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with the back of her hand. “‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,’” she declared. “And though it may be so, let me tell you this, my brother—I want my share too.”
    “You are upset,” I said.
    “How can you tell?”
    “You surely have reason for your bitterness, and—” I began, but she cut me off by grabbing me by the throat.
    “Are you not curious as to how I will have my share of vengeance?” she asked.
    “Pray tell me,” I said.
    “ Pray tell me?! ” she said. “‘Pray tell me,’ did he say? Oh you may mock me, brother dear, but I will have vengeance—a great, enduring vengeance that will dwarf all the minor perturbations of this life. Do not doubt me, thee of meager faith. And how? How? Tell me, my love. How will I have my portion?”
    Aware that nothing I could do or say would temper her rage, I remained silent.
    “A tongue hath he, yet he speaks not,” she said, and gripped my throat more forcefully. “ How ? How long, oh Lord, I must wonder, can this fool—this coward I have called my dearest friend and soul mate—keep from inquiring as to how I will have my share in the time to come?”
    Blood pulsing with increasing force behind my eyes, I considered prying her thumbs upwards with force—of breaking one of them if need be, or of visiting a blow upon her cheek with the back of my hand that would have cracked bone there—yet I was also able in the moment to find a place within me that said: Go slow, Horace. Go slow, my friend, for you dare not add physical pain to the distress of her soul. Be kind if you can. Be kind.
    As if she discerned my thoughts at the very moment they were making themselves known to me, she loosened her hold upon my throat.
    I sucked in quick, shallow breaths of air, and then: “How?” I asked. “How will you have your vengeance?”
    “Thank you for asking,” she replied. “How? Why, by having his child—that is how. I will have Max Baer’s child. Since I cannot … since we can never…”
    That was when something inside her, like the branch of a sapling, seemed to snap in two. She let go of me, sat on our bed, slumped forward, and wept. I was not surprised by what she had said, or by what she had begun to say, for we had decided long before, and had ever taken necessary precautions, to make certain our love would not bring a new life into this world. So I sat beside her, took her hand in mine, and said that given our place in Max’s life—in the world!—we needed, now more than ever, to exercise caution. We needed not to act from a raw desire for vengeance, as urgent as that desire might be.
    Through her tears, Joleen asked what if not raw desire had our life together been about. Until this moment, she had believed that no matter how dark the way in this life might be, she would always be able to count on me. But now …
    “But now, more than ever, you can,” I said softly. “For I am acting out of a desire beyond the desire that has made us one with the other. I am acting out of a desire to protect you.”
    “From him ?” she said. “Do not talk nonsense to me. He is a mere child. Protect me from him ?!”
    “Protect you from yourself,” I said.
    “ I will have Max Baer’s child !” she declared again and, wiping away her tears, she stood and went to the door. “And now, my husband, there are chores that await, and I must be gone. Do you object?”
    “I love you more than life,” I said. “I always will.”
    “Do not utter banal nonsense in my presence,” she said. “And do not underestimate me. I want vengeance, yes, but knowing me— loving me, as you would have it, and are not, in the biblical sense, knowing and loving one and the same?—you should also know that there is nothing in the smallest digit of my smallest finger or toe that is, or ever has been, self-destructive. During your peregrinations with our lord and master, I have had more than ample time for reflection, and before this day decided that of course I will not