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Holly said, "No good You’ll be gone when I get here in the , I won’t knohere you went, y for resistance "Then stay the night"

"You have a spare bedroom?" "Yeah But there’s no spare bed You can sleep on the fauess, but it’s damned old and not too comfortable" , She carried her halfeing, brown sofa "It’ll be good enough"

"Whatever you want" He seemed indifferent, but she sensed that his indifference was a pretense "You have any spare paja any"

"Mine’ll be too big for you"

"Just makes them more comfortable I’d like to shower, too I’ in the sun all afternoon"

With the put-upon air of aon his doorstep unannounced, he took her upstairs, showed her the guest bath, and got a pair of pajamas and a set of towels for her

"Try to be quiet," he said "I plan to be sound asleep in five minutes"

Luxuriating in the fall of hot water and clouds of steae off her beer buzz

Though she had slept better last night than Ironheart claiht hours in the past few days, and she was looking for ward to a Corona-induced sleep even on the worn and lumpy sofa

At the same time, she was uneasy about the continued fuzziness of her mind She needed to keep her wits about her After all, she was in the house of an undeniably strangemystery She understood little of as in his heart, was pureater quantity than blood For all his coolness toward her, he seen intentions, and it was difficult to believe that he was a threat to her

On the other hand, it was not unusual to see a news story about a berserkhis friends, fahbors as "a really nice guy" For all she knew, in spite of his claim to be the avatar of God, by day Jim Ironheart heroically risked his own life to save the lives of strangers-and, by night, tortured kittens with lee

Nevertheless, after she dried off on the clean-s s of her Corona She decided that a full night of deep and drea butchered in her She put on his pajamas, rolled up the cuffs of the pants and the sleeves

Carrying her bottle of Corona, which still contained a s or two, she quietly opened the bathroom door and stepped into the second-floor hallway The house was eerily silent

Heading toward the stairs, she passed the open door of thelamps were mounted on the wall on both sides of the bed, and one of theht on the ru on his back in bed, his arms folded on the two pillows under his head, and he seemed to be awake

She hesitated, then stepped into the open doorway "Thanks," she said, speaking softly in case he was asleep, "I feel a lot better"

"Good for you"

Holly entered the rooh to the bed to see his blue eyes shining in the backsplash of the lamp The covers were pulled up past his navel, but he was not wearing pajama tops His chest and arht you’d be asleep by now"

"Want to be, need to be, but I can’t shutdown at him, she said, "Viola Moreno says there’s a deep sadness in you"

"Been busy, haven’t you?" She took a se of the bed "Do your grandparents still have the farm with the windmill?" "They’re dead"

"I’ht o on without her They had good, full lives But I miss them"

"You have anybody?" "Two cousins in Akron," he said

"You stay in touch?" "Haven’t seen them in twenty years"

She drank the last of the Corona She put the ehtstand

For a few minutes neither of them spoke The silence was not aard

Indeed, it was coot up and went around to the other side of the bed She pulled back the covers, stretched out beside him, and put her head on the other two pillows

Apparently, he was not surprised Neither was she

After a while, they held hands, lying side by side, staring at the ceiling

She said, "Must’ve been hard, losing your parents when you were just ten"

"Real bad"

"What happened to them?" He hesitated "A traffic accident"

"And you went to live with your grandparents?" "Yeah The first year was the hardest I wasin bad shape I spent a lot of time in the windmill It was my special place, where I went to playto be alone"