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His eye rol ed up to look at her. Blood was trickling from his nose—that looked broken, too—and a lot more was coming out of his mouth. Almost gushing out. “You pushed me,” he said. “Oh Darcy,

why did you push me?”

“I don’t know,” she said, thinking we both know. She began to cry. Crying came natural y; he was her husband, and he was badly hurt. “Oh God, I don’t know. Something came over me. I’m sorry. Don’t move, I’l cal 911 and tel them to send an ambulance.”

His foot scraped across the floor. “I’m not paralyzed,” he said. “Thank God for that. But it hurts.”

“I know, honey.”

“Cal the ambulance! Hurry!”

She went into the kitchen, spared a brief glance for the phone in its charger-cradle, then opened the cabinet under the sink. “Hel o? Hel o? Is this 911?” She took out the box of plastic GLAD bags, the storage-size ones she used for the leftovers when they had chicken or roast beef, and pul ed one from the box. “This is Darcel en Anderson, I’m cal ing from 24 Sugar Mil Lane, in Yarmouth! Have you got that?”

From another drawer, she took a dishwiper from the top of the pile. She was stil crying. Nose like a firehose, they’d said when they were kids. Crying was good. She needed to cry, and not just because it would look better for her later on. He was her husband, he was hurt, she needed to cry. She remembered when he stil had a ful head of hair. She remembered his flashy breakaway move when

they danced to “Footloose.” He brought her roses every year on her birthday. He never forgot. They had gone to Bermuda, where they rode bikes in the morning and made love in the afternoon. They had

built a life together and now that life was over and she needed to cry. She wrapped the dishwiper around her hand and then stuffed her hand into the plastic bag.

“I need an ambulance, my husband fel down the stairs. I think his neck might be broken. Yes! Yes! Right away!”

She walked back into the hal with her right hand behind her back. She saw he had pul ed himself away from the foot of the stairs a little, and it looked like he’d tried to turn over on his back, but at that he hadn’t been successful. She knelt down beside him.

“I didn’t fal ,” he said. “You pushed me. Why did you push me?”

“I guess for the Shaverstone boy,” she said, and brought her hand out from behind her back. She was crying harder than ever. He saw the plastic bag. He saw the hand inside clutching the wad of

toweling. He understood what she meant to do. Perhaps he had done something like it himself. Probably he had.

He began screaming… only the screams weren’t real y screams at al . His mouth was fil ed with blood, something had broken inside of his throat, and the sounds he produced were more guttural

growls than screams. She jammed the plastic bag between his lips and deep inside his mouth. He had broken a number of teeth in the fal , and she could feel the jagged stumps. If they tore into her skin, she might have some serious explaining to do.

She yanked her hand free before he could bite, leaving the plastic bag and the dishwiper behind. She grabbed his jaw and chin. The other hand she put on top of his balding head. The flesh there was

very warm. She could feel it throbbing with blood. She jammed his mouth shut on the wad of plastic and cloth. He tried to beat her off, but he only had one arm free, and that was the one that had been

broken in the fal . The other was twisted beneath him. His feet paddled jerkily back and forth on the hardwood floor. One of his shoes came off. He was gurgling. She yanked her dress up to her waist,

freeing her legs, then lunged forward, trying to straddle him. If she could do that, maybe she could pinch his nostrils shut.

But before she could try, his chest began to heave beneath her, and the gurgles became a deep grunting in his throat. It reminded her of how, when she was learning to drive, she would sometimes

grind the transmission trying to find second gear, which was elusive on her father’s old Chevrolet standard. Bob jerked, the one eye she could see bulging and cowlike in its socket. His face, which had been a bright crimson, now began to turn purple. He settled back onto the floor. She waited, gasping for breath, her face lathered with snot and tears. The eye was no longer rol ing, and no longer bright with panic. She thought he was d—

Bob gave one final, titanic jerk and flung her off. He sat up, and she saw his top half no longer exactly matched his bottom half; he had broken his back as wel as his neck, it seemed. His plastic-lined mouth yawned. His eyes met hers in a stare she knew she would never forget… but one she could live with, should she get through this.

“Dar! Arrrrrr!”

He fel backward. His head made an egglike cracking sound on the floor. Darcy crawled closer to him, but not close enough to be in the mess. She had his blood on her, of course, and that was al