Paradise Lost

color—the brilliant emerald-green hue of freshly sprouted cottonwood leaves, a color desert dwellers find hard to resist. It didn’t hurt that, with her red hair and light skin, that particular shade of green was, in Butch’s words, a “killer” combination.

The nuptials were scheduled to be held in one of the several ball-rooms on the Conquistador’s second floor. Joanna was already seated in one of the rows of chairs when Lila Winters entered the room. Blond and elegant, she wore a sapphire-blue suit. Watching her start down the aisle, Joanna couldn’t quite stifle the stab of jealousy that shot through her whole body. Watching closely, however, Joanna did detect the smallest trace of a limp as Lila made her way to a chair. That limp caused Joanna’s jealousy to change to compassion.

Only three people among the assembled guests—Butch, Joanna, and Lila Winters herself—knew that the strikingly elegant woman who looked so vibrantly alive was actually dying. What must it be like, Joanna wondered, to be given that kind of devastating diagnosis? Whom would I tell if that happened to me? In the end there was only one answer. Butch, she realized. He’d help me figure out what to do.

At that juncture the first strains of the “Wedding March” sounded. Joanna rose and turned with everyone else to watch the procession. Butch preceded the bride down the aisle, walking in the slow, halting manner dictated by the occasion. Catching Joanna’s eye as he passed, Butch winked. Tammy Lukins walked down the aisle on the arm of her adult son, who also gave her away. During the brief and joyful ceremony Joanna couldn’t help feeling a grudging respect for Lila Winters’s decision to keep her bad news away from the happy bride and groom.

After the ceremony, the wedding entourage moved to a second ballroom for the reception. While Butch was occupied with his attendant duties, Joanna sat down at one of the tables which offered a panoramic view of the entire reception. She was sipping a glass of champagne when someone said, “Mind if I join you?”

Joanna looked up to see Lila Winters in her sapphire-blue suit. “Sure,” Joanna said. “Help yourself.”

As Lila took a seat, Joanna noted the fleeting wince that crossed the woman’s face when her back came in contact with the chair. The expression passed so swiftly that only someone looking fir it would have noticed.

“You seemed upset earlier,” Lila began, once she was seated. “When Butch and I met up with you in the lobby, I mean. I didn’t want you to think anything untoward had happened.”

During that earlier encounter, Joanna Brady would willingly have scratched the woman’s eyes out. Now she simply said, “I know. Butch told me.”

They were interrupted by a roar of laughter from a group gathered across the room, where the groom had just tossed the bride’s garter high into the air, and several of the guests, graybeards all of them, scrambled to retrieve it.

“He told you about me, then?” Lila asked, once the laughter subsided. “About what’s going on?”

Joanna nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Please,” Lila said, cutting her off. “Let’s not discuss it. I’m still feeling pretty sorry for myself, and I don’t want to go into it here. Not now. Not yet. I just wanted to say that I think you’re very lucky—to have Butch, that is.”

“I know,” Joanna said. “Thank you.”

For the space of almost a minute they sat in silence while both sipped at their respective glasses of champagne. Across the room it was time for the bride to toss her bouquet.

“It doesn’t seem real,” Lila said quietly. “It wasn’t all that long ago when I was the one tossing the bouquet, and now ...”

Even though she had said she didn’t want to discuss her loom­ing illness, Joanna realized that’s what they were doing neverthe­less. “It must be very difficult,” she replied.

Lila nodded. “These are my friends,” she said, gazing around the room. “I’ve known these people for years. It was bad enough to have to come back and face them all at a wedding, of all things, after Jimmy walked out on me the way he did. But now that I know about—” She stopped short of naming her illness. “I don’t want to tell them, but . . . I don’t want to die alone, either.”

Law enforcement circles are full of heroes and acts of derring­-do—the kind that make for newspaper headlines and for riveting television newscasts. Lila Winters’s courage was far quieter than that, and far more solitary. In her life-and-death struggle, she couldn’t reach for a radio and call for backup.