It still wasn't noon.

Christina was just tired, she told herself. After all, with the party, she'd been awake until nearly two last night, then had her nightly argument with Joe. This morning, then, her ashes and the long, strangely emotional breakfast with Mark Dooher, her car not starting, the neo-hippie woman in the park, Sam's disapproval.

Then Tania Willows and Abe Glitsky with whatever his sorrow was – his sick wife.

Suddenly, the rain launching a new attack behind her back against her grimy window, the lights off as she sat alone in her tiny cubicle, something broke in her. She wiped the back of her hand roughly against her eyes – as a child would – trying to will away the tears, but they kept coming.

She was just tired.

This – the sudden collapse – hadn't happened in almost two years. She wasn't going to let herself think it was anything to do with the baby she'd lost, with her past. Not that again. That was behind her and she wasn't going to let it get to her anymore. It was the events of the morning, that was all.

She'd just toughen up. That was it, that was what she'd do. Swiping again at her face, sniffling, she got up from her desk, pulling her Gore-Tex up around her face. The rain would hide the tears. No one would see.

CHAPTER FIVE

His Excellency didn't have to explain it all to Dooher, but if it made him feel better, Mark would let him go on – he was the client, and every hour was $350. They were sitting in the Archbishop's office, above the children's playground at Mission Dolores. Their informal meetings always took place here, in the serenity of the laughter of children that floated up into Flaherty's sanctum sanctorum.

Although the Archdiocese employed a full-time attorney of its own, its mandate was far too broad for one man to do it all, and so a lot of the work needed to be farmed out to private firms. And over the years, Dooher's firm had come to specialize in the Church's secular affairs - dozens upon dozens of slip and fall cases, liability, property management, personnel.