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you’re well trained. But the fact is, I thought of you because you seem to fit. You and Covenant could talk to each other—if you gave yourselves a chance.”
    “I see.” In the silence, she was groaning, Is it that obvious? After everything I’ve done to hide it, make up for it, does it still show? To defend herself, she got to her feet. Old bitterness made her sound querulous. “I hope you like playing God.”
    He paused for a long moment before he replied quietly, “If that’s what I’m doing—no, I don’t. But I don’t look at it that way. I’m just in over my head. So I asked you for help.”
    Help, Linden snarled inwardly. Jesus Christ! But she did not speak her indignation aloud. Dr. Berenford had touched her again, placed his finger on the nerves which compelled her. Because she did not want to utter her weakness, or her anger, or her lack of choice, she moved past him to the outer door of the veranda. “Goodnight,” she said in a flat tone.
    “Goodnight, Linden.” He did not ask her what she was going to do. Perhaps he understood her. Or perhaps he had no courage.
    She got into her car and headed back toward Haven Farm.
    She drove slowly, trying to regain a sense of perspective. True, she had no choice now; but that was not because she was helpless. Rather it was because she had already made the choice—made it long ago, when she had decided to be a doctor. She had elected deliberately to be who she was now. If some of the implications of that choice gave her pain—well, there was pain everywhere. She deserved whatever pain she had to bear.
    She had not realized until she reached the dirt road that she had forgotten to ask Dr. Berenford about the old man.
    She could see lights from Covenant’s house. The building lay flickering against a line of dark trees like a gleam about to be swallowed by the woods and the night. The moon only confirmed this impression; its nearly-full light made the field a lake of silver, eldritch and fathomless, but could not touch the black trees, or the house which lay in their shadow. Linden shivered at the damp air, and drove with her hands tight on the wheel and her senses taut, as if she were approaching a crisis.
    Twenty yards from the house, she stopped, parked her car so that it stood in the open moonlight.
    Be true
.
    She did not know how.
    The approach of her headlights must have warned him. An outside lamp came on as she neared the front door. He stepped out to meet her. His stance was erect and forbidding, silhouetted by the yellow light at his back. She could not read his face.
    “Dr. Avery.” His voice rasped like a saw. “Go away.”
    “No.” The uncertainty of her respiration made her speak abruptly, one piece at a time. “Not until I see her.”
    “Her?” he demanded.
    “Your ex-wife.”
    For a moment, he was silent. Then he grated, “What else did that bastard tell you?”
    She ignored his anger. “You need help.”
    His shoulders hunched as if he were strangling retorts. “He’s mistaken. I don’t need help. I don’t need you. Go away.”
    “No.” She did not falter. “He’s right. You’re exhausted. Taking care of her alone is wearing you out. I can help.”
    “You can’t,” he whispered, denying her fiercely. “She doesn’t need a doctor. She needs to be left alone.”
    “I’ll believe that when I see it.”
    He tensed as if she had moved, tried to get past him. “You’re trespassing. If you don’t go away, I’ll call the Sheriff.”
    The falseness of her position infuriated her. “Goddamn it!” she snapped. “What are you afraid of?”
    “You.” His voice was gravid, cold.
    “Me? You don’t even know me.”
    “And you don’t know me. You don’t know what’s going on here. You couldn’t possibly understand it. And you didn’t choose it.” He brandished words at her like blades. “Berenford got you into this. That old man—” He swallowed, then barked, “You saved him, and he chose you, and you don’t