By the light of the moon

his
forehead.
    'Are you okay, Shepherd?'
    'Shep is scared,' he whispered.
    'Don't be scared.'
    'Shep is scared.'
    'We're safe here, now, for a while,' she assured him. 'Nobody
can hurt you.'
    His lips moved, as though he were speaking, but no sound issued
from him.
    Shepherd was not as big as his brother, but he was bigger than
Jilly, a full-grown man, yet he seemed small beneath the sheets.
Hair tousled, mouth pinched in a grimace of fear, he looked
childlike.
    A pang of sympathy pierced her when she realized that Shepherd
had lived twenty years without any meaningful control over his
life. Worse, his need for routine, the limits he put on what he
would wear, his elaborate rules about food: All these things and
more revealed a desperate need to establish a sense of dominion
wherever possible.
    His silence held. His lips stopped moving. The fear did not fade
from his face, but it settled into softer lines, as if mellowing
from acute fright to chronic dismay.
    Jilly settled back upon her pillow, grateful that she had not
been born in a trap as inescapable as Shep's, but she also worried
that by the time the worm of change finished with her, she might be
more like Shep than not.
    A moment later, Dylan came out of the bathroom. He'd taken off
his shoes, which he put beside the bed that he would share with his
brother.
    'You okay?' he asked Jilly.
    'Yeah. Just... burnt out.'
    'God, I'm sludge.'
    Fully clothed, ready for an emergency, he got into bed, lay
staring at the ceiling, but did not turn out the nightstand
lamp.
    After a silence, he said, 'I'm sorry.'
    Jilly turned her head to look at him. 'Sorry about what?'
    'Maybe from the motel on, I've done all the wrong things.'
    'Such as?'
    'Maybe we should've gone to the police, taken a chance. You were
right when you said we can't run forever. I've got an obligation to
think for Shep, but I've no right to drag you down with us.'
    'Accountable O'Conner,' she said, 'vortex of responsibility. As
broody as Batman. Call DC Comics, quick.'
    'I'm serious.'
    'I know. It's endearing.'
    Still staring at the ceiling, he smiled. 'I said a lot of things
to you tonight that I wish I hadn't said.'
    'You had provocation. I made you nuts. And I said worse things.
Listen... it just makes me crazy to have to depend on anyone.
And... especially on men. So this situation, it pushes all my
buttons.'
    'Why especially men?'
    She turned away from him to gaze at the ceiling. 'Let's say your
dad walks out on you when you're three years old.'
    After a silence, he encouraged her: 'Let's say.'
    'Yeah. Let's say your mother, she's this beauty, this angel,
this hero who's always there for you, and nothing bad should ever
happen to her. But he beats her up so bad before he goes that she
loses one eye and walks with two canes the rest of her life.'
    Though weary and in need of sleep, he had the grace to wait for
her to tell it at her own pace.
    Eventually, she said, 'He leaves you to the miseries of welfare
and the contempt of government social workers. Bad enough. But then
a couple times each year, he'd visit for a day, two days.'
    'Police?'
    'Mom was afraid to call them when he showed up. The bastard said
if she turned him in, when he got bail, then he'd come back and
take her other eye. And one of mine. He would have done it,
too.'
    'Once he'd walked out, why come back at all?'
    'To keep us scared. Keep us down. And he expected a share of her
welfare money. And we always had it for him because we ate a lot of
dinners free at the church kitchen. Most of our clothes came
without charge from the church thrift shop. So Daddy always got his
share.'
    Her father rose in her memory, standing at the apartment door,
smiling that dangerous smile. And his voice: Come to collect the
eye insurance, baby girl. You got the eye-insurance
premium?
    'Enough about that,' she told Dylan. 'This isn't meant to be a
pity party. I just wanted you to understand it isn't you I've got a
problem with. It's just... being dependent on anyone.'
    'You didn't owe me an explanation.'
    'But there it is.' Her father's face persisted in memory, and
she knew that even as tired as she was, she wouldn't sleep until
she had exorcised it. ' Your dad must have been great.'
    He sounded surprised. 'Why do you say that?'
    'The way you are with Shep.'
    'My dad raised venture capital to help high-tech entrepreneurs
start up new companies. He worked eighty-hour weeks. He might've
been a great guy, but I never spent enough time with him to know.
He got