Nothing like a mood-killing angry face waiting on my side porch to bring me back to earth with a ground-shaking thud.

All morning Jackson and I had been the way we used to be: touching each other, laughing together, no old animosity or manipulation. Just a man and a woman. A couple who looked, to outsiders, as if they were very much in love. I liked the feeling. I liked daring to draw in a deep breath and not hurting inside. I welcomed touching his cheek over coffee, making love a last time before leaving, taking one of his well-manicured hands in my rather rough hand and bringing it to my lips, looking up at him, seeing him contented and pleased with me.

Driving home I thought about what it could be like if we married again. I’d have to leave my house on Willow Lake. The real estate market wasn’t very good in Michigan; maybe I would hang on to it for a while. Why not? I asked myself. We could come up here to write. Nothing stopping us from having a second home. I wouldn’t have to give up my place entirely, just be ready to share a little. Lots of couples did exactly that. Or they had time apart at their summer home. Maybe I couldn’t keep the garden, but then I could hire Crazy Harry to weed for me, maybe spray on deer repellant. There was no reason to go on in such turmoil, not with a perfectly good marriage as an alternative.

I drove down my drive, happy with myself, but guilty that I’d left Sorrow on the porch alone all night. I thought, with a thud, I might have to get rid of Sorrow. Really no place for him back in Ann Arbor. He was too big, too clumsy, too unmanageable. And he was used to freedom. I could see him leaping on a leash, tied to a post outside of Zingerman’s, straining to get away. No, I would just have to harden my heart and find him a good home. Maybe Dolly would take him. She didn’t have much in the way of entertainment. A dog would be good for her.

Or Crazy Harry. He could add Sorrow to his kennel of dogs. I even told myself Sorrow would like that, having his own kind for company.

The Leetsville patrol car sat in my drive. Sorrow, who had escaped, leaped in place beside my squat, angry friend, standing with her fists jammed at her waist, watching me pull down the hill. Eleven thirty. We’d said early, but I’d forgotten.

I parked beside Dolly’s car, got out, and waved, happily calling out, “Hi! Beautiful morning.”

“Where the hell you been?” Dolly growled.

Sorrow leapt in wild circles around me. He had learned not to throw his body at a human being, but had not learned how to stay on the ground. I grabbed a couple of fistfuls of his thick hair and forced him to calm down. He lapped at me, his long pink tongue reaching for a bare arm, a leg, anything he could get to. I patted his head and bent close, whispering an apology.

“We were supposed to get going early. Remember what you said yesterday?”

I murmured something and nodded.

“You stay in town?”

I grabbed my purse, salad bowl, and tongs out of the car and started toward the house with Sorrow leaning his big black-and-white body into mine.

“Looks like it,” I answered Dolly over my shoulder, opening the door, and nudging Sorrow to sit.

The two of them followed me inside. I hurried to feed Sorrow, still feeling guilty that he’d probably been out all night, and hadn’t been fed. Water he could get down at the lake.

“You sleep with Jackson?” she demanded.

I turned an astonished, and innocent, face to her.

“None of your business,” I said, and slipped off my shoes. I needed a shower, my hair washed, a change of clothes. Maybe an hour. Dolly had been there almost two hours already. I probably wouldn’t have time for a shower. No time to wash my hair. But I was at least going to change out of the silk shirt and pants into something more suitable for hunting down missing women.

“Are you nuts?” She took a seat at the kitchen island, wiggling around so her gun found a place for itself over the side of the chair. “You know what that guy’s like. He’ll use you again. You’re already typing up his stuff, sending it to the publisher for him. Now he’ll have all the sex he wants, too. Sounds like some damned geisha to me. Never thought you’d be that kind of woman.”

I gave a disgusted snort and headed back to my bedroom to change. When I came out, dressed more for the day ahead in jeans and yellow cotton sweater, she was still talking.

“You think you’ll marry him again? Start all that over—finding underwear in the glove box of his car?”

I decided I’d told Dolly too much and was sorry. I had needed a place to go with my misery when I first knew her, but I should have kept it to myself.

I shrugged. “Might. Things aren’t working that well up here.”

“You mean your crappy books?”

“Well, yes,” I sat on a stool and changed into tennis shoes. “My crappy books. No decent jobs. Being alone too much. Talking to a dog like some old lady.”

“What about the Dead Dancing Women thing? The one about us?”

“No takers.”

“Thought you were sure about that one. Didn’t like it myself—made me look kind of like an odd person—but I thought, ’cause it was based on those murders here last year, well, that it should sell. If that happens you should be OK.”

I nodded. “If that happens,” I echoed.

“Doesn’t take a lot to live up here.”

“Takes some.”

“You said you still got money from your dad.”

“But it’s running out. Probably by next year …”

“Geez.” She looked away, disgusted. “Anything can happen between then and now. If I was you I’d get my real estate license, just in case. You could make enough off that.”

I nodded. An idea I’d been kicking around. A week of schooling. Have to pass a test. Find an office that would take me …

Thinking about Jackson and Ann Arbor was easier.

“I thought you loved it up here.” She sniffed and picked at the skin on her left hand.

“I do,” I said. “But …” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

Sorrow had to be put on the porch, though I promised him a long walk when I got back.

A woman has to be practical, I told myself as we headed out to my car. Maybe it was time to move on. Still, as I turned to lock my door, I felt the solid brass knob in my hand, put a palm against the warm and firm wood, and turned away from the house I loved with a frisson of sadness.