Roadside Crosses (Kathryn Dance 2)

She rose and hugged him hard. His arms slid around her back and pressed her to his solid chest.

They step

ped apart and clinked glasses.

"Ernie presents to the grand jury in two weeks. There's no doubt they'll return a bill. They want us down there on Tuesday, nine a.m., to plan out the testimony. You up for a trip?"

"Oh, you bet I am."

O'Neil moved to the railing. He was gazing out into the backyard, staring at a wind chime that Dance had been meaning to pick up from the spot, where she'd dumped it on a windy--and sleepless--night some time ago. He fell silent.

Something was coming, Dance could tell.

She grew alarmed. What was the story? Illness?

Was he moving?

He continued, "I was wondering . . ."

She waited. Her breath was fast. The wine in her glass rocked like the turbulent Pacific.

"The meeting's on Tuesday and I was wondering if you wanted to stay down in L.A. a few extra days. We could see the sights. Get those eggs Benedict we were hoping for. Or maybe we could go out for sushi in West Hollywood and watch people trying to be cool. I could even buy a black shirt." He was rambling.

Which Michael O'Neil never did. Ever.

Dance blinked. Her heart thudded as fast as the wings of the hummingbird hovering over the crimson feeder nearby. "I . . ."

He laughed and his shoulders slumped. She couldn't imagine what her expression looked like. "Okay. There's something else I guess I ought to say."

"Sure."

"Anne's leaving."

"What?" She gasped.

Michael O'Neil's face was an amalgam of emotion: hope, uncertainty, pain. Perhaps the most obvious was bewilderment.

"She's moving to San Francisco."

A hundred questions filled her mind. She asked the first, "The children?"

"They'll be with me."

This news wasn't surprising. There was no better father than Michael O'Neil. And Dance had always had her doubts about Anne's skills at mothering, and about her desire to handle the job.

Of course, she realized. The split-up was the source of O'Neil's troubled look at the hospital. She remembered his eyes, how hollow they seemed.

He continued, speaking with the clipped tone of somebody who'd been doing a lot of rapid-fire--and not wholly realistic--planning. Men were guilty of this more often than women. He was telling her about the children's visiting their mother, about the reactions of his family and Anne's, about lawyers, about what Anne would be doing in San Francisco. Dance nodded, concentrating on his words, encouraging, mostly just letting him talk.

She picked up immediately on the references to "this gallery owner" and a "friend of Anne's in San Francisco" and "he." The deduction she made didn't truly surprise her, though she was furious with the woman for hurting O'Neil.

And hurt he was, devastated, though he didn't know it yet.

And me? Dance thought. How do I feel about this?

Then she promptly tucked that consideration away, refusing to examine it right now.

O'Neil stood like a schoolboy who'd asked a girl to the eighth-grade dance. She wouldn't have been surprised if he'd jammed his hands into his pockets and stared down at his shoe tips. "So I was just wondering, about next week. A few extra days?"