt would have ended at that moment. His pain now came from the possibility that the one he"d finally found to love might not love him back.

"I know you do," I said softly.

He seemed to glimpse the world we"d once shared, the love and trust we"d once known. "You"d help me if you could," he said with his old confidence that I was still the brother he remembered, the one who"d dove into the water so many years before, who"d always swum out to save him.

"Of course, I would," I told him in a voice that no doubt sounded brotherly to my brother, sweet, devoted, having nothing but his best interests at heart, as Iago"s voice must have sounded to Oth.e.l.lo.

I spent the next hour doing a few final ch.o.r.es, bringing firewood up from the bas.e.m.e.nt, coal for the old iron stove he"d never removed from his study. By then Billy had gone upstairs, so that as I worked, I could hear the soft tap of his cane as he paced back and forth within his room, brooding, as seemed obvious, about Dora.

Once I"d finished the work, I shouted a quick "Good night," listened for his reply, then, when none came, headed out the door. I"d just reached the stairs when I saw Henry Mason pull up to the curb.

"I think Billy"s sleeping, Henry," I said as I came up to him.

"Sleeping? He just called me."

"Called you?"

Henry"s pale face seemed even more ghostly in the dark air. "He says he"s coming back to work."

"When?"

"Soon, I guess. He wants to see the books."

"The books? He doesn"t know anything about the books."

"I know," Henry said. "But he wants to see them."

I glanced into the backseat of Henry"s car, saw the ledgers stacked in a single cardboard box, a weight far too heavy for a man as frail as Henry Mason to bear up the stairs.

"I"ll take them to him," I said.

Henry did not resist the offer. "Whatever you say, Cal." He opened the car door, then stepped aside while I lifted the box to my shoulder.

"Sorry for the trouble, Henry."

Henry looked at me worriedly. "Is William ... is he ... all right?"

"He"s fine," I a.s.sured him, then turned and headed up the stairs.

Billy was sitting in bed when I came into the room.

"Henry brought these," I told him. "Where do you want them?"

"Just put them on the bed."

I placed the heavy box at the foot of the bed. "Well, good night again," I said.

"Good night, Cal," my brother said, then, just as I turned away, he grinned his old grin, the one I"d seen so often in his youth, the one he"d never failed to give me when I shared a piece of candy or offered him a turn at some game I was playing with my older friends, a grin I"d not seen since his accident, and which seemed, in every way, to summon back a bright and innocent world, the brotherhood we"d once known, and which in my wild innocence I had thought would last forever.

I went directly home, made dinner, then went to my study and tried to read. But as the hours pa.s.sed, the room"s solitary atmosphere began to oppress me. I heard my father"s words again, There"s nothing like loneliness to bring you to your knees, and wondered if I had reached that point where solitude itself became an accusation.

By eight the sound of my own breath had driven me from the house, sent me pacing aimlessly, with no particular destination in mind, so that it seemed almost providential when I suddenly noticed Dora coming toward me, her long black skirt flowing like a dark wave over the walkway.

"I was on my way to William," she said when she stopped before me.

"I saw him earlier this evening," I told her.

"How was he?"

"Fine. At the moment he"s going over the books."

"What books?"

"The accounting books. For the Sentinel. He asked Henry to bring them over."

"Why did he want to see the books?"

"He"s preparing to go back to work, I suppose."

I expected her to nod briskly, continue on her way. But she remained in place just long enough for me to recall my last meeting with my brother, the things he"d said about Dora.

"Dora? Do you think we could have a talk?" I asked.

Before she could refuse, I added, "Billy"s quite focused on the Sentinel"s financial records at the moment. It"s probably better to leave him alone until he gets tired of them."

I touched her arm, moved her down the walkway, heading now in the opposite direction from my brother"s house.

"Billy and I had a talk this afternoon," I began.

She didn"t look at me, but I sensed a subtle tension come over her.

"About his feelings for you," I added quietly, laying little emphasis, letting my words fall upon Dora like flakes of snow, with no indication of the dark suspension in which I hung.

We walked on a little way, then I stopped and faced her. "You know what those feelings are, don"t you?"

"I do, yes," Dora said. "But, Cal, I"ve never given William any reason to think that I--" She halted. Her eyes glowed in the darkness. "This is hard."

I felt a circle tightening around us, drawing us together.

"What should I do, Cal?" she asked. "He"s getting better. I wouldn"t want to do anything that might..."

"You don"t love him, do you?"

"No."

A fire blazed in me. "And never can?"

"Never."

With a confidence I had never felt in my life, a confidence like my Mother"s, swift and sure, I took Dora"s arm and led her toward the bay. We said nothing until we reached the water"s edge.

"I don"t want to hurt him, Cal," Dora said.

"I know you don"t."

"I don"t know what to do."

"Maybe there"s nothing you can do."

"I didn"t mean for William to--"

"You can"t help the fact that you don"t love him, Dora. You can"t choose who you love. Neither can Billy. He can"t help it if he fell in love with you." I faced her squarely, threw the die, and held my breath. "Neither can I."

She looked at me as no woman ever had. "Cal."

"It"s true."

Her eyes glistened, and I knew.

"Dora," I whispered.

A wave rushed me forward. I drew her into my arms.

It was a kiss such as I had never known before, and while it lasted I felt our bodies flow seamlessly one into the other, a stillness all around us, perfect and unbroken, with nothing but the sway of the sea gra.s.s and the distant crash of a rushing wave to suggest that anything at all existed beyond or outside the circle of our arms. And I thought, this is what it must surely have been like, the first kiss that ever was, with nothing fixed in all the spinning world but love, all else a maelstrom and a chaos, our only hope, this utter and complete surrender.

When she spoke, her voice was barely audible above the wind in the reeds, but in its very quietness bore a chilling message.

"William."

"I know."

"We can"t do this, Cal."

I held her tightly. "We can do anything."

"He"s your brother."

"I don"t care."

"William," she repeated, this time emphatically. "William."

I stopped her with a kiss. We sank down onto the sand, my body pressed against hers, feeling her need as fiercely as my own, a sense of devouring and being devoured at the same time.

Finally, she pushed me away. "No," she breathed. "I can"t." She started to rise, but I grabbed her hand. "We have to find a way."

She pulled her hand from my grasp and got to her feet. I expected her to rush off into the night, like all those fevered heroines so beloved by my mother. But she stood motionless, a curious wonder in her eyes that love had come to her by such an unexpected route. "I never thought that anything like this could..."

I started to rise.

She lifted her hand to stop me. "Tomorrow," she said, then turned and strode away.

A high rapture swept over me.

And I thought, She"s mine.