“The brown contact lenses are the worst, though, because they are covering up your gorgeous blue-green ones! And trust me, we all love your eyes, Ja...ke-e-poo!”“Figures, I get disguised, and I look like crap, but a sexy woman is still a sexy woman,” I laughed. “Come, ‘wifey’ let’s go,” I quipped as I put my arm out for her, “the Louvre awaits!”“Okay, hubby,” Violet grinned as she took my arm.We walked down the hall and into the main living area where Sheila was watching a Disney movie with Billy,. Or I made you do it, Alex,” I explained. “A few days later, I did the same thing to you, Sam. But when you were in the chair, you weren’t all hugs and love like Alex was. You were in need of the boot recharge. You were on a vector of a little bit of hurt, a little bit of fear, and a chunk of confusion. You kept sailing on that vector.”“Um, what do you mean by vector?” Alex asked after a silent moment.I laughed, shaking off some of the tension. I wasn’t talking to Max. “Have you ever heard of. ”I tore it open. “Little Annette cost us six thousand four hundred ninety-seven dollars and forty-three cents ... of which, our insurance covered five thousand one hundred ninety-seven dollars and ninety-four cents, leaving us on the hook for pennies under thirteen hundred bucks.”“That’s more than Dr Lang quoted in the beginning,” she replied.I regarded the itemized charges. “Well, it includes your tubal ligation, an extra day of confinement and some extras in the delivery room ... transfusion. When he removed his arm from her forehead, Alice stood still for a few seconds. The hand around her neck was getting loose too, which she interpreted as a reckoning of her submission. She hesitated before turning towards him. She was afraid of what his face might reveal; of what reasons might move that boy she knew so well to trap her in a spring afternoon when nobody else was at home. Finally, she turned her head and found his eyes. It was him, the him she was so familiar with, no doubt about.