By the Light of the Moon

'Shep is scared,' he whispered.

'Don't be scared.'

'Shep is scared.'

'We're safe here, now, for a while,' she assured him. 'Nobody can hurt you.'

His lips moved, as though he were speaking, but no sound issued from him.

Shepherd was not as big as his brother, but he was bigger than Jilly, a full-grown man, yet he seemed small beneath the sheets. Hair tousled, mouth pinched in a grimace of fear, he looked childlike.

A pang of sympathy pierced her when she realized that Shepherd had lived twenty years without any meaningful control over his life. Worse, his need for routine, the limits he put on what he would wear, his elaborate rules about food: All these things and more revealed a desperate need to establish a sense of dominion wherever possible.

His silence held. His lips stopped moving. The fear did not fade from his face, but it settled into softer lines, as if mellowing from acute fright to chronic dismay.

Jilly settled back upon her pillow, grateful that she had not been born in a trap as inescapable as Shep's, but she also worried that by the time the worm of change finished with her, she might be more like Shep than not.

A moment later, Dylan came out of the bathroom. He'd taken off his shoes, which he put beside the bed that he would share with his brother.

'You okay?' he asked Jilly.

'Yeah. Just… burnt out.'

'God, I'm sludge.'

Fully clothed, ready for an emergency, he got into bed, lay staring at the ceiling, but did not turn out the nightstand lamp.

After a silence, he said, 'I'm sorry.'

Jilly turned her head to look at him. 'Sorry about what?'

'Maybe from the motel on, I've done all the wrong things.'

'Such as?'

'Maybe we should've gone to the police, taken a chance. You were right when you said we can't run forever. I've got an obligation to think for Shep, but I've no right to drag you down with us.'

'Accountable O'Conner,' she said, 'vortex of responsibility. As broody as Batman. Call DC Comics, quick.'

'I'm serious.'

'I know. It's endearing.'

Still staring at the ceiling, he smiled. 'I said a lot of things to you tonight that I wish I hadn't said.'

'You had provocation. I made you nuts. And I said worse things. Listen… it just makes me crazy to have to depend on anyone. And… especially on men. So this situation, it pushes all my buttons.'

'Why especially men?'

She turned away from him to gaze at the ceiling. 'Let's say your dad walks out on you when you're three years old.'

After a silence, he encouraged her: 'Let's say.'

'Yeah. Let's say your mother, she's this beauty, this angel, this hero who's always there for you, and nothing bad should ever happen to her. But he beats her up so bad before he goes that she loses one eye and walks with two canes the rest of her life.'

Though weary and in need of sleep, he had the grace to wait for her to tell it at her own pace.

Eventually, she said, 'He leaves you to the miseries of welfare and the contempt of government social workers. Bad enough. But then a couple times each year, he'd visit for a day, two days.'

'Police?'

'Mom was afraid to call them when he showed up. The bastard said if she turned him in, when he got bail, then he'd come back and take her other eye. And one of mine. He would have done it, too.'

'Once he'd walked out, why come back at all?'

'To keep us scared. Keep us down. And he expected a share of her welfare money. And we always had it for him because we ate a lot of dinners free at the church kitchen. Most of our clothes came without charge from the church thrift shop. So Daddy always got his share.'

Her father rose in her memory, standing at the apartment door, smiling that dangerous smile. And his voice: Come to collect the eye insurance, baby girl. You got the eye-insurance premium?

'Enough about that,' she told Dylan. 'This isn't meant to be a pity party. I just wanted you to understand it isn't you I've got a problem with. It's just… being dependent on anyone.'

'You didn't owe me an explanation.'

'But there it is.' Her father's face persisted in memory, and she knew that even as tired as she was, she wouldn't sleep until she had exorcised it. 'Your dad must have been great.'

He sounded surprised. 'Why do you say that?'

'The way you are with Shep.'

'My dad raised venture capital to help high-tech entrepreneurs start up new companies. He worked eighty- hour weeks. He might've been a great guy, but I never spent enough time with him to know. He got in some deep financial problems. So two days before Christmas, near sunset, he drove to this beach parking lot with a great view of the Pacific. Cold day. No swimmers, no surfers. He connected a hose to the tailpipe, put the other end into the car through a window. Then he got in behind the wheel and also took an overdose of Nembutal. He was thorough, my dad. Always a backup plan. He went out with one of the most spectacular sunsets of the year. Shep and I watched it from the hill behind our house, miles away from that beach, and of course we didn't know he was watching it, too, and dying.'

'When was this?'

'I was fifteen. Shep was five. Almost fifteen years ago.'

'That's hard,' she said.

'Yeah. But I wouldn't trade you situations.'

'So where did you learn?'

'Learn what?'

'To take such good care of Shep.'

He switched off the lamp. In the darkness, he said, 'From my mom. She died young, too. She was great, so tender with Shep. But sometimes you can learn the right lesson from a bad example, too.'

'I guess so.'

'No need to guess. Look at yourself.'

'Me? I'm all screwed up,' she said.

'Name me someone who isn't.'

Trying to think of a name to give him, she eventually drifted into sleep.

The first time that she woke, rising out of a dreamless bliss, she heard Dylan snoring softly.

The room was cold. The air conditioner had shut off.

She had not been awakened by Dylan's snoring, but perhaps by Shepherd's voice. Three whispered words: 'Shep is scared.'

Judging by the direction from which his voice arose, she thought he was still in bed.

'Shep is scared.'

'Shep is brave,' she whispered in reply.

'Shep is scared.'

'Shep is brave.'

Shepherd fell silent, and when the silence held, Jilly found sleep again.

When next she woke, she heard Dylan still snoring softly, but fingers of sunshine pried at every edge of the blackout drapes, not the thinner light of dawn, but the harsher glare of midmorning sun.

She became aware of another light, arising from beyond the half-open bathroom door. A bloody radiance.

Her first thought was fire, but even as she bolted out of bed, with that word stuck