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soak your feet."
    "It's that obvious?"
    "Been in restaurants since I left the army," he said. "You notice things."
    Carrying my basin, I limped upstairs, took off my shoes and socks, filled it with water, and sat on the edge of the bed, soaking my feet. Then, unable to keep my eyes open, I dried my feet and lay down. I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

 
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    Chapter 4

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    At eleven p.m. I was parked in the garage of a small ranch-style house about ten miles south of Merchantville. As promised, the door had opened upon the command of the remote in my glovebox, and, as instructed, I had closed the door behind me and stayed in the car, waiting. Normally, I didn't wait well. I inherited impatience genes from both sides of the family, and in combination, they make me as restless as a Mexican jumping bean. But tonight, after working breakfast, lunch, and dinner at Mother Theresa's, the only thing that was holding me up was the steering wheel. I didn't care if the trooper I was supposed to be meeting never showed up. All I wanted to do was sleep.
    I was wrested from Morpheus's gentle arms when the lights came on and the garage door began to lift with a series of creaks and moans so fearsome it sounded like a metallic monster rising from the depths. By the time the door had opened, I was a trembling wreck. These days, my nerves seemed too close to the surface. I was used to being driven and under stress; what I wasn't used to was this constant state of subhysteria, this sense that anything could knock me off balance and send me spinning out of control.
    Under the circumstances, it wasn't an abnormal reaction. Two days ago, I had been laughing at my own bridal giddiness and reflecting on the chain of circumstances which had led me to be marrying Andre.
    Couples always like to ask each other, "How did you two meet?" Our answer is a bit of a conversation stopper. We met because he was the detective on the case when my sister Carrie was murdered. We'd started as enemies and look where we'd ended up. Or would have ended up. My whole life had been put on hold. All I could do was wait and hope, things I was terribly bad at. And trembling atop the whipped cream of my frenzied nerves like the cherry on a bad sundae, was fear. The fear that something would go wrong and I'd never see him again. Fear that the baby I was carrying would grow up without a father. I was so scared I felt like my insides had been through a Mixmaster. And I didn't do scared. I was a tough guy.
    If I was this consumed by fear, how must it be for him? It had been a revelation for me, his overwhelming joy at impending fatherhood. Such a contrast to my own ambivalence. I'd been sulky, confused, feeling trapped by this accidental pregnancy. His delight and unconditional acceptance had been like a life raft, sustaining me through my confusion. I hoped that now it would do the same for him, that however miserable his circumstances, the thought of me and the baby, waiting, might give him strength.
    Oliver, Mason, or Claudine. Not names I would have picked. When he found out I might be pregnant, they had rolled off Andre's tongue with a fluency and readiness that stunned me. While I was still dithering about being pregnant at all, he was happily naming our child. While I was still in a snit because I hadn't gotten to choose whether I would be a mother, he was dragging me into the children's book sections of bookstores and picking out "must have" books for the baby. While I was throwing up and feeling too miserable to live another day, he was pricing fleecey baby bags and L.L. Bean baby backpacks. He had already begun to make a tiger-maple cradle.
    Though he was the constant centerpiece of my life, I skittered over my thoughts of Andre the way I'd rush across slippery ice, not pausing for fear I'd trip on a memory and fall, unable to regain my footing. It had happened to me once today. Catching sight of a departing man's broad back and shoulders, his