Lightning

fact that you can't really be on guard the rest of your life, every minute."
    "I can, though, if I have to."
    "Oh, yeah? What about right now? Your gun's disassembled. What if some barbarian thug with tattoos on his tongue started kicking down the kitchen door?"
    The kitchen chairs were on rubber casters, so when Laura suddenly shoved away from the table, she rolled swiftly to the counter beside the refrigerator. She pulled open a drawer and brought out another .38 Chiefs Special. Thelma said, "What—am I sitting in the middle of an arsenal?" Laura put the second revolver back in the drawer. "Come on. I'll give you a tour."
    Thelma followed her to the pantry. Hung on the back of the pantry door was an Uzi semiautomatic carbine.
    "That's a machine gun. Is it legal to have one?"
    "With federal approval, you can buy them at gunshops, though you can only get a semiautomatic; it's illegal to have them modified for full automatic fire."
    Thelma studied her, then sighed. "Has this one been modified?"
    "Yes. It's fully automatic. But I bought it that way from an illegal dealer, not a gunshop."
    "This is too spooky, Shane. Really."
    She led Thelma into the dining room and showed her the revolver that was clipped to the bottom of the sideboard. In the living room a fourth revolver was clipped under an end table next to one of the sofas. A second modified Uzi was hung on the back of the foyer door at the front of the house. Revolvers were also hidden in the desk drawer in the den, in her office upstairs, in the master bathroom, and in the nightstand in her bedroom. Finally, she kept a third Uzi in the master bedroom.
    Staring at the Uzi that Laura pulled from under the bed, Thelma said, "Spookier and spookier. If I didn't know you better, Shane, I'd think you'd gone mad, a raving paranoid gun nut. But knowing you, if you're really
this
scared, you've got to have some reason. But what about Chris around all these guns?"
    "He knows not to touch them, and I know he can be trusted. Most Swiss families have members in the militia—nearly every male citizen there is prepared to defend his country, did you know that?—with guns in almost every house, but they have the lowest rate of accidental shootings in the world. Because guns are a way of life. Children are taught to respect them from an early age. Chris'll be okay."
    As Laura put the Uzi under the bed again, Thelma said, "How on earth do you find an illegal gun dealer?"
    "I'm rich, remember?"
    "And money can buy anything? Okay, maybe that's true. But, come on, how does a gal like you find an arms dealer? They don't advertise on Laundromat bulletin boards, I presume."
    "I've researched the backgrounds to several complicated novels, Thelma. I've learned how to find anyone or anything I need."
    Thelma was silent as they returned to the kitchen. From the family room came the heroic music that accompanied Indiana Jones on all of his exploits. While Laura sat at the table and continued cleaning the revolver, Thelma poured fresh coffee for both of them.
    "Straight talk now, kiddo. If there's really some threat out there that justifies all this armament, then it's bigger than you can handle yourself. Why not bodyguards?"
    "I don't trust anyone. Anyone but you and Chris, that is. And Danny's father, except he's in Florida."
    "But you can't go on like this, alone, afraid…"
    Working a spiral brush into the barrel of the revolver, Laura said, "I'm afraid, yeah, but I feel good about being prepared. All my life I've stood by while people I love have been taken from me. I've done nothing about it but endure. Well, to hell with that. From now on, I fight. If anyone wants to take Chris from me, they're going to have to go
through
me to get him, they'll have to fight a war."
    "Laura, I know what you're going through. But listen, let me play psychoanalyst here and tell you that you're reacting less to any real threat than you are overreacting to a sense of helplessness in the face of fate. You can't thwart Providence, kid. You can't play poker with God and expect to win because you've got a .38 in your purse. I mean, you lost Danny to violence, yeah, and maybe you could say that Nina Dockweiler would have lived if someone had put a bullet in the Eel when he first deserved it, but those are the only cases where lives of people you loved might've been saved with guns. Your mother died in childbirth. Your father died of a heart attack. We lost Ruthie to fire. Learning to defend yourself with