Then, barely a fortnight before the wedding, the black sheep had appeared in the 
flesh. Things had gone well for him of late. He was wearing gold rings on his fingers, 
and his skin was tight and tanned. There was little outward sign of the monster Rory had 
described. Brother Frank was smooth as a polished stone. She had succumbed to his charm 
within hours.
    A strange time ensued. As the days crept toward the date of the wedding she found 
herself thinking less and less of her husband-to-be, and more and more of his brother. 
They were not wholly dissimilar; a certain lilt in their voices, and their easy manner, 
marked them as siblings. But to Rory's qualities Frank brought something his brother 
would never have: a beautiful desperation.
    Perhaps what had happened next had been inevitable; and no matter how hard she'd 
fought her instincts, she would only have postponed the consummation of their feelings 
for each other. At least that was how she tried to excuse herself later. But when all the 
self-recrimination was done with, she still treasured the memory of their first-and 
last-encounter.
    Kirsty had been at the house, hadn't she?, on some matrimonial business, when Frank 
had arrived. But by that telepathy that comes with desire (and fades with it) Julia had 
known that today was the day. She'd left Kirsty to her listmaking or suchlike, and taken 
Frank upstairs on the pretext of showing him the wedding dress. That was how she 
remembered it-that he'd asked to see the dress-and she'd put the veil on, laughing to 
think of herself in white, and then he'd been at her shoulder, lifting the veil, and 
she'd laughed on, laughed and laughed, as though to test the strength of his purpose. He 
had not been cooled by her mirth however; nor had he wasted time with the niceties of a 
seduction. The smooth exterior gave way to cruder stuff almost immediately. Their 
coupling had had in every regard but the matter of her acquiescence, all the aggression 
and the joylessness of rape.
    Memory sweetened events of course, and in the four years (and five months) since that 
afternoon, she'd replayed the scene often. Now, in remembering it, the bruises were 
trophies of their passion, her tears proof positive of her feelings for him.
    The day following, he'd disappeared. Flitted off to Bangkok or Easter Island, some 
place where he had no debts to answer. She'd mourned him, couldn't help it. Nor had her 
mourning gone unnoticed. Though it was never explicitly discussed, she had often wondered 
if the subsequent deterioration of her relationship with Rory had not started there: with 
her thinking of Frank as she made love to his brother.
    And now? Now, despite the change of domestic interiors, and the chance of a fresh 
start together, it seemed that events conspired to remind her again of Frank.
    It wasn't just the gossip of the neighbors that brought him to mind. One day, when 
she was alone in the house and unpacking various personal belongings, she came across 
several wallets of Rory's photographs. Many were relatively recent: pictures of the two 
of them together in Athens and Malta. But buried amongst the transparent smiles were some 
pictures she couldn't remember ever having seen before (had Rory kept them from her?); 
family portraits that went back decades. A photograph of his parents on their wedding 
day, the black and white image eroded over the years to a series of grays. Pictures of 
christenings, in which proud godparents cradled babies smothered in the family lace.
    And then, photographs of the brothers together; as toddlers, with wide eyes; as surly 
schoolchildren, snapped at gymnastic displays and in school pageants. Then, as the 
shyness of acne-ridden adolescence took over, the number of pictures dwindled-until the 
frogs emerged, as princes, the other side of puberty.
    Seeing Frank in brilliant color, clowning for the camera, she felt herself blushing. 
He had been an exhibitionist youth, predictably enough, always dressed d la mode. Rory, 
by comparison, looked dowdy. It seemed to her that the brothers' future lives were 
sketched in these early portraits. Frank the smiling, seductive chameleon; Rory the solid 
citizen.
    She had packed the pictures away at last, and found, when she stood up, that with the 
blushes had come tears. Not of regret. She had no use for that. It was fury that made her 
eyes sting. Somehow, between one breath and the next, she'd lost herself.
    She knew too, with perfect certainty, when her grip had first faltered. Lying on a 
bed of wedding lace, while Frank beset her neck with kisses.
    
    3
    Once in a while she went up to the room with the sealed blinds.
    So far, they'd done little decorating work on the upper floors, preferring to first 
organize the areas in public gaze. The room had therefore remained untouched. Unentered, 
indeed, except for these few visits of hers.
    She wasn't sure why she went up, nor how to account for the odd assortment of 
feelings that beset her while there. But there was something about the dark interior that 
gave her comfort; it was a womb of sorts, a dead woman's womb. Sometimes, when Rory was 
at work, she simply took herself up the stairs and sat in the stillness, thinking of 
nothing; or at least nothing she could put words to.
    These sojourns made her feel oddly guilty, and she tried to stay away from the room 
when Rory was around. But it wasn't always possible. Sometimes her feet took her there 
without instruction to do so.
    It happened thus that Saturday, the day of the blood.
    She had been watching Rory at work on the kitchen door, chiseling several layers of 
paint from around the hinges, when she seemed to hear the room call. Satisfied that he 
was thoroughly engrossed in his chores, she went upstairs.
    It was cooler than usual, and she was glad of it. She put her hand to the wall, and 
then transferred her chilled palm to her forehead.
    "No use," she murmured to herself, picturing the man at work downstairs. She didn't 
love him; no more than he, beneath his infatuation with her face, loved her. He chiseled 
in a world of his own; she suffered here, far removed from him.
    A gust of wind caught the back door below. She heard it slam.
    Downstairs, the sound made Rory lose his concentration. The chisel jumped its groove 
and sliced deeply into the thumb of his left hand. He shouted, as a gush of color came. 
The chisel hit the floor.
    "Hell and damnation!"
    She heard, but did nothing. Too late, she surfaced through a stupor of melancholy to 
realize that he was coming upstairs. Fumbling for the key, and an excuse to justify her 
presence in the room, she stood up, but he was already at the door, crossing the 
threshold, rushing toward her, his right hand clamped ineptly around his left. Blood was 
coming in abundance. It welled up between his fingers and dribbled down his arm, dripping 
from his elbow, adding stain to stain on the bare boards.
    "What have you done?" she asked him.
    "What does it look like?" he said through gritted teeth. "Cut myself."
    His face and neck had gone the color of window putty. She'd seen him like this 
before; he had on occasion passed out at the sight of his own blood.
    "Do something," he said queasily.
    "Is it deep?"
    "I don't know!" he yelled at her. "I don't want to look."
    He was ridiculous, she thought, but this wasn't the time to give vent to the contempt