“You know, it's amazing, after ail these years, I still miss her.” There was a long pause, and then Mary Stuart nodded.

“So do I,” she admitted in a soft voice. In some ways Ellie had been the heart and soul of the group. She had always been the gentlest of them all, and yet she had often been the life of the party. She was a funny, zany girl, who would do almost anything for a laugh, including walking into a party with nothing but white paint on. She had done that once, and now and then she wore a lamp shade to chapel. She did crazy, silly things, and she always made them laugh, and then she made them cry. It had broken everyone's heart when she died, particularly Mary Stuart's. They had been best friends and roommates. And they were all sitting there thinking about her, when Zoe broke the silence.

“I wish I'd known then what I know now,” she said gently to Mary Stuart, as Tanya watched them. “I had no right to say the things I did to you. I can't believe how young and stupid I was. I've often thought about it. I almost wrote you a letter once, when my first patient committed suicide. It was like God's vengeance for my having been so cruel and so outrageous to you. It was as if he were trying to teach me everything I hadn't learned with Ellie, that it was no one's fault, that we couldn't have stopped her if we tried, oh, we might have for a while. But not in the end, not if that was really what she wanted. I was so damn ignorant when I was young, I kept thinking that one of us should have seen it, that you should have because you were closest to her. I couldn't understand why you didn't know that she'd been taking pills and drinking. She must have been doing it for months, I think, and I guess she'd gotten away with it. But she really didn't want to. Ellie got exactly what she wanted.” But as Mary Stuart listened to Zoe's words, she started crying. It was like listening to her talk about Todd, but Zoe didn't know that. And Tanya put a gentle arm around her. “I should have written you the letter, Stu,” Zoe said with tears in her own eyes. “I never forgave myself for what I said to you, I guess you didn't either. I don't blame you,” she said sadly. It had blown them all apart. Zoe had been vicious with her, she had raged at her for days, and even at the funeral, she had refused to sit beside her. She had blamed Mary Stuart completely for not being able to stop her, and Mary Stuart had been overwhelmed by the accusations, and she had believed her. It had taken years to overcome her sense of having failed to save her friend's life. It was almost as though she had killed her. And then it had all come back to her with Todd. It was as though the horror had never ended. Only this time it was worse, and now it was Bill blaming her, and not Zoe. “I'm so sorry,” Zoe said as she walked across the room and sat beside her. “I've wanted to say that to you all night. Even if we both leave tomorrow morning, especially if we do, I can't live with myself unless I tell you how wrong I was, and how stupid. You were right to hate me for all these years and I'm really sorry.” She was crying when she said it. It was important to her now to confess her sins and make peace with the people she had injured. And in Zoe's life, there weren't many.

“Thank you for saying that,” Mary Stuart choked on a sob as she hugged her, “but I always thought you were right. How could I not know what she was doing? How could I have been so blind?” They were the same questions she had asked herself about her son's death. Todd's death had, in some ways, been very similar to Ellie's. It was like a recurring nightmare. Only there was no waking. It seemed to go on forever.

“She was very sneaky, and she wanted to die,” Zoe said simply. Her practice had taught her a great deal in the past two decades. “You couldn't have stopped her.”

“I wish I believed that,” Mary Stuart said sadly, confused suddenly if they were talking about her son, or their roommate,

“I know,” Zoe persisted, as firm in this position as she had once been in the other. “She didn't want you to know what she was doing. If she had, you could have stopped her, but you couldn't.”

“I wish I had,” Mary Stuart said, staring at her hands folded in her lap, as the other two watched her. And Tanya was worried. “I wish I had known, about both of them.” She raised her eyes to her friends’, and they could both see the agony she held here.

“Both of whom?” Zoe was confused now, and Mary Stuart didn't answer, but the others just waited. “Mary Stuart?” She looked at her, and then she understood as Mary Stuart looked at her, and she wished she could have died for her, for both of them. She could only begin to imagine the agony she'd been through. Even more so after the distant memory of Ellie. It must have been like reliving it all again, but it had been so much worse for her. It made Zoe sob to realize what had happened. “Oh my God,” she said, as she clutched her old friend and they both cried. “Oh, God… Stu… I'm so sorry…”

“It was so awful,” Mary Stuart cried, “it was so terrible… and Bill said all the same things you did, and more.” She went on sobbing as though her heart would break. But Mary Stuart knew it couldn't, it had broken long before that. “And Bill still blames me,” she explained. “He hates me. He's in London now, without me, because he can't bear the sight of me, and I don't blame him. He thinks I killed our son, or let him die, at the very least… just as you thought about Ellie.”

“I was a fool,” Zoe said, still holding Mary Stuart in her arms, but it was small comfort in the face of what had happened. “I was twenty-two years old and an inexperienced moron. Bill should know better.”

“He's convinced I could have stopped him.”

“Then someone needs to tell him the truth about suicides. Stu, if he really wanted to, wild horses couldn't have stopped him. If he really wanted to, he would never have given you any warning.”

“He didn't,” she said sadly, blowing her nose in the tissue Tanya handed her, as Zoe sat back and put an arm around Mary Stuart's shoulders.

“You can't blame yourself. You have to try and accept what happened. As awful as it is, you can't change it, you can't stop it. You couldn't have stopped it then. All you can do now is go on, or you'll destroy yourself and everything around you.”

“Actually, we've done a fairly good job of that.” She blew her nose again and smiled at both her friends through the tears she was still crying. “There's nothing left of our marriage. Absolutely nothing.”

“Well, not if he blames you. Somebody needs to talk to him.”

“Probably my lawyer,” Mary Stuart said, laughing grimly, and the other two smiled at her. She sounded a little more herself, and Tanya held one hand, and Zoe the other. “I've kind of decided to give it up. I'm going to tell him when he comes back from London.”

“What's he doing there?” Zoe was curious. She didn't think they lived there.

“He has a big case there for the next two or three months, but he wouldn't let me come with him.”

Zoe raised an eyebrow, and looked like her old cynical self as the other two watched her. She had mellowed a lot over the last twenty years, but there was still quite a lot of spice there. “Is he involved with someone else?”

“Actually, I don't think so. We haven't made love in a year, not since the night before Todd died. He's never touched me since. It's like the ultimate silent punishment. I think I so revolt him he can't touch me. But anyway, I really don't think there is someone else. That might be easier to understand than what's happened.”

“Not really,” Zoe looked clinical more than sympathetic.

“Some people just freeze up after traumas like that. It's pretty typical. I've heard it before. It's not exactly therapeutic, however, for a marriage.”

“Not really.” Mary Stuart smiled briefly. “Anyway, I think I've finally figured out what I need for myself. He's never going to forgive me anyway, and I might as well get it over with. Living with him is like living with my guilt every day, and I just can't do it.”

“You shouldn't,” Zoe said quietly. “He either has to deal with it honestly, or you need to get out. I think you're doing the right thing,” she said matter-of-factly. “What about your daughter?”

Mary Stuart sighed as she answered. “I think she'll probably blame me for the divorce. I don't think she understands how rotten her father has been to me. She just thinks he's busy. I did too, at first. But he made pretty clear what he was feeling. I can't stay there anymore, just for Alyssa, or even for him. I'm not even a wife to him now. We don't speak, we don't go anywhere, he doesn't want to be with me. And just seeing the way he looks at me is like being beaten.”

“Then get out,” Zoe said firmly. They hadn't seen each other for twenty years, and it was suddenly as though they had turned the clock back, to the beginning.

“You'll be better off without him if he's making you miserable,” Tanya said gently. “I survived it. You will too. We all do.”

“We've been married for twenty-two years. It's incredible to watch it all go out the window.”

“It sounds like it already did a while ago,” Zoe said honestly, and Tanya nodded, and Mary Stuart couldn't disagree with them. Even now that he was gone, he hardly ever called her. And when they spoke, he was in a hurry to get off the phone because it was so awkward. Lately, she had taken to sending him faxes, as she had that night when they arrived, just confirming her location. And even then, he didn't answer.

“You're still young,” Tanya said encouragingly, “you could meet someone else, and have a whole new life with them, with someone who wants to be with you.” Mary Stuart nodded, wishing she believed them. She couldn't imagine anyone ever wanting to be with her again, after the way Bill viewed her.