"It's beautiful. I've seen it."
  
  "It needs you."
  
  "Sounds like something I can handle. You go on."
  
  THE RAIN came again the next morning. Michael was sitting under the oak outside, near 
the freshly turned earth, merely looking at it, looking at the torn-up grass.
  
  Ryan came out to talk to him, staying carefully to the path not to get mud on his 
shoes. Michael could see it was nothing urgent. Ryan looked rested. It was as if Ryan 
could sense that things were over. Ryan ought to know.
  
  Ryan didn't even glance at the big patch of earth above the grave.  It all looked like 
the moist and sparse earth around the roots of a big tree where grass would not grow.
  
  "I have to tell you something," said Michael.
  
  He saw Ryan stop-a sudden revelation of weariness and fear-then catch up with himself 
and very slowly nod.
  
  "There's no danger anymore," Michael said. "From anyone now.  You can pull off the 
guards. One nurse in the evenings. That is all we require. Get rid of Henri too, if you 
would. Pension him off or something. Or send him up to Mona's place."
  
  Ryan said nothing, then he nodded again.
  
  "I leave it to you, how you tell the others," said Michael. "But they should know. The 
danger's past. No more women will suffer. No more doctors will die. Not in connection 
with this. You may hear again from the Talamasca. If you do, you can send them to me. I 
don't want the women to go on being frightened. Nothing will happen. They are safe.  As 
for those doctors who died, I know nothing that would help. Absolutely nothing at all."
  
  Ryan seemed about to ask a question, but then he thought better of it, obviously, and 
he nodded again.
  
  "I'll take care of it," Ryan said. "You needn't worry about any of those things. I'll 
take care of the question of the doctors. And that is a very good suggestion, regarding 
Henri. I will send him uptown.
  
  Patrick will just have to put up with it. He's in no condition to argue, I suppose. I 
came out to see how you were. Now I know that you are all right."
  
  It was Michael's turn to nod. He gave a little smile.
  
  AFTER lunch, he sat again by Rowan's bed. He had sent the nurse away.
  
  He couldn't stand her presence any longer. He wanted to be here alone.  And she had 
hinted heavily that she needed to visit her own sick mother at Touro Infirmary, and he 
said, "Things are just fine around here. You go on. Come back at six o'clock."
  
  She'd been so grateful. He stood by the window watching her walk away. She lit a 
cigarette before she reached the corner, then hurried off to catch the car.
  
  There was a tall young woman standing out there, gazing at the house, her hands on the 
fence. Reddish-golden hair, very long, kind of pretty. But she was like so many women 
now, bone-thin. Maybe one of the cousins, come to pay her respects. He hoped not. He 
moved away from the window. If she rang the bell, he wouldn't answer. It felt too good to 
be alone at last.
  
  He went back to the chair and sat down.
  
  The gun lay on the marble-top table, big and sort of ugly or beautiful, depending on 
how one feels about guns. They were no enemy to him. But he didn't like it there, because 
he had a vision of taking it and shooting himself with it, and then he stared at Rowan, 
and thought:
  
  "No, not as long as you need me, honey, I won't. Not before something happens..." He 
stopped.
  
  He wondered if she could sense anything, anything at all.
  
  The doctor had said this morning she was stronger; but the vegetative state was 
unchanged.
  
  They had given her the lipids. They had worked her arms and legs.  They had put the 
lipstick on her. Yes, look at it, very pink, and they had brushed her hair.
  
  And then there's Mona, he thought. "Yuri or no Yuri, she needs me too. Oh, it's not 
really that she does," he said aloud to the silence. "It's that anything more would hurt 
her. It would hurt them all. I have to be here on St. Patrick's Day, don't I? To greet 
them at the door. To shake their hands. I am the keeper of the house until such time 
as..."
  
  He lay back against the chair thinking of Mona, whose kisses had been so chaste since 
Rowan came home. Beautiful little Mona. And that dark, clever Yuri. In love.
  
  Maybe Mona was already working out the scheme for Mayfair Medical. Maybe she and Pierce 
were working on it now uptown.
  
  "Now, we are not handing the family fortune over to this juvenile delinquent!" Randall 
had said in a booming voice last night, when arguing with Bea outside Rowan's door.
  
  "Oh, do be quiet," Bea had answered. "That's ridiculous. It's like royalty, you old 
idiot. She is a symbol. That's all."
  
  He sat back, legs outstretched under the bed-skirt, hands clasped on his chest, staring 
at the gun-staring at its silver-gray trigger, so inviting, and its fat gray cylinder 
full of cartridges, and the sheath of black synthetic closed over the barrel, oddly like 
a hangman's noose.