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naturally now, playfully poking her jaw. “I’m your big brother, little girl,” he said. “I’m responsible for you.”
     
    “Thank you, Paul.”
     
    “Only right now,” he said, “I’ve got a cup of coffee getting cold in the kitchen. Is it okay if I go out and get it? If I promise to come right back, I mean?”
     
    She smiled, nodding. “I think it’ll be all right,” she said.
     
    “Fine.”
     
    He got his coffee and they sat together in the living room. They were silent, mostly, saying small inconsequential things to one another, only at intervals. Angie needed time to get over the emotional explosion that had hit her at the church, and Paul seemed to realize this as he paced his own mood accordingly.
     
    They’d been there not quite an hour when Bob arrived.
     
    Bob, over the last two years, had gradually become, to a certain extent, a normal part of the household. He had dinner with Angie and her parents perhaps once or twice a week. He had spent many afternoons chatting with Angie’s father or working with him on the car. And he had long since come to the stage of personal relationship with the family where he no longer bothered with the doorbell. On arriving at the house, his normal method was to simply open the front door, walk in and shout, “I’m here!”
     
    That is exactly what he did this time. His shout, loud and ringing, went echoing through the silent house, emphasizing its new emptiness. Angie jumped, wide-eyed, feeling her nerves tighten suddenly.
     
    Then Bob appeared in the living room doorway, grinning fatuously. “Hi, folks,” he said.
     
    Angie could only stare at him.
     
    Paul got to his feet slowly, glaring at the boy. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “Don’t you have a brain in your head?”
     
    Bob stopped, open-mouthed. “Oh, golly!” he said. “Oh, for Pete’s sake, I forgot! I’m sorry -- Paul, Angie, I’m really sorry, truly I am. I just completely forgot.”
     
    “You better forget yourself right on out of here,” Paul told him angrily.
     
    “Hey, now, wait a second!”
     
    “Never mind ‘wait a second’,” Paul said. “Just get out.” He strode across the room to Bob. “Go on,” he said. “Take off.”
     
    Bob looked over Paul’s shoulder at Angie, his eyes wide with surprise. “Angie! Tell him to stop this. Tell him it’s okay for me to be here.”
     
    Paul reached out and shoved the other boy, saying, “Just leave Angie alone. She’s had a rough time today. We don’t need idiots like you coming around to make things worse.”
     
    “Angie!”
     
    Angie looked from one to the other. She felt the nerves in her body tightening, coiling harder and harder like the mainspring of a watch. She hung onto the arms of the chair, afraid she was going to burst apart any second now.
     
    Because Bob brought it all back. All the guilt, terror, loneliness and self-pity that had gradually been soothed out of her by the quiet, reassuring presence of Paul was all coming back now. Bob’s presence had brought it crashing in upon her again. The betrayal of her parents, when first she had heard of their deaths, when she had used the knowledge to avoid committing herself with Bob. The second betrayal lay in her happiness at Paul’s having come home. And the third betrayal had occurred today when she hadn’t even accompanied her parents to the cemetery, and had made it impossible for Paul to go to the cemetery, either.
     
    Paul’s strength, his calm presence, had soothed her and made her forget these things, or at least had kept her from dwelling on them. But now Bob was here, bringing the raucous sight and sound of the non-grieving world, bringing with him the strong reminders of guilt.
     
    And. he was calling to her for help. He was looking over Paul’s shoulder at her and calling to her to turn against her brother. She couldn’t do it. Even if she’d wanted him to stay, she couldn’t turn against her