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heat.
        "Seriously,
to what do I owe this—"
        "You
sounded a little rough on the phone. Like it hadn't been the best day."
        I
listened to that, and watched her move around the kitchen, and I was grateful
to see her there. She was right; it hadn't been the best day—but those were the
sort of days that could stack up on you easily, and it was a new and welcome
thing for me to end them with Amy. It beat the hell out of ending it alone,
with a bottle of beer and the mindless noise of some TV show.
        "Thank
you," I said. "Really."
        "I
wouldn't say that till you taste this."
        "What
is it—"
        "I
call it Mafia lasagna. In honor of the Sanabria family."
        "Weak
humor, Amy. Very weak."
        She
dried her hands on a towel and turned to face me. "If you're interested,
I've got a bunch of printouts discussing Joshua Cantrell—or at least the
discovery of his body—over on the table. As for Alexandra, there's not much out
there. She's the quiet one of the Sanabria family, I suppose."
        I
walked over to the table and looked at the stack of papers there. Lots of
articles. The discovery of Cantrell's body had made plenty of news.
        "I
can't believe the name didn't register with me," I said, flipping through
the articles.
        Amy
turned to look at me over her shoulder, a few strands of hair glued to her
cheek from the steam rising off the stove. After months of fighting to
straighten her naturally curly blond hair, she'd finally given up again, and I
was glad to see it. She'd looked too corporate with the straightened hair—an
observation that had gotten a pen thrown at me once.
        "You've
been pretty removed from the news lately." She pulled the oven open and
bent to look inside, leaving her voice muffled as she continued to speak.
"Can't say the last time I've seen you with the paper."
        It
was a good point. Ordinarily I would've read about the discovery of Cantrell's
body, and probably remembered the name when Harrison said it, but I'd stopped
reading the papers and watching TV news shows back in the fall, when I was
making all-too-frequent appearances in them. I hadn't gone back to them yet,
but now I was thinking maybe I should. It's dangerous to be uninformed, as
today had demonstrated.
        "That's
just good taste," I said. "You know the sort of crap they write in
the newspaper these days. It's a wonder they still refer to those people as
journalists."
        She
closed the oven and stood up. "I am close to knives, you know. Large,
sharp knives."
        "Good
reminder." I moved the stack of articles out of the way. They could wait,
or maybe I'd never read them at all. There was no need to. I'd taken a silly
nibble today, but now I saw the lure and its hooks and knew better than to hang
around. The Cantrell case didn't need my attention, and I needed even less the
attention of the Sanabria family.
        "Food
is almost done," Amy said, "and you better realize the only reason
I'm feeding you is because I want to hear the story. Not some half-assed
version of it, either. The real story, with all the details."
        "You'll
get it," I said, "but let me pour some wine first."
        
        
        It
was a nice evening that turned into a nice night, and she stayed with me and we
slept comfortably and deeply in my bed while another round of storms blew in
off the lake and hammered rain into the walls that sheltered us. Amy rose early
and slipped out of the house sometime before seven to return to her own
apartment before starting the day. We'd been together a while now, but still we
both clung to own routines and our own space, and I wondered at times if maybe
that wasn't the way it would and should always be, if maybe we were the sort of
people who simply didn't cohabit well. At other times, I'd come home and sit
alone in the apartment and wonder why in the hell I hadn't proposed.
        She'd
been gone for almost an