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that it was three o'clock in the morning on the East Coast.
    "William," Jamie said to me, his voice strangely detached and cold, "there's been an accident. A fire."
    "Is everyone okay?" I asked.
    It was the dumbest question I could have possibly come up with. If anyone was okay, it wouldn't be my estranged uncle calling from the backwoods of Maine at three in the morning. My uncle let out a long, tired sigh, the kind you only ever hear when it precedes the worst kind of news.
    "No William. They're all gone. No one made it out alive. Your parents and sister, they're dead."
    I don't recall much of the remaining conversation. Even now, years later, all I remember was sitting on the edge of the bed, with my head in one hand and the phone in the other, asking my uncle a series of senseless questions. Was he sure they were dead? Was he sure it was our house? It really was a fire? No one was left? He really was sure it was our family? Not the house next door?
    Beth, dear Beth, slowly and with infinite care, wrapped herself around me on the bed. Her breasts pressed against my back, her chin rested gently on my shoulder, her temple against mine, her arms wrapped around my shoulders, her legs wrapped around my hips. I could feel her tears falling down my chest, and I thought how sweet she was to cry for me, because for no reason I could think of, I was not crying. Not one tear fell as I babbled away at my uncle on the phone.
    Finally Jamie asked if there was anyone with me, and if so, could he speak to them? I handed the phone over my shoulder to Beth, and heard her voice, shaky and small next to my ear. There was a short conversation and then Beth hung up the phone. I noticed a change in her. She was no longer sobbing and grieving but instead, she was afraid, trembling even. She had the look of someone who was an arm's length away from a viper, trying to remain calm and failing miserably.
    "Your uncle says he wants you to stay in Paris for a few more weeks."
    "Why?" I asked. "I gotta go back...a funeral, there's going to be a funeral. I have to go back."
    "He...he said it might not be safe," Beth replied. Her voice was quavering.
    I wasn’t understanding her. "But the fire will be out, they would have taken care of that. I don't understand."
    Beth shook her head. "No, he meant, it's not safe for you to go back home. It might not have been an accident. Your family might have been killed because of your father's work. It might be because of a trial."
    That was a moment of clarity for me. All the cobwebs that had been spun through my mind over the last few terrible minutes just blew away. I stood up and looked down at Beth, so beautiful and sorrowful and terrified. There must have been something dark and cold in my eyes now, because she drew the covers up to her chin and hid her nudity from me.
    "Is that what he said? That they were killed? Is that what he told you?"
    Beth buried her face in the covers and nodded frantically.
    I walked over to my luggage, dug around and pulled out my little black leather address book. I looked up my uncle's number and called down to the front desk, asking them to put me back through to him.
    "Jamie, I want to know what happened," I asked. There was no sadness in my voice, no sorrow, no quaver. I might as well have been telling a classmate to go over an assignment again.
    I heard my uncle make a strange sound on the other end of the line. It was a dry, humorless, evil sort of chuckle, the sound a man makes when he sees something bad about to happen that's going to bring him great satisfaction. It was the sort of laugh you made knowing your favorite prizefighter is about to destroy his unsuspecting opponent, and you've got a ringside seat. Jamie knew, although at the time I didn't, that I had just climbed over the ropes and stepped into the ring.
     
     

THREE
     
     
    I left Paris the day before Jamie buried my family. On his advice, I checked out of my hotel, put Beth on a plane back to the states,