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cut a chunk of peach with his spoon, found some cottage cheese for it. “Who says you do? And since when is Gibson an Italian name?”
    â€œIt isn’t. But Gibone was. I think we were all lucky Great Grandpa Woppo G didn’t change it to Gibbon.”
    â€œWell, look at the bright side,” Herman told her. “Once you put all this behind you, leave CHiPs, take a little tip from me, take a little trip—someplace far away where nobody’ll call you Chippy anymore.”
    Cheryl’s angst dissolved like the sugar in her ice tea. “Low Rider” again. What was this, catching? Some kind of mental disease?
    Herman pushed his messed-up plate of curds away from him. “So … you need a divorce lawyer too?”
    *   *   *
    That time she didn’t bother answering. It wasn’t like that between her and Rachel. Their thing wasn’t about things . It was about them. Each other. The Big Trust, which a single look in the mirror had shattered. Everything deteriorating from there.… How pitiful, truly pathetic. And moving day had arrived.
    A couple of weeks had passed, and now it was Rachel’s turn to find the tequila bottle a little too often. She sat at the spectacular safety glass table in the dining room under the $2,000 chandelier she’d gotten half price at the Cherokee Iron Works. The chandelier ran the length of the thick glass like a pool table light, translucent parchment behind paper-thin iron silhouettes marching along its sides. The fancy lamp was called Cattle Drive : little doggies and longhorns wandering between cactus and cowboys on horseback. The lamps behind always made it look like sunset. Pure kitsch, but Cheryl loved it. No, not something she could unbolt from the ceiling and take away.
    A cloying melancholy had descended on both of them. No shouting, no hair-pulling, no anger or recriminations. No jealous love scenes. And maybe no divorce either, just a separation. It sort of depended on what the lawyers said. There had to be some kind of asset protection, but maybe not. If divorce meant Rachel’s liability could be limited, they’d do it. If it didn’t … well, Cheryl still had to get away.
    â€œYou can take what you want,” Rachel told her.
    â€œI know.”
    â€œWe could fight it out here, together.”
    â€œI know.” She took a sip from Rachel’s shot glass. “Let’s just see how things go, okay?”
    But she knew she was lying. Moving back east pretty well broke it. Rachel wasn’t about to give up her lawyer job and put the house up for sale. One of the movers rolled an overstuffed wardrobe box toward the front door, its sides bulging. All those party clothes.
    Rachel pounded back the rest of the shot. “You’re going to be the best-dressed lipstick lez in all of Dutchess County.”
    â€œThat’s not hard, Sugah.”
    â€œI know.” Rachel reached for the bottle again. “I’ve been to Dutchess County.”
    One of the movers, a bald guy with bulging pecs, popped his head around a hallway corner. “Hey, there’s somebody out here for you.”
    He meant Cheryl.
    *   *   *
    She stopped short as she came out the door. A man was waiting by the moving van, dark suit, open collar. Never seen him before. Broad, open face and scruffy graying beard; intelligent, sad, knowing eyes. The fellow seemed a cross between John Q. Citizen and a well-established foreign gentleman, originally from somewhere in northwestern India—now standing in her driveway in American clothes. A guy some people might have called a Dot head or Sabu when he wasn’t looking. He’d come in a rental full-size black SUV Ford Explorer, anonymity in four-wheel drive. And he spoke in a whisper-soft voice:
    â€œMiss Gibson,” the man asked. “May I come in?”
    Something in his manner—the sincerity and gentleness—made it so