“Rick,” Janet said.  “I want to talk to you about something.  About Lucy.”

            Rick looked down at the hose he was winding up and frowned.  “Let me put this away,” he said. 

            He’d been hosing off their little patio.  Lucky had left them a nice sum of money, almost exactly the amount that Lucy had lost in the disastrous poker game, and they had used it to make a down payment on a condo.  It wasn’t the house they had lost, but Janet had found that with the boys gone, not having a house was nicer than she expected.  She’d done it in Santa Fe colors—soft reds and creams.

            Rick got some iced tea and sat down at the kitchen table.  “So what’s up?” he asked, carefully reserving judgment.

            “After what happened to Robert—“

            “You think maybe she could use some counseling?”

            Good grief.  Rick was a big believer in counseling.  He’d been very keen to get Lucy counseling when she was fourteen.  Lucy had been opposed.  Four weeks later the counselor told them Lucy probably had temporal lobe epilepsy causing ecstatic experiences that she interpreted as visions of saints.  She had looked it up at the library and carefully mimicked the symptoms. 

            That was about it for counseling, as far as Janet was concerned.  She wasn’t worried about Lucy getting her life straightened out.  She was worried about Lucy getting a bullet through her stomach.

            “Actually, I was thinking about that neighborhood she lives in.”

            “God help us.”

            “Rick, maybe we could help her find a new place, somewhere safer.”  Here was the tricky part.  “Help her out.  Maybe with the first and last month’s rent.”

            “Did she talk to you about this?” Rick said.

            “No,” Janet said.  “My idea entirely.”

            Rick was already shaking his head.  “We can’t do it.  You know we can’t.”

            “Rick—“ 

            “She’s got to suffer the consequences of her own choices.  Every time we bail her out, we’re enabling,” he said.  They’d gone to the open Gambler’s Anonymous meetings.  Janet knew the whole line.

            “This isn’t enabling,” Janet said.

            “It is, too,” Rick said.  “She could get a better job than that limo thing she does.  Eventually, she will.  She’s could be as smart as the boys, if she put her mind to it.  And she wouldn’t let us help, anyway.”

            “We could make her.”

            “No, we couldn’t.”  He shook his head.  “Lucy’s got to choose to get her life together.”  Rick was looking at her in his infuriating tender way, as if everything would be okay between them if they could just share their feelings.

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