The Widower's Wife

Illustration by John Stevens

Men are fools. Eve probably said it first, within five minutes of meeting Adam. No. Five seconds. Oddly though, it’s the guys who normally never put a foot wrong who drop the deepest into smelly doodoo when they fall.

Could he have? Been that stupefyingly stupid?

I was aaaaalmost sure. He had.

The “he,” my widower, who still had to force himself to look at me, sat eating calmly in his usual place, the head of the family table.

Randy, one of the half orphans, except I couldn’t stop thinking of him as my older son, shoveled food into his mouth with the singleminded devotion of a boy dragged out of Andromeda’s maze just as he was about to find the treasure and rescue the princess, racking up a record score, and was impatient to get back and do so.

Link, the youngest half orphan, munched loudly while staring at the stranger across the table. As I was, more covertly.

The stranger. Could he really be… I just couldn’t believe my supposedly intelligent widower could be that infuriatingly brain dead.

My ex-daughter Lizzie, the middle half orphan, couldn’t decide whom to glare at, the stranger… or me. So far, she was dividing her rancor. Though I, the known evil, was getting the larger share.

I supposed that was only fair, from her point of view After all, I killed her mother and made her father a widower.

Right. Yes. Evil, cruel me. If I had done exactly that, I wouldn’t be paying a higher price.

I only wanted not to die. But maybe death would have been kinder.

Legally dead. Worse, to my family. My officially ex-family.

The stranger kept trying to look at me without looking at me. That was what had triggered my suspicions off in the first place. That knowledge, that… recognition. Yes. Recognition.

I knew he wasn’t a reporter. Court (Harcourt Randolph Winthrop, my widower) would have killed him, or died trying, to protect the sanctity of his home.

Scratch reporter.

Lawyer or law official? Court knew the risks as well as I did. Scratch law anything.

We had been all over the media when it happened. But then the attention mostly died away; fifteen seconds of fame, then oblivion. Yet there was knowledge in the man’s soft brown eyes. Knowledge and recognition. Personal recognition.

I was becoming more and more certain. Court, my beloved, foolish widower, had brought my other widower home to dinner. The two men ate and talked amiably. I mentally checked through the pantry’s contents for rat poison.

I was keeping a weather, i.e., mother’s gimlet eye, on all three children. Waiting for the inevitable. Court, the ultra conservative, had long ago insisted that we eat the old fashioned way, no portables, consoles, etc. brought to at least dinner. The dining room table itself, polished satin pseudo-oak, had no built-ins. No distractions. Leading to trouble.

Link started it. “Hey, Mr. Adamson, did you know your eyes are red?”

They were. Like someone who had wept a long time. Or who rubbed his eyes constantly, perhaps because he wanted to cry and couldn’t.

“Are they?” Without thinking he reached up and confirmed my diagnosis. With a sick smile to Link, he added, “Guess that’s because of my work. I spend a lot of time staring at a computer screen.” A depreciating half grin. “I design computer games.”

Lizzie shot him her patented, I-hate-computer-games glare, but Randy focused on him a la instant. “Jason’s Lair?” His current favorite.

“ ’Fraid not, son.” Harley Adamson struck me as a grown man who didn’t have children around much, a little unsure how to talk to them. Now he favored Randy with a nod. “I do math and English games schools use.”

He couldn’t have lost their interest faster. Even today, with the computerized half-at-home, wide range of private and public education, the dread word “schools” could throw a blight on any group of children.

“I did the Heroes and Villains Concerts math series,” he added, almost apologetically.

Link’s face screwed up. “But I liked that one,” he burst out. He looked ready to cry. “You’re not supposed to like school.”

“Did you learn from it?” Harley Adamson was suddenly professional.

Link stuck out his lower lip. “No. Dint.”

Harley shook his head. “Guess I’ll have to work more on it. Maybe if I have the Villains kidnap a pretty girl to sing for them, that would improve their numbers and make the Heroes lose audience. If they lost enough, their percent’d be lowered, too. Might make it difficult for them to fund the Green Team’s environmental crusade, though.”

“Lower percent and lower gates?” Link looked disgusted. “How can you do that to them!”

“Maybe if they held more concerts, that would make up for the loss?” Harley said, all innocence.

“Dumb.” Link sniffed. “If you lower their 5 percent gate share even a percent, they have to do—” He stopped and calculated, “—25 percent more concerts to make the same take, without taking into account lower gates at each concert.”

“Link, you fool,” Lizzie said with a sneer. “He’s made you help him with the stupid program.”

Harley looked at her. “No,” he said honestly. “But I wanted to see just what he’d learned about fractions and percents.”

Mentally, I rolled eyes skyward. Harley was now zero for three. Link, for making him show himself a liar. Lizzie, because she was looking for a reason and embarrassing Link was better than none. Randy, for admitting he worked on “fake” games.

At which point Harley managed a home run. “I have a program I was working on. I had to… stop, for a while. Maybe one of you would like to play it, and tell me if it’s worth finishing.”

Three pairs of young eyes drilled him like lasers. “Nobody’s ever played it before,” Randy said slowly.

“Nope. I was just about to arrange for testing when I… took leave of absence. But I could use my password and download it here.” A twisted grin. “Long as I don’t ‘work’ on it, that is.” Apologetic. “I’ll have to wipe it when I leave, it’s proprietary to the company I work for. But I could designate somebody who tried it a beta tester. If the playing goes well enough, I could register you as an official beta tester for my games. You’d have to visit the office to test, until the software is finished enough to copyright, but once it is, you could have beta copies to play with. As long as you told me all your reactions, and where the game had glitches.”

“Play new games!” Randy almost wasn’t breathing.

“Help design games.” Link’s eyes were wide.

“Finks,” said Lizzie with a disgusted snort.

“Nobody’s twisting anybody’s arm, Lizzie,” Court said slowly. “If the boys want to play with Mr. Adamson’s new game or games, they may. If not, they won’t. You have the same privilege. But part of democracy is, if one person has a right, all do.”

Lizzie stuck out her lip. “Rights is what grownups have. Kids don’t have rights, except the right to obey orders.”

I opened my mouth, shut it again. One right I had lost, was saying anything more significant than, “Pass the salt, please,” to my grieving daughter.

Harley Adamson looked at Lizzie, and chewed his lip. Then amazed us all. “You don’t like computer games, because most of them are male—boy—oriented.”

My adolesofeminist shrugged. “What do you care how a silly little girl feels.”

Harley smiled. Though he was looking at Lizzie, it was obvious that he was seeing something (someone?) in his mind’s eye. “Foolish boys can say, or believe, that because girls are different, they’re inferior. Or that, what interests a girl couldn’t interest them, or vice versa. Many men think the same way. But some of us strike it lucky. We find out that different is just that, different. Not better, not worse, just different. Or, to put it another way—” Suddenly, he was very solemn, and looking at Lizzie very hard. “I’m a man. And I know that any woman, whatever age, can be better or worse or maybe the same as me, in any of thousands of traits or skills or talents you can name. Even if you could measure every one of them, and weigh them, heavens only knows how, and average them out, you still couldn’t say, She’s better, or worse, or the same, as me. I’m still me. You’re still you. I’m a man. You’re a woman. So bloody what.” He frowned. “But you’re right. I’ve been writing my games from my male point of view. I wonder—”

“Nanni nanni, Lizzie!” Link gloated. “Now you’ve helped him.”

Lizzie jumped up and threw what was left of her dinner into his face.

A not untypical evening at the widower’s house ensued.

But I was sure we hadn’t seen the last of “my friend, Harley Adamson.”

We hadn’t.

The trouble was, I liked Harley Adamson. He wasn’t at all like I’d imagined my other widower to be. Yet it could have been written on the wall by a flaming hand. Harley Adamson was my other widower. The villain. The money hungry slime. The pits.

The man who sold his dying wife’s body. The body a different woman now lived in. Me.

But he didn’t fit that picture at all.

He kept coming around. Court encouraged him. Fool of a man. Fool both of them. To me, Court was my husband of sixteen years, the man I loved for all his virtues (and he had many) and even his flaws. The man I knew, thought I knew, even better than myself.

Something else was happening. I was attracted to Harley.

No. My body, that is, the body my mind was now living in, was attracted to Harley. Our chemicals meshed too well.

Why not? He was a fine man, moderately good looking, and, as he had proved the first night, as sweet inside as his outside was pleasant. (There had to be a reason beyond the obvious for the sale of his wife’s body for the transplant. Because, if nothing else, Court would never have brought him if he really was a bottom feeder.)

If my mind flinched every time Court politely but firmly gave me a good night peck on the forehead before walking away from the guest room (how I was beginning to hate it) my body thrummed with pleasant anticipation around Harley.

Our marriage, Court’s and mine, had lasted sixteen years, until it was legally dissolved by my “death.” Before my rebirth, after the transplant, in another woman’s body. I knew exactly what I was feeling. One night, when Harley left me in a very unpleasant state, I decided to Do Something.

I didn’t give Court a chance to land his damn peck and slip away. I put a hand on his shoulder, and said, “We need to talk. Your room or mine.”

Sixteen plus years. I didn’t have the voice I had had twelve months ago, but he recognized, perhaps subconsciously, the under note. “No, Mary. Whatever it is can wait until tomorrow.”

Between my teeth: “It can’t, dammit. Either come in here, or I’ll follow you to yours.”

I could see my darling number-cruncher computing the odds. The king-sized bed we’d shared for so many years still lived in the master bedroom. But the guest room had a queen size, for when we had a couple for guests.

Our room held too many memories. The guest room none. “All right. I’ll come in. Just to talk.”

I could have killed him. Talk. That’s all we had done. Since.

There was only one chair in the room, a comfortable easy chair by a small table and bookshelf. He sat gingerly, like a cat lowering itself to a hot stove. “Well, Mary. What’s so important it can’t wait until we’re less tired?”

“Several items, Court. Let’s start with your mysterious new friend Harley.”

He shrugged. “His company got trashed by a computer glitch from one of my clients. I met him while straightening it out. I liked him, that’s all there is to it.”

Oh, Court. I know when you lie. All the normal telltales are missing, but I’ve always known.

I tested the waters deeper. “I don’t think he’s good for the children. Why don’t you start meeting him for guy’s nights out, instead of bringing him here.”

It was a mistake.

“Why don’t you like him, Mary?”

“I do like him,” I protested, too quickly. “It’s the children that—”

“His big advantage is, he didn’t know us before. You think that’s so bad?”

“Court.” He was still wearing his office suit. I wanted to rip it off him. The question was, would trying to beat the starch out of him make him angry… or get him ready for action? We weren’t legally married anymore. But sixteen years is a long time.

Not for him, apparently. Of course, he’d only known the body I now inhabited a few months. For me, I didn’t feel different. You go to sleep, you wake up. So once it’s anesthesia putting you to sleep. You still wake up feeling the same. Except you’re in a whole new body, and legally a new person. You still feel the same about your husband, family. But they see a new person, a different person.

Dammit!

He stood. “If that’s all, I think we consider it settled. If you object to Harley, I’ll cut back on bringing him home.”

I had never sat down. “It isn’t just Harley, and you know it. Court, I can’t stand this. Being around you and not—not.” I ground my teeth. Of all things in the Universe, I didn’t want to say, It isn’t fair. After all, I was alive when I should have been dead. The woman whose body I now wore, the woman whose brain had been destroyed in an accident that left her body intact was really, permanently dead. I was alive. But talk about Tantalus. I was with my husband; and he flinched away from me. Because what he saw was a strange woman, not me. Not his wife.

“I’m sorry.” And I knew he was. “But there are some things a man just can’t do. Intellectually, I know you’re still Mary. But I look at you, and—”

I couldn’t help what I said next. “Then strip off, get on that bed, and close your eyes!”

He sputtered, somewhere between anger and amusement.

I felt hot liquid in my eyes.

“Don’t cry, Mary.” Suddenly his arms wrapped around me. I relaxed into that so familiar aura, body smell, firmness, everything right, so right.

Only for him, I knew, I was now wrong, so wrong.

“It’ll come, in time,” he said softly.

I reared back and glared. “How much time?”

He was so… Court. “That’s my Mary. I can’t know. Just—” a very wry grimace, “—not as soon as you’d like.”

“She was almost ten years younger than I was. Must I wait until this body has aged to where you remember mine?”

He jerked slightly. “You know, I think that’s part of it. She’s so much younger, I feel like a cradle robber.”

“Well, just remember, inside this fat young person is a thin old person!” She wasn’t fat. Nor had I been thin. She weighed a few pounds more than I had, but she was taller.

“Oh, Mary.” He slumped a little against me, gave me the first honest hug. “You sounded so—you, then.”

“I am me. That’s the problem.”

“I know, love.” He sighed. “I know. But you don’t look like you.”

Of course not. They had matched the body donor to me by a lot of chemical, subtle criteria. Size, features, none of that had been taken into account. The best you could say was, we were both brunettes. Big deal.

I almost had him. There we were, inches apart… and I lost again. I got my peck on the cheek, as he slipped out of my room.

I had trouble getting to sleep that night. Even beating the pillow, imagining it a male body, didn’t help.

The next day, I banged my head, for the thousandth time since getting out of the hospital, on a damn open cabinet door in the kitchen. I’d always had the bad habit of leaving them open, unless Court or another adult taller than me was in the room.

Lizzie looked smug. “Served you right.”

I rubbed my forehead, then went around slamming them all shut.

The boys were enjoying one last computer game on the kitchen table consoles before the school courses started coming in via the net.

“You shouldn’t have come here. We don’t want you,” Lizzie added smugly.

At the moment, love her as I did, it was hard not to smack her. Something Court didn’t approve of, and I had never done. Before.

Her lips turned down in a sneer. “I saw what you did, last night. I saw Daddy coming out of your room.”

Twelve is a hellish age. Time mercifully dulls the memories, once we reach adulthood. The last thing I needed was a daughter jealous of her father’s feelings toward me. But with a throbbing head distracting me, all I could come up with was a stupid, “So what.”

“You think I’m dumb. You think I don’t know why you’re here. You came to take Mommy’s place.”

“I am—” I stopped. She didn’t believe. Her mother was dead. The slowly dying body she had lived in, buried. Lizzie, all of them, had attended the funeral. That was it. Period. Finis. Yet her mother’s brain—me—had been given a new lease on life in a donated body. Body transplants were such a new medical technique, and the chances for abuse were so very huge, that congress, for once, had gotten ahead of the game. Almost as soon as the first brain transplant proposal, the first full body donor suggestion, they had passed a law.

The person who donated the body had to be legally brain dead, and after the transplant, was legally dead.

The person who accepted the body donation, who was only a brain in a new body, that person was legally dead, too.

Her children orphans, or half orphans. Her husband a widower.

Both the husbands. The man married to the brain that went into a new body. The man married to a body that got a new owner via the brain transplant.

They even ruled that as soon as she (or he, of course) was released from the hospital, that they go through a version of the protected witness routine. Another name, another city. There was even conditioning against ever coming back. Voluntarily. By oneself.

What they hadn’t counted on was someone like Court, who played the information nets like his children rescued princesses and treasures. Who could trace what little was left of his wife. And bring her home. Even if she was legally dead. Even if she looked totally different.

The trouble was, I didn’t feel dead. Living Inside the new body, everything seemed the same to me, until I looked in a mirror. The first thing I did when I got back, was take every mirror out except the ones in the bathrooms.

I watched Lizzie glaring at me as if looks could kill, and decided this couldn’t go on.

Two days later, I knew that Something had to be done. Harley followed me into the kitchen, and, with a groan, grabbed me and kissed me.

The real trouble was, I liked it. A lot.

Lizzie had followed us. “Good,” she said. Harley almost leaped away from me, blushing bright red. Lizzie sneered at us. “Now maybe you’ll both go.” She folded her arms, and watched. As though we’d march out together, that very second.

“Oh, lord.” Harley didn’t look happy.

I only smiled. Maybe if she told Court?

I think she did. Nonetheless, he continued to Not.

The spit hit the rotating propellers four days after Harley kissed me. We were all in the den. Harley and the boys were “beta testing” one of his programs. From the hisses and snarls intermixed with cries of glee, I was sure all three were enjoying themselves.

Lizzie was on Court’s lap. Using a portable computer, he was helping her with some subject she claimed to be having problems with. It was a put up job, but if she needed the reassurance of love from her father, then she needed it.

I was sitting at a small table, using its terminal to make payments. Muttering. “Third child tax. Idiot government. Inverse incentives.”

Gaze still fixed on the screen in his lap, Court finished it. “Encouraging producers not to have kids, and paying the nonproducers for as many as they want.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “You always say the same thing, Mary.”

Lizzie was glaring at me, but there was an odd horror mixed in.

The doorbell went off, sweet wind chimes.

I was the only one close to unencumbered. “I’ll get it.”

Court frowned. “Who’d be calling at this hour?”

“A salesperson.” I shrugged. “I’ll get rid of them.”

It wasn’t a salesperson, though that was the general impression. She seemed mid- to late twenties, bland and innocuous looking, dressed in an anonymous powersuit. No one feature, from neat page boy brown hair to hazel eyes, stood out. If I turned away, I’d have difficulty describing her.

She flashed a badge. “This is official. Is Mr. Winthrop here?”

Oh, oh! I decided truth is always better, and nodded.

She took a step in, and I back pedaled. “May I speak to him?”

“The taxes are paid,” I said firmly. Even if it was only authorized five minutes ago, electrons move fast.

She awarded me A Look. “This isn’t about taxes. Where is Mr. Winthrop?”

I tried another line of defense. “We have company.”

A shrug. “Get rid of them. This is going to take a while.”

I chewed my knuckle. Then, “Shall I bring him into his home office?”

She folded the badge holder closed. Somehow, in that action, its outer edge brushed against my bare arm. “Your choice, ma’am. But your company will have a long wait.”

I went into the den. “Court, there’s some woman here, says she has Official business with you. You want to use the office? Harley, do you mind?”

Harley answered first. “Course not.” He grinned at the boys. “Now, if I was the one who was leaving, so far ahead—”

“You’re not neither,” Link asserted.

Court was frowning. “I can’t think which of my clients would feel it urgent enough—”

I had left the door only partly shut. Now it opened fully and the woman with the badge stood framed in the doorway. Only she wasn’t holding the badge out, she was staring at its box with the glee of Arnie Jacoby when he signed that new half billion contract with the Chicago Natives. “I thought so,” she was saying. “I thought so!”

She looked up, we were all staring at her. She held out the case, it had a tiny screen opposite the badge. “I took a sample from you when we were talking at the door.” Her gaze skewered me like a butterfly impaled on a board. “I know who you are.”

“Oh, God!” Court soared up, dumping Lizzie and the computer. Lizzie squalled, and the computer wheeeeped.

“Dad-dy!” Lizzie protested.

Immediately, he knelt and hugged her. “I’m sorry, honey. I was so startled, I just reacted without thinking. Are you OK?”

“I guess. Daddy?”

He hugged her desperately. “I love you, muffin.”

“Too bad. This is going to make my career. You’ve broken the law, you and her, and I’m going to take care of you both. These kids will never see you again, not even when they’re grown and gray.”

All three children stared at her in horror.

I swallowed. “You can’t. Court had nothing to do with it. You can do what you like to me, but he’s out of the loop. It was all me.”

She glared. “I don’t believe you.”

“You have to. That’s my testimony. I broke the conditioning, and came back all by myself, I wormed my way in here. He had nothing to do with it. You can’t touch him.”

“Mary!” Court groaned in agony. “Don’t you know what the penalty is?” To the officer. “It was me, it was all me. I dragged her back. Don’t—oh, god, don’t do anything to her, do it to me!”

“Court, don’t you see? It’s not one or the other of us, it’s both of us or me! For the children’s sake, Court, for the children’s sake, it has to be me!” To the officer: “He said that to try to protect me. I ll swear in any court you want. It was all me.”

She grinned, the snake watching Eve take that first bite. “Sorry, lady, that train won’t fly. It couldn’t have just been you. Impossible.”

“Court, it was all me. Say it was all me!”

“Mary, I can’t.”

His arms tightened around Lizzie, and she squeaked, “Daddy!”

“You have to, Court. Tell her the truth. For the children’s sake. It was all me.”

The official merely shook her head. “I’m taking you both in. The kids can go to social services. I’m taking no chances with you two criminals. You deserve what you’re going to get. Both of you.” To Court. “She couldn’t have done it alone. You’re in it up to your neck.” To both of us: “You want your modified Miranda rights? Or do you depose you’re aware of them? They added recently that you can access LegalNet.”

“I depose, I know my rights,” I said hurriedly. The new Miranda rights took ten minutes to read, especially since the witness had to say, I acknowledge, after every bureaucratically waffled sentence.

Court grimaced. “I depose, I know my rights.”

Randy swallowed. “What are you going to do with Daddy? And Aunt Mary?” I was grateful I was even an addition.

Even bureaucrats have some feelings. “They’re… going to jail. I’m sorry, kiddos. For a long, long time. You won’t see them, so you’d better start forgetting them.”

“No!” from all three of the kids. Lizzie clenched her fists at her. “You can’t take our Daddy.”

“Kiddo, I’m going to take your daddy. And your—” She hesitated.

“Aunt Mary,” I supplied grimly.

“Aunt Mary.”

“You rotten mean fink!” Link soared to his feet and hurled himself at the official.

“Sonny.” The woman plucked Link off and held him, legs thrashing, arms flailing. “Kid, if you were a little older, I’d arrest you, too. I’m doing my duty, and you’re obstructing me. Now, you kids. Go throw your favorite videos and toothbrushes and whatever else you’ll need for a few days into a bag. I’ll give you five minutes.” She plunked Link onto his feet.

“You can’t give us orders.” Lizzie, as usual.

“No.” She nodded. “I can’t. What I can give you is five minutes. Anything you don’t have ready to go with you after that, you can just live without.”

“No!” All three of the children were either wailing or shouting.

“You can’t, official or not.” My chest felt so tight I had to force the words out. “You can’t. I said it was just me. Leave Court.”

“Lady, you get high marks for trying to save him. But you can t. He’s in it deep as you. You couldn’t have done it alone, of course he helped.”

“No.” Harley unfolded himself. “He didn’t help her. I did.”

“Who the hell are you!”

Harley was smiling. “I just told you. The man who brought her here. The man who helped her.”

“Don’t be a fool, mister. Don’t you know the penalty?”

Harley nodded, almost contentedly. “I know exactly what I’m doing, officer.” He waved at the badge/tester and held out his hand. “Just use that gadget of yours on me. You’ll see. Why I wanted her back. Why I brought her back.”

“I don’t understand. I—” She gasped Then, unbelieving: “You’re the other one!”

“Right.” Harley glowed. “I’m the other one.”

I decided to throw a monkey into the pot. “Har-ley? You can’t be. Court would never have brought him to meet me.”

“Right. Of course.” The official nodded. “The other one wouldn’t be welcomed here. Good try, whoever you are, but it won’t work. I’m not letting these two off, no matter what lies you tell.”

But Harley had strolled over almost casually to face her. “If you think I’m lying, why are you afraid to confirm my lies?”

“Harley? It can’t be true.” To the official. “Don’t dare test him. He’s a friend of the family, that’s all, with no idea what he’s risking! I told you already, it was all me, and that’s final.”

“Of course he’s a liar,” the official spat. But Harley was running his bare finger over the case, and the official glanced at the screen and flinched back. “Oh, shit!”

“Oh, shit,” I echoed. “Court, he isn’t, you wouldn’t have brought my other widower here, you wouldn’t.”

He looked ashamed. “Did you think I liked what was happening?”

“Court, I may kill you myself.” Then I froze. Because, legally, that’s what all three of us were facing. Body donation. Real brain death. Desperately, to the official: “I don’t care what either of those fools says, it was all me. All me. You can’t touch them if I say it was all me.”

She shook her head. “You’re lying, lady. I’m taking all three of you in right now.” She looked at the children, and licked her lips. “You kids, I meant it. Get what you need and be ready to leave when I am.”

Lizzie dived on Court. “Daddy, don’t let her take you away.” Randy ran into the study. Link again hurled himself, fists flailing, at the official, who by now looked frazzled.

“You can’t take either of them. Not Court, not Harley. I said it was all me, and I’ll swear it. You’ll look a fool.”

“You’re not taking my daddy!” Randy had reappeared, with the small target pistol Court kept packed away in his closet. We all practiced with it. Court always said that even a young child could be educated in gun safety, and that it was ignorance and curiosity that caused so many accidents. Nonetheless, he had kept it locked except in use, until recently.

“Kiddo, you are interfering with an officer of the United States in her duties. Put the gun away, and I’ll forget all about it,” said Ms. Badge in a jollying tone.

“Randy.” Court’s voice was firm. “Put it away. We’re in enough trouble as it is.”

“She isn’t taking you.” Randy was equally firm. For a second, I saw my child as the man he would be one day.

“No. She isn’t,” I agreed. “Unless she wants to make a fool of herself. I said it. It was all me and only me. She won’t take Court, she won’t take Harley. Just me.”

Court was suddenly smiling. “She won’t take any of us.” To his son: “It’s a promise, Randy. So put it away.” Curious: “Is it on safety? And if it isn’t, did you load it?”

“Aw, Dad, what good is an unloaded gun? And I can’t fire it when it’s on safety.”

“Safety, son. Now.”

Randy knew that tone. I could hear the click of the safety.

“Go put it away. Unloaded.” Randy looked defiant. “Don’t worry, son. It’s under control.”

“It sure is.” The official had regained her spine, once the safety clicked. “You’re all coming with me.”

“Of course. It’s your career, after all,” Court said softly. “Or more accurately, it was.”

“Hey, pinpointing you three felons, that’ll make me.”

“Or break you. I’m going to swear it was me, and only me. That means, you’ll have two false arrests on your record, if your superiors believe me.”

Harley and I got it simultaneously, and grinned in relief at each other. I nodded, and he spoke. “I’m going to swear it was me and only me. So, if your superiors believe me, that’s two false arrests on your record.”

“I’m going to swear it was me, and only me. If your superiors believe me, that’s two false arrests on your record,” I caroled.

Harley twisted the knife another turn. “I write educational games for kids. A false arrest would damage my career. I could sue for gazillions.”

Court nodded. “I’m a money trail consultant. A false arrest, and my career dies, too.” He smiled, and a wolf would know to run away from that smile. “I’ve been a money trail consultant in high places for years. Many of our friends are lawyers. Good ones. Rich ones.”

I buffed my nails on my collar and gave the official, now sweating slightly, as close to a piranha smile as my younger features could produce. “I part time in installing office software. Legal’s one of my specialties. If you don’t happen to know any good lawyers, Harley, don’t worry. We do.”

The official paled. “You’re all three in it,” she repeated weakly.

Court took a step toward her. “I swore it was me and only me, but what happened was, they screwed her conditioning up. She came back here herself, because she couldn’t help herself.”

I frowned. Court had come and gotten me. But, I remembered, he had used a false name. Was he properly covered? Then I relaxed. Court, making a mistake in something that involved computer gimmicking? Never! The records showed I had come back, most voluntarily, by myself.

The official looked at me, lips trembling. “Lady?”

“I’m sorry. That’s exactly it. I couldn’t help myself.” And was that ever the truth.

Desperate, pointing, to Harley: “He said he helped you!”

Harley shrugged. “You were going to take both of them, and throw the kids to social services. What else could I do?”

“Argh!” She threw the badge/tester on the floor and stamped on it.

“I think,” I said softly, “if I’m arrested, I’ll start my suit with the people who conditioned me.” To the official: “But I’ll include you and your superiors, don’t worry we’ll leave you out.”

She was almost crying. “Did your conditioning really fail?”

I said, with every ounce of sincerity I could muster. “I couldn’t stay away from Court. I love him. I love my children. You can arrest me, but you can’t touch him. If you do, if you have our children taken away, your career will be dead. That’s not a threat, it’s a promise.”

Her lip stuck out. “If it really was a failure of conditioning…”

“I’m sorry. I see you’re ambitious. You can arrest me, but I doubt much will come of it. If you add either Court or Harley, you’ll regret it.”

She sighed, then knelt down and picked up the little badge/tester. Looked at it. Decided. “I wiped tonight off when I stomped on it. The nerds will have to reprogram it tomorrow.” Another sigh. “Good-hearted of you, lady, to come care for a stranger’s children.” To Harley, “Go back and play with the kids, friend of the family. Their dad isn’t going anywhere, either, even if he’s the slickest talking con man I ever ran into.” A glare. “But you three better walk the straight and narrow from now on. I’ll be watching.” Then she about faced and stalked out of the room. In seconds, we could hear the outside door slam behind her.

“Whew!” Harley sat on the floor abruptly, let his head sag. Court leaned against a wall, head thrown back, eyes shut. I sagged against the small table I had been working at, shuddering helplessly.

“Daddy?” Lizzie still sounded scared spitless. “Daddy, what happened?”

He came away from the wall to gather her in. “It’s OK, muffin. Something terrible almost happened, but it didn’t and it won’t.”

Lizzie glared at me. “She did something.”

“No, muffin. If she hadn’t been the bravest woman in the world, they would have taken me away.” He tilted her head up. “Do you understand? If not for Mary just now, I’d be gone. Forever.”

She stuck her lip out, glared at me. But it wasn’t quite the whole hearted hate glare she had produced up to this evening. So maybe there would be that at least. Lizzie had taken the first step toward accepting me.

That night I discovered another good result. Adrenaline is a funny thing. When the chemicals are raging through the body, even a rational being like Court can be helpless. He didn’t give me a peck on the forehead for goodnight, and he didn’t stop with a kiss.

For the first time since I had come home, I went to sleep happily sated. It had been a long time for him, too.

I planned my last rendezvous with the care of any woman cheating on her husband, even though there was nothing sexual involved. If Court ever found out… I didn’t even want to think about it.

Chris was about five minutes late, but she’d been late before, and I only sipped my scotch on the rocks and waited patiently.

She slipped into the chair opposite me, picked up the dry white wine I’d ordered for her, and took a grateful, hearty gulp. “God, I needed that.” I grinned. She still looked like an anonymous sales type. Or a gov desk jockey. Even an FBI agent.

“Rough day,” I commiserated.

“Yuck.” She made a face, staring into the glass. “Bureaucrats.”

“You’re a bureaucrat,” I pointed out. Today she was wearing a blue powersuit with silver trim.

“Don’t remind me.” She took a slow sip. “For the next hour, I’m a human being. No more and no less.”

“Aren’t we all?” I muttered.

“Some of us,” she said, with a sly hazel wink over the glass, “are more human than others.”

“Watch your tongue, girlo. Or I won’t tell you the good news. This is going to be our last meeting.”

“What!”

“They’ve speeded him up. Release next week, instead of in another month. Nothing else changed, he just seemed to be doing well, both medically and psychologically.”

“Oh, god!” She froze. Even her neat brown page boy hair seemed to be holding its breath. “You sure?”

“I trained under the best in ferreting through the nets. Can you move forward, or will you have to stick to the original schedule?”

“Yippee!” She threw up her arms, and the guy at the next table sputtered as he got showered with cold wine. “I’m sorry.” She jumped up and gave him a hug, which made him sputter even more. “I’m sorry, but I’m just so happy!”

He gave her a dirty look, then had to smile. “Good luck, lady. I envy him, whoever he is.”

“My husband to be.” She planted a kiss on his ear, and danced back to her seat.

I rolled my gaze skyward, and let her calm down. Then, during our meal, we discussed nitty gritty. Travel arrangements. Cover up. New Identity. As I said, I trained under the best.

During dessert I told her, honestly, “I wish we could see each other again. I owe you so much.”

“You owe me?” A spoonful of ripe cantaloupe trembled inches from her mouth. “You found Frank for me.”

“To help myself. So you’d have a reason to do what I wanted, fool my husband. You sure you won’t have problems? Frank’ll look completely different.”

Total scorn. “I know that. I’m ready. I know about your husband, he had trouble seeing it was still you inside the new body. But I won’t. He’s Frank where it counts. And we have his frozen sperm, so when we opt for kids, we’ll be able to have his. Even if his real body is—” Tears dribbled out of her hazel eyes.

“Don’t think it. Frank, your Frank, is still alive. He’ll feel the same about you as he always did. You’ll have to prove to him that it makes no difference to you what he looks like. Think of it as an accident. If he’d been in a auto wreck, and had to have surgery, he’d still be Frank.”

She smiled through the tear tracks. “Just like you’re still Mary. It’s easier for me, since I didn’t know you before. I wish we could still get together.”

I toasted her with my coffee cup. “Me too. But if Court ever realizes we know each other—”

She snickered. “I don’t have to ask if it worked. You look… happy.”

“It helped with the kids, too. But if either of the guys had taken a good look at die badge—”

“And realized I worked for the Federal Air Assurance Agency, not the FBI or something.” She shrugged. “They didn’t though. It worked. Just like my getting Frank will work. Thanks for that. I can’t thank you enough.”

“Hey.” I clasped her hands. “If we women won’t help each other, who will?”

She grinned and winked.

After she left, I sat for a bit, sipping cooling coffee and staring at nothing. Not that all my problems were solved. The children were still hostile. There was still Harley, my chemical attraction to him, and Court, who would never approve of a menage à trois.

But hey, there was the future I wouldn’t have had.

Life goes on.

So would I.

I called for the check, and left to get on with my life.