now, Uncle Michael. I mean, like, there's not really any other possibility now, 
logically, I mean. I should stay."
  
  He sat against the pillows, struggling to keep his eyes open.
  
  She took his wrist suddenly. He didn't seem to know what she was doing-that she was 
feeling the pulse the same way a doctor would do it. His hand was heavy and slightly 
cold, too cold. But the heartbeat was steady. It was OK. He wasn't nearly as sick as her 
own father. Her own father wasn't going to live six months. But it wasn't his heart, it 
was his liver.
  
  If she closed her eyes she could see the chambers of Michael's heart.  She could see 
things so brilliant and unnamable and complex as to be like modern painting - a sprawl of 
daring colors and clots and lines and swelling shapes! Ah. He was OK, this man. If she 
did get him into bed tonight, she wouldn't kill him.
  
  "You know your problem right now?" she asked. "It's those bottles of medicine. Throw 
them in the trash. That much medicine will make anyone sick."
  
  "You think so?"
  
  "You're talking to Mona Mayfair, a twenty-fold member of the Mayfair family, who knows 
things that others don't know. Oncle Julien was my great-great-grandfather three times. 
You know what that means?"
  
  "Three lines of descent, from Julien?"
  
  "Yep, and then the other tangled lines from everybody else. Without a computer, no one 
could even put it all together. But I have a computer and I figured it all out. I've got 
more Mayfair blood in me than just about anybody in the whole family. It's all 'cause my 
father and mother were too close as cousins to get married, but my father got my mother 
pregnant, and that was it. And besides, we're all so intermarried it doesn't make much 
difference..."
  
  She stopped, she was doing her chattering number. Too much talk for a man his age who 
was this sleepy. Play it with more craft. "You're OK, big boy," she said. "Throw out the 
drugs."
  
  He smiled. "You mean I'm going to live? I will climb ladders and hammer nails once 
again?"
  
  "You'll wield your hammer like Thor," she said. "But you do have to get off all these 
sedatives. I don't know why they're drugging you like this, probably scared if they don't 
that you'll worry yourself to death about Aunt Rowan."
  
  He laughed softly, and took her hand now with obvious affection.  But there was a dark 
shadow in his face, in his eyes, and for a second it was in his voice. "But you have more 
faith in me, right, Mona?"
  
  "Absolutely. But then I'm in love with you."
  
  "Oh no!" He scoffed.
  
  She held fast to his hand as he tried to pull away. No, there was nothing wrong with 
his heart now. The drugs were doing him in.
  
  "I am in love with you but you don't have to do anything about it, Uncle Michael. Just 
be worthy of it."
  
  "Right. Be worthy of it, just what I was thinking. A nice little Sacred Heart Academy 
girl like you."
  
  "Uncle Michael, pa ... leeze!" she said. "I began my erotic adventures when I was 
eight. I didn't lose my virginity. I eradicated all traces of it. I am a full-grown woman 
only pretending to be this little girl sitting on the side of your bed. When you are 
thirteen, and you cannot disprove it, because all your relatives know, being a little 
girl becomes simply a political decision. Logical. But believe me, I am not what I seem."
  
  He gave the most knowing laugh, the most ironic laugh.
  
  "And what if my wife, Rowan, comes home and finds you here with me, talking about sex 
and politics?"
  
  "Your wife, Rowan, isn't coming home," she said, and then instantly regretted it. She 
hadn't meant to say something so ominous, so depressing. And his face told her that he 
believed her. "I mean... she's..."
  
  "She's what, Mona? Tell me." He was quietly and deadly serious.
  
  "What do you know? Tell me what's inside your little Mayfair heart?
  
  Where is my wife? Give me some witchcraft."
  
  Mona gave a sigh. She tried to make her voice as hushed and quiet as his voice. "Nobody 
knows," she said. "They're plenty scared, but nobody knows. And the feeling I get is ... 
she's not dead, but. . . well, it might not ever be the same again." She looked at him. 
"Do you know what I mean?"
  
  "You don't have a good feeling about her, that she's coming back? That's what you're 
saying."
  
  "Yeah, kind of. But then I don't know what happened here on Christmas Day, not that I'm 
asking you to tell me. I can tell this, however. I'm holding your wrist, right? We're 
talking all about it, and you're worried about her, and your pulse is just fine. You 
aren't that sick. They've doped you. They overreacted. They got illogical. Detox is what 
you need."
  
  He sighed, and looked defeated.
  
  She leant forward and kissed him on the mouth. Immediate connection. In fact, it