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When I returned to the living room, Stuart was still sit ting in his chair, his head down, his hands pressed together like someone in prayer.

"I'm sorry, Stuart. I didn't mean to get you involved in all this, but the choice was either to tell you or..."

"Or what?" he said, lifting his eyes to me quickly.

"Say or do something that would drive you away so I wouldn't have to continually come up with some lame excuse for why Geraldine isn't home," I said.

"Well," he said, standing, "I still can't believe you guys did this and in the backyard?"

I nodded.

"I've got to take a look and see for myself before I really believe it," he said.

I followed him to the back door. He opened it and stepped out, looking over the yard. The day was mostly overcast with the occasional sunlight drawing dreary shadows over everything.

"The fresh seeds and freshly planted flowers give it away. Right?" he said, nodding at the grave.

"Right. After a little while it will be hard to tell though."

"Maybe?'

"You should have seen us out here that night. It wasn't easy to dig a grave?'

"I bet," he said, shaking his head. Then he looked at me, his eyes narrowed and troubled. "So you're really on your own? You really have nobody now?"

"I have the girls and I hope I have you," I said.

He looked toward the grave again.

"This is crazy, Cathy. I said what I said in there in front of them, but now that I see this, and realize what's happened, you can't go on with this. It really is illegal. I don't think any of you actually thought this out:'

"But you told them you'd help, Stuart?"

"Even if you all are somehow able to carry it off until you're eighteen, how are you going to explain this when you have to? You know, they'll dig her up and they'll do an investigation to see if she died naturally or whatever. If there is even the slightest suggestion or possibility she didn't, the four of you could become murder suspects?'

"Murder suspects! She just died, Stuart. She had a heart attack?'

"How do you know that? None of you has a medical degree, Cathy. Do you know how that's determined? I do. Remember, I told you I want to go into medicine. They have to do an autopsy and they examine the heart. They can tell if it's been damaged. What if it hasn't?"

"Why else would she have died?" I moaned. I wished we weren't having this conversation ten feet from Geraldine's grave. I could almost see her smiling beneath the ground.

"There are lots of causes of death." He thought a moment and then he turned to me and put his hands on my shoulders. "Cathy, what if she was depressed about all this and she took her own life? What if she swallowed some pills or something? Don't you see? Someone might think you put the pills in her food and then you and your girlfriends, all troubled and disturbed so much they had to have therapy, buried her to hide what you did."

I shook my head.

"No, no that's not what happened. I couldn't have done something like that," I cried.

"But I bet you've wished it, haven't you?"

"Maybe," I admitted.

"So someone who doesn't know you obviously could think it." He stepped back. "No," he said. "Now that I've seen this and thought about it, I realize you have to go in there and call the police and tell them what you did."

"No, Smart," I said, the tears streaming out of my eyes and zigzagging down my cheeks to my chin. "I couldn't do that. They're my friends, my best friends. I can't betray them. We're all in this together."

"Yeah, I know. The OWP's. You're not children anymore you know. The next thing you'll all tell me is you have a clubhouse."

I looked up sharply.