“Of course it's not. They're perfect for each other.”

“But don't you mind?” What was wrong with all of them? How did they think these days? And she was twenty-five years old, when was she ever going to settle down?

“Of course I don't mind. I told you years ago, Mom, Harry and I are just friends. The best of friends. And I'm thrilled for them.” She waited a respectable interval to tell her about the child, when she called again.

“And what about you, Tan? When are you going to think about settling down?”

Tana sighed. What a thought. “Don't you ever give up, Mom?”

“Have you, at your age?” What a depressing thought.

“Of course not. I haven't even started to think about that.” She was just out of her affair with Yael McBee, who was the last person one would have thought of settling down with, and she didn't even have time to think of romance at her new job. She was too busy learning to be an assistant D.A. It was almost six months into the job before she even had time for her first date. A senior investigator asked her out, and she went because he was an interesting guy, but she had no real interest in him. She went out with two or three lawyers after that, but her mind was always on her work, and in February she had her first important case, covered by national press. She felt as though all eyes were on her, and she was anxious to do well. It was a fiercely ugly rape and murder. The rape of a fifteen-year-old girl, who had been lured into an abandoned house by her mother's lover. She had been raped nine or ten times, according to the testimony, badly disfigured, and eventually killed, and Tana wanted to get the gas chamber for him. It was a case that struck a chord near her heart, although no one knew that, and she worked her ass off, preparing the case, and reviewing the testimony and the evidence every night. The defendant was an attractive man of about thirty-five, well educated, decently dressed, and the defense was trying to pull every trick in the book. She was up until two o'clock every night. It was almost like trying to pass the bar again.

“How's it going, Tan?” Harry called her late one night. She glanced at the clock, surprised that he was still up. It was almost three.

“Okay. Something wrong? Averil all right?”

“She sure is.” She could almost see him beam. “We just had a baby boy, Tan. Eight pounds one ounce, and she's the bravest girl in the whole world … I was there, and oh Tan, it was so beautiful … his little head just popped out, and there he was, looking at me. They handed him to me first…” He was breathless and excited and he sounded as though he were laughing and crying at the same time. “Ave just went to sleep so I thought I'd give you a call. Were you up?”

“Of course I was. Oh Harry, I'm so happy for both of you!” There were tears in her eyes, too, and she invited him up for a drink. He was there five minutes later, and he looked tired, but the happiest she'd ever seen. And it was the strangest feeling, watching him, listening to him tell it all, as though it had been the first baby that had ever been born, and Averil were miraculous. She almost envied them, and yet at the same time, she felt a terrible void deep in her soul, as though that part of her just wasn't there, almost as though it had been left out. It was like listening to someone speak a foreign tongue and admiring them tremendously, but having no understanding of the language at all. She felt completely in the dark, and yet she thought it was wonderful for them.

It was five o'clock in the morning before he left, and she slept for a little less than two hours before getting up to get ready for court, and she went back to her big case. It dragged on for more than three weeks, and the jury stayed out for nine days, after Tana argued before them heroically. And when they finally came in, she had won. The defendant was convicted of every charge and although the judge refused to impose capital punishment on him, he was sentenced to prison for life, and deep within her, Tana was glad. She wanted him to pay for what he had done, although his going to prison would never bring the girl back to life.

The newspapers said that she had argued the case brilliantly, and Harry teased her about it when she came to see the baby in Piedmont after that, calling her Madam Hotshot, and giving her a bad time.

“All right, all right, enough. Let me see this prodigy you've produced, instead of giving me so much flak.” She was fully prepared to be acutely bored and was surprised to discover how sweet the baby was. Everything was tiny and perfect and she hesitated when Averil tried to hand him to her. “Oh, God … I'm afraid to break him in two.…”

“Don't be silly.” Harry grabbed the baby easily from his wife and plopped him into Tana's arms, and she sat staring down at him, utterly amazed at how lovely he was, and when she handed him back, she felt as though she had lost something and she looked at them both almost enviously, so much so that when she left, he told Averil victoriously, “I think we got to her, Ave,” and indeed she thought about them a great deal that night, but by the following week, she had another big rape case on her hands, and two big murder cases after that. And the next thing she knew, Harry called her victoriously. He had not only passed the bar, but he'd been offered a job, and he could hardly wait to start.

“Who hired you?” She was happy for him. He had worked hard for it. And now he laughed.

“You won't believe this, Tan. I'm going to work for the P.D.”

“The public defender's office?” She laughed too. “You mean I have to try my cases against you?” They went out to lunch to celebrate and all they talked about was work. Marriage and babies were the last thing on her mind. And the next thing she knew, the rest of the year had flown by, and another one on its heels, trying murders and rapes and assaults and assorted other crimes. Only once or twice did she actually find herself working on the same case Harry was on, but they had lunch whenever they could, and he had been in the public defender's office for two years when he told her that Averil was pregnant again. “So soon?” Tana looked surprised. It seemed as though Harrison Winslow V had been born just moments before, but Harry smiled.

“He'll be two next month, Tan.”

“Oh, my God. Is that possible?” She didn't see him often enough, but even at that it seemed impossible. He was going to be two. It was incredible. And she herself was twenty-eight years old, which didn't seem so remarkable actually, except that everything had gone so fast. It seemed like only yesterday when she was going to Green Hill with Sharon Blake, and taking long walks with her into Yolan. Only yesterday when Sharon was alive, and Harry could dance.…

Averil had a baby girl this time, with a tiny pink face, a perfect little mouth, and enormous almond-shaped eyes. She looked incredibly like her grandfather, and Tana felt an odd tug at her heart when she looked at her, but again, it didn't feel like anything she could ever do herself. She said as much to Harry when they had lunch the following week.

“Why not, for chrissake? You're only twenty-nine years old, or you will be in three months.” He looked at her seriously then. “Don't miss out on it, Tan. It's the only thing I've ever done that really matters to me, the only thing I really give a damn about … my children and my wife.” She was shocked to hear him say that. She thought his career was more important to him than that, and then she was even more startled to hear that he was thinking of giving up his job with the P.D., and going into practice for himself.

“Are you serious? Why?”

“Because I don't like working for someone else, and I'm tired of defending those bums. They all did whatever it is they claim they didn't do, or at least most of them anyway, and I'm just sick of it. It's time for a change. I was thinking of going into partnership with another lawyer I know.”

“Wouldn't it be dull for you? Ordinary civil law?” She made it sound like a disease and he laughed as he shook his head.

“No. I don't need as much excitement as you do, Tan. I couldn't run the crusades you do every day. I couldn't survive that day in, day out. I admire you for doing it, but I'll be perfectly happy with a small comfortable practice, and Averil and the kids.” He had never set his sights high, and he was happy with things just as they were. She almost envied him that. There was something deeper and hungrier that burned within her. It was the thing that Miriam Blake had seen in her ten years before, and it was still there. It wanted tougher cases, across-the-board convictions, it wanted harder and more, and greater challenges all the time. She was particularly flattered when, the following year, she was assigned to a panel of attorneys that met with the governor over a series of issues that affected the criminal processes all over the state. There were half a dozen lawyers involved, all of them male except for Tana, two of them from Los Angeles, two from San Francisco, one from Sacramento, and one from San Jose, and it was the most interesting week she thought she had ever spent. She was exhilarated day after day. The attorneys and the judges and politicians conferred long into the night, and by the time she got into bed every night, she was so excited about what they'd been talking about that she couldn't sleep for the next two hours. She lay awake running it all through her mind.

“Interesting, isn't it?” The attorney she sat next to on the second day leaned over and spoke to her in an undervoice as they listened to the governor discuss an issue she had been arguing about with someone the night before. He was taking exactly the position she had herself and she wanted to stand up and cheer.