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you're looking at the issue from the dispassionate view of a bystander; it's another thing altogether when your family is at stake. Right this second I feel murderous—I want blood.
    "How do you know?" The accusation is unmistakable. For a second, I see the hurt in in his eyes. It's worse than if I had slapped him.
    "I was told about it by someone who was there," he says, his expression and his tone almost indifferent. "You sure know how to kill the mood." He turns away and heads for the back door, waving over his shoulder as he says, "See you around, sweet butt."
    I grab the can of beer he left on the table and hurl it at the door. Bad idea—he hadn't finished it, and now I need to clean up the liquid splashed all the way to the door. As I mop, I start crying again. I hate it—I'm turning into a fountain, or maybe my mother.
    I resolve to stop crying and try to reason with myself. After all, he was dead by then, so it shouldn't really matter. There was nothing left but an empty shell. It's not as if they hurt him. Only animals go after a dead body like that!
    Cold reasoning doesn't work today.
    My mother must never know. If she finds out, it will push her over the edge. She's so fragile, I'm not sure I'm going to be strong enough to keep her together.
    But what if Everest was right? What if David's captain was really sweet on her? Now that I'm wrapping my mind around the concept, I see my mother in a totally different light. Objectively, she's really okay. How old is she anyway? Fifty-five or fifty-six. When I was a teenager, I used to see her as ancient. Some of my law professors and some partners I interviewed with were probably older than she is, and I never thought for a second that their lives were over. I know they had rich professional lives, and I'm pretty sure their private lives were active as well, so why did I look on my mother differently?
    It isn't hard to picture my mother and Captain Williams together since he was by her side most of the day. He's big and protective; he would surely make her feel safe. I play with the idea, seeing them sitting side by side on the swing and holding hands, maybe kissing, walking down the aisle in church. In my overactive imagination, she's wearing a pearl-colored dress and he's in his dress uniform, just like today. She looks delightfully happy.
    Concentrating on that image, I go to bed with a smile on my face.

CHAPTER NINE

    Everest was right. The week following the funeral, Captain "please do call me Steven" Williams comes around several times to our house. Officially, he's making sure my mother does the paperwork just right so she gets all the benefits she's entitled to since David died on the job.
    Without Everest's warning, my normal reaction would have been to tell him that if I managed to get into one of the top law schools in the country, filling out their stupid paperwork shouldn't be a problem. But because I've been told, I play the helpless dumb blonde. I thank him profusely for helping my mother and let them both sit down side by side at the dinner table with the paperwork. I serve them iced tea and make myself scarce. He stays for a couple of hours, but they're not finished when he leaves.
    The funny thing is that now I hardly recognize my mother—she's all chirpy, almost cheerful. I kept pinching myself to make sure I'm not dreaming.
    Of course, the second she went to bed after his first visit, I returned to being my normal control-freak self and looked at the forms. There was nothing complicated about them, and yet they had only gone through one of the three pages.
    Yeah, he's definitely into her, and the coolest thing is that she's into him, as well.
    So much so that she's agreed to go out with him.
    "Don't be silly, dear. It's not a date. I'm just accompanying him to a police social function," she tells me as she gets ready.
    "Absolutely." What I really wanted to say was, Of course it's not a date, and it's true you're still wearing black . Black is black,