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“SO JIMMY SNUCK IN behind them with a gun?” Thomas McGoey says.

He has driven over from Quogue to talk about the beginning of our case tomorrow. Really, he wants to know how I’m going after Sonny Blum, our first witness.

But he also wants to know about the scene at the Carson house on Friday afternoon with Eric Jacobson and Edmund McKenzie.

“It was a very Jimmy thing to do,” I tell McGoey.

McGoey is shaking his head. “And I thought I was badass,” he says. “I’m not even in the same league as the two of you.”

“Eric tried to act cool about the whole thing,” I say. “He said to Jimmy, ‘You know you’re not going to shoot us.’ And Jimmy said, ‘Don’t tempt me,’ and told them to get lost.”

“They followed you and he followed them?” McGoey says.

“He was in his car in the parking lot and saw them pull out after me,” I say. “But then he likes to say how sometimes being a good investigator just means hanging around and waiting for something interesting to develop.”

“And they just left?”

“They did,” I say. “But Jimmy yelled after them that he’d see them real soon.”

“You think he can find them if we want to call them?”

I say, “It will be a lot less difficult now that he planted a tracking device on McKenzie’s car, over the right front tire.”

McGoey is shaking his head again, admiringly. “Badass.”

I have been feeling punk all weekend. But I power through our meeting. Before McGoey leaves he says, “You’ve got to make sure that you don’t make it look like elder abuse with our friend Sonny.”

“He’s a killer,” I say.

“But he’s not on trial,” McGoey says.

“You sure about that?” I say innocently.

When he’s gone, I am feeling well enough to take Rip to the beach, knowing I first have to make a stop at Rob Jacobson’s house, where he wants to take one more swing at changing my mind about putting Sonny Blum on the stand. And about something else.

“For the last time, put me on the stand,” he says when I get there.

“For the last time, no,” I say.

“I can win over the babes on the jury,” he says.

“Keep telling yourself that,” I say. “Now let’s change the subject.”

“Sonny is blaming me for this,” Rob says.

“Good to know that the two of you are staying in touch.”

“I told Sonny I didn’t think I could change your mind.”

“My sincerest apologies.”

“So when I did tell him that,” Rob continues, “he said to make sure to tell you that you have now been warned for the last time.”

So a weekend that began with a threat from Eric Jacobson is now ending with one from Sonny Blum. I remember a line from “Send in the Clowns” then:

Isn’t it bliss?

Jacobson offers to walk me to my car. I tell him not to bother. I drive Rip and me to Indian Wells, where we happily discover that the wind has mostly died down tonight, despite this morning’s severe passing storm. But its aftermath, big, loud, crashing waves, are wonderful to see and hear.

You’ve been warned for the last time.

Being such a cultured girl, and not just with music, I fell asleep the other night rewatching Braveheart, long enough to hear my favorite line from the movie: “Everybody dies, but not everybody really lives.” Something like that.

I smile thinking about it now. That was when Mel Gibson was still Mel Gibson, still cute and sexy as hell even with his face painted like he was at a college basketball game.

Rip and I walk the beach and I feel the salt air in my face, not whipping at me the way it sometimes can, more gentle tonight.

I suddenly feel the best I have all weekend.

Maybe because I’m here.

Still effing here.

The wind is slowly picking up, Rip and I walking right into it for another hundred yards or so before I plan to turn around. And I am thinking about the effing trial again, even in what has always been my safe place, my best place, not even remotely surprised that it’s followed me here.

I know Katherine Welsh’s case is stronger, knew that going in, know it tonight on the eve of presenting my own case. But I felt that same way about Kevin Ahearn, the Suffolk County DA, before Rob Jacobson’s first trial.

Now I’m in the barrel again, in what might be my last trial.

The thought stops me cold.

I turn and stare out at the ocean, a sight that really has always made me feel in total contact with my soul.

Is this my last trial?

Maybe.

But if it is, I don’t plan on leaving anything in the locker room, something our hockey coach at Boston College used to tell us was the worst penalty a player could commit.

“You do that,” she always said, “you’re on your way to losing the game before it even starts.”

I hated losing then, I hate it even more now.

Starting with cancer.

I start running now, yelling over my shoulder at Rip to catch me if he can, not feeling weak or sick. Or terminal. Not tonight, and not tomorrow morning.

Back in the house, I take Rip into the kitchen and give him treats, more than I usually give him after a beach walk, but I can spoil my own damn dog if I want to, it’s the same for him as for me.

You only live once.

I treat myself to a glass of wine, taking it into the living room and setting it on the coffee table and putting my feet up next to it.

Then my phone is playing the BC fight song, the one that would always play when we skated out onto the ice.

It is a London number, one I recognize as belonging to my friend Fiona, who beat cancer when hers was supposed to have been much further along than mine.

She is the cool English chick I met on my first trip to the Meier Clinic.

When I said good-bye to her that time, I thought we were saying good-bye for the last time.

But it turned out she was back when I was back and we met again.

I was out for a walk one afternoon and there she was.

I thought I was seeing a ghost, but she was very much alive, and in remission.

We promised each other we would stay in touch, but haven’t since she was back in England and I was back here.

It’s not her voice at the other end of the line.

“Is this Jane?” a male voice says when I answer.

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“This is Jeremy. Fiona’s husband.”

I suddenly feel as if my soul is leaving my body.

“She died a few hours ago,” he says.