Candace's lawyer asked if his client could meet with me, without attorneys, before the settlement conference. Paloma said absolutely not. I said yes.
She came to my house on a Sunday afternoon at the end of April. It was raining, a real spring rain, and she stood on my porch in a long hooded rain shell, and when I opened the door we both looked at the jacket at the same time, and she closed her eyes.
"I didn't think," she said. "I'm sorry. It's the only raincoat I have."
"Come in," I said.
We sat at my kitchen table. I made tea, because my mother raised me to and because it gave my hands something to do. Rook came in from the living room and stopped in the doorway and looked at her.
Candace went very still. Her right hand moved to her left forearm and stopped there.
"You can tell him to stay over there," I said. "He will."
She looked at him for a long moment. He looked back, calm, his ears soft, his gray face patient, waiting to be told what the situation was.
"No," she said finally. "It's all right."
He came over, slowly, because his hips were worse that spring, and he stopped a foot from her chair and stretched his neck out and sniffed her hand where it lay on her arm, the scarred one, from the knuckles to the wrist, with great care. Then he sat down, and then he lay down next to her chair, with a groan, and put his chin on his paws.