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He crossed the basketball court to where Nore overcoat, his sand-colored clothes Her eyes lingered on the boot cast

"How er?" she asked

"Six weeks Old bones knit slowly"

"It hurt?"

"I've had worse You should see the bruises from my ex-wife"

"The least that could've happened," Norma said, "is they break your jaw and wire your ht about my offer?"

She looked down at the chunks of shattered asphalt, the tree roots and dirt clods and stones--a s earthquake

"Yeah" She propped the shovel handle against the fence "Yeah, I thought about it I finally learn how to hate you, and you pull soardless If you'd rather, you can buy me out, keep the house"

Her eyes burned with a se, Chadwick supposed, of the moment she'd opened the cupboard in the Mission house, let loose a spill of plastic and black hair and pale flesh that had resolved itself into the face of a friend She said, "John used to say you only find one home in your lifetime--one true home"

"John also said never trust a Realtor"

"Send e scholarship fund?"

"I'll be the trustee," she agreed "Race will be the first recipient The other Laurel Heights parents won't like that uardian"

Chadwick heard the nervousness in her voice He knew Norma faced an uphill battle in the courts, even if she could provide Race a horandht lose her bid for custody, but she was trying She had put herself on the line, opened herself up for hurt, because she wanted to help the boy That in itself was a victory

"The other parents," Chadwick told her, "can kiss my boot cast"

Nor to hope John rong about only getting one ho to hope that for both of us"

She stood on her tiptoes, kissed hiet the hell out of here, will you? Hijo, you're worse than a broken mirror for luck"

He kneould be the last time he'd ever see her, and she left his life just as she'd arrived--dis off to the party with the saeles beer joint, twenty-eight years before, and dragged him out on the dance floor

He stood alone at the lip of the broken asphalt, feeling warmer than he should have in the January chill He didn't notice Ann until she walked back to the speaker's podium and turned off the microphone

"Closure?" she asked him

"As much as I can hope for"

She slipped a tape into the cassette player of the PA systeuitar work of Pat Metheny--as desolate and expansive as the Texas plains--drifted across the courtyard Jazz drue

"She'll do it, you know," Ann told hiet custody of Race They'll take care of each other He'll graduate at the top of his class"

Chadwick listened for jealousy, or resentment Ann would've been entitled She'd been shunned by her own daughter, forced to officially expel her froun Now she would pay the bulk of her salary for h school career, to get Mallory through a prograhter would become soh school career in the program Ann had built

But there was no bitterness in her voice Nothing except that new sense of authority--clean and hard and hollow like the bore of a cannon

"Mallory will make it, too," Chadwick said "Maybe not the way you envisioned, but she'll make it"

Ann was conscious of her audience--the whole school co Still, her eyes betrayed a touch of strain, of need

"You belong in the classroom," she told him "There's no reason for you to stay away froain This is your hoirls turning the tire swing so fast they were a blur of ponytails and skirts He tried to i picked up in the ht by a stone-faced escort--soine it That was the problem--you never could, until it happened

"This used to be my home," he said "Not any

Chadwick said, "You're the most i"

"Yes"

"Because I didn't trust you--theyou went after Mallory?"