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been a long time ago, but Mama Corleone never trusted her after that and always

checked. "You feel all right?" the old woman asked.

"Yes," Kay said.

The church was small and desolate in the early morning sunlight. Its stained-glass

windows shielded the interior from heat, it would be cool there, a place to rest. Kay

helped her mother-in-law up the white stone steps and then let her go before her. The

old woman preferred a pew up front, close to the altar. Kay waited on the steps for an

extra minute. She was always reluctant at this last moment, always a little fearful.

Finally she entered the cool darkness. She took the holy water on her fingertips and

made the sign of the cross, fleetingly touched her wet fingertips to her parched lips.

Candles flickered redly before the saints, the Christ on his cross. Kay genuflected

before entering her row and then knelt on the hard wooden rail of the pew to wait for her

call to Communion. She bowed her head as if she were praying, but she was not quite

ready for that.

It was only here in these dim, vaulted churches that she allowed herself to think about

her husband's other life. About that terrible night a year ago when he had deliberately

used all their trust and love in each other to make her believe his lie that he had not

killed his sister's husband.

She had left him because of that lie, not because of the deed. The next morning she

had taken the children away with her to her parents' house in New Hampshire. Without

a word to anyone, without really knowing what action she meant to take. Michael had

immediately understood. He had called her the first day and then left her alone. It was a

week before the limousine from New York pulled up in front of her house with Tom

Hagen.

247

She had spent a long terrible afternoon with Tom Hagen, the most terrible afternoon

of her life. They had gone for a walk in the woods outside her little town and Hagen had

not been gentle.

Kay had made the mistake of trying to be cruelly flippant, a role to which she was not

suited. "Did Mike send you up here to threaten me?" she asked. "I expected to see

some of the 'boys' get out of the car with their machine guns to make me go back."

For the first time since she had known him, she saw Hagen angry. He said harshly,

"That's the worst kind of juvenile crap I've ever heard. I never expected that from a

woman like you. Come on, Kay."

"All right," she said.

They walked along the green country road. Hagen asked quietly, "Why did you run

away?"

Kay said, "Because Michael lied to me. Because he made a fool of me when he stood

Godfather to Connie's boy. He betrayed me. I can't love a man like that. I can't live with

it. I can't let him be father to my children."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Hagen said.

She turned on him with now-justified rage. "I mean that he killed his sister's husband.

Do you understand that?" She paused for a moment. "And he lied to me."

They walked on for a long time in silence. Finally Hagen said, "You have no way of