Sanity is defined in the dictionary as being healthy of mind. She knew this because in a macabre moment of introspection, she felt compelled to look it up. Healthy implied an entire range of adjectives that she wasn't sure applied to her anymore: vigorous, rational, happy ... sane. Caroline Williams was none of those things.

Shutting her eyes, she pushed gently on the warm boards of the wooden porch with her bare foot. Not a breath of wind marred the day, and the scent of her mother's roses hung oppressively in the humid air like a narcotic drug. She could still see the fields around her imprinted against her eyelids: the thrusting corn, the fragrant butterfly bush that had overgrown the corner, the sunny porch with the lilac tree that brushed her shoulder with drooping branches. Gone was the roar of the city, the huge teeming highways, the stench of exhaust.

For the past four months, she thought morosely, she had crawled around on raw nerves. The devastation was inward, a festering wound of uncertainty and self-doubt. She might smile mechanically and make it through each day, but the rickety interior threatened collapse at any moment.

So she had brought the wreck home to Illinois. After years of exile, she'd run back, something she'd sworn she'd never do. Sitting on her parents' porch, those years were suddenly like a puff of smoke. California and her life there might have been a dream.

"Caroline?"

Her eyes flew open. The sunlight made her wince, and her hand flew up in a defensive gesture. "I'm here."

"Are you all right? I mean ... you've been sitting out there all morning."

"I'm fine." She turned to look at him.

Silence. Birds chirping. The smell of earth and damp grass and decaying roses. Her father's hand rested on the doorknob. He stared out the screen.

She knew he had no idea how to treat her or what to say. Since her return home, it had been painful to watch him struggle against his personality, to seek to reach out. She wished she could help him.

Of course, she couldn't. She couldn't even help herself, much less someone else.

He blinked, waiting, standing tall and erect, doubt etching lines near his eyes and nose. His mouth was uncertain and half-open, as if the right words might float out.

"Pete..." he finally began, clearing his throat.

"...needs to go to the vet next Tuesday," she finished mildly. "I know."

"I told you, then." His smile was rueful.

"Several times."

"And your grandmother's medication--did your mother give it to you?" Tiny creases deepened around the edges of his mouth. "Sometimes she forgets to take it and you have to remind her. Your mother usually takes care of that, but..."

She sighed. "She explained everything, Dad. There are lists and phone numbers and instructions galore. Please stop worrying, will you? Gran and I will be fine, and Rob will take care of everything around the farm. Just go and have a good time. Please."

His doubt remained evident in the shadows of his face. He half-turned, almost leaving, but his hand still held the doorknob. Caroline might have inherited his fair hair and blue eyes, but not his easy-going disposition. Had they been more alike, more in tune, perhaps it would have been easier.

Love, she thought wryly, might have a language all its own, but both parties had to be able to speak it. Her brother Rob was her father's true offspring: happy, generous, physical rather than intellectual.

She looked away, anywhere but at the anxious figure of her father in the doorway. Sun made bold blocks of light everywhere. The lilac bush caressed her arm. A robin intent on lunch hopped across the grass, throwing a tiny shadow like a moving flame. A sudden urge, throat-clogging and eye-stinging, made her want to leap to her feet, throw her arms around her father's neck and weep on his shoulder. She wanted to be his child again, to have him pat her back and frighten the monsters away.

The feeling was so strong she felt dizzy.

What nonsense, her brain whispered. A world of monsters was too much for one middle-aged farmer.

Eventually her father let go of the knob and summoned up a smile. The wrinkles under his eyes looked like fine polished leather. "Well, that's that, then. I guess we'll go on. The car is loaded."

"Great. I hear the weather is going to be perfect there all week, so wear sunscreen on the beach. Give Aunt Sue a kiss for me. Hug the kids." She dug up her own brave effort and plastered it across her face.

"Sure will."

"I've already said goodbye to Mom."

"Okay."

He hesitated one last second, still tied to the other side of that door by words he was incapable of saying. It took her mother's impatient voice and a honk from the driveway to move him. The slam of the car door was a hollow, final sound.

Caroline sat and listened to the crunch of gravel under the car's wheels as her parents departed. She told herself fiercely that she was glad--glad to be alone, glad they were gone. Being handled like a piece of glass was beginning to wear thin. It had been seven days since she'd arrived home. Seven days of tip-toeing and polite conversation that had not done any of them much good. And not once had her parents mentioned her future plans.

That was just as well. She had none.

At twenty, she had left home abruptly, so sure what she needed was to make her place in the world. At twenty-four, she had returned to the only place in the world she felt safe.

A hummingbird shot past in a low swoop, intent on some flower. At her feet, Pete, her father's beloved collie, stirred in his sleep, giving a soft bark. Odd, she thought dimly, how a certain sound or smell could evocatively conjure up memory much better than sight. No picture could replace her childhood like the roar of a distant tractor, the creak of locusts in the trees, the heady scent of overblown peonies.

Or recreate horror like the smell of hot blood spilling over concrete, the clean flutter of spring leaves, the roll of the ocean against rock and beach, the sound of people screaming until it deafened even the beating of your heart...

Some smells and sounds were unwelcome intruders.

She got up and went inside.