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cock crows.” Saint Peter couldn’t believe it possible, but it came to pass.
     
    And so had it for her. She had denied her parents, betrayed them.
     
    In the Gothic severity of the stone-pillared church, with its high, dark, stained-glass windows, she felt small and unclean. She hadn’t loved her mother and her father enough.
     
    The services went on and on, but finally it was over and they were motioning to her to get up from the pew. She stepped into the aisle and Paul was beside her, strong and protective. They began the slow procession down the aisle to the gaping, sun-brightened doors, moving slowly behind the two coffins.
     
    They’re in there, she thought. Mom and Dad -- they’re in those two draped boxes. They’re going into the ground.
     
    She felt her legs buckling beneath her, but Paul’s hand was strong and reassuring on her arm. She managed to keep walking until they were out of the church, following the caskets down the steps toward the waiting cars.
     
    Screaming. Somebody was screaming.
     
    Paul had arm around her shoulder, his anxious face close. She looked at him wonderingly, not understanding, until she realized all at once that it was she who was screaming.
     
    Angie wished she could die. She went limp, closing her eyes, expelling her breath, shutting out the sight, sound, smell and feel of the sacrilegiously bright day around her. Feet were scraping, clothes were rustling, voices were murmuring anxiously, hands were supporting her and someone was moving her down the steps. Dimly, she heard Paul’s voice saying, “I’ll take her home. I’d better take her home.”
     
    There was confusion and motion. Time went rushing by and then slowed to a crawl and then speeded up again. At one point she and Paul were in the back seat of a taxi, at another point they were in the living room of their own house, and at still another point he was giving her a cup of tea with the tea bag still in it. His face looked pale and worried.
     
    All at once she came to. It was the tea bag that did it. She looked at it and thought, Paul forgot to take the tea bag out. She was thinking and aware again.
     
    She looked around, suddenly wide-eyed. They were home. She was sitting in the armchair near the radiator, in the living room, with Paul standing in front of her, the worried expression still on his face. They were really and truly at home.
     
    The cemetery.
     
    “We didn’t go!” she cried.
     
    “Take it easy,” Paul said. “Take it easy, Angie. Drink your tea.”
     
    She shook her head wildly. Didn’t he understand? “We didn’t go!” she cried again. “We didn’t go!”
     
    “You got all shook up, Angie,” he said gently. “Nobody blames you. It was a hell of a thing. Funerals are the cruelest things in the world. I never knew that before but they are.”
     
    “But -- Mom and Dad. We didn’t go to the cemetery!”
     
    “It’s good we didn’t,” he said. “We couldn’t have done anybody any good. And it just would have made you even more upset.” He laughed nervously. “You had me scared, Angie,” he said. “I thought you were going to die, right there on the church steps.”
     
    “I tried to,” she said quietly. “I tried to die.”
     
    “Hey! Cut that out, kid. Take it easy and let things settle inside your head. Don’t go getting dramatic on me.”
     
    She looked at him, his familiar, concerned face strengthening her, as his hand against her arm had strengthened her in the church. “Thank you, Paul,” she whispered. She reached out, tenderly, hesitantly, touching his cheek. “I’m glad you came home,” she said.
    “I don’t know what would have happened to me if you hadn’t come home.”
     
    “You’d be okay,” he told her. “You’re a good kid. You’re going to bounce back fast. Wait and see.”
     
    “Stay here with me,” she begged him. “At least for a while -- for a few weeks, at least.”
     
    “Sure. What do you think?” He grinned, more