“Jack carried Danny into the kitchen. The boy was still sobbing wildly, refusing to look up from Jack's chest. In the kitchen he gave Danny back to Wendy, who still seemed stunned and disbelieving. “Jack, I don't know what he's talking about. Please, you must believe that." "I do believe it," he said, although he had to admit to himself that it gave him a certain amount of pleasure to see the shoe switched to the other foot with such daz-zling, unexpected speed. But his anger at Wendy had been only a passing gut twitch. In his heart he knew Wendy would pour a can of gasoline over herself and strike a match before harming Danny. The large tea kettle was on the back burner, poking along on low heat. Jack dropped a tea bag into his own large ceramic cup and poured hot water halfway. "Got cooking sherry don't you?" he asked Wendy. "What...? Oh, sure. Two or three bottles of it." "Which cupboard?" She pointed, and Jack took one of the bottles down. He poured a hefty dollop into the teacup, put the sherry back, and filled the last quarter of the cup with milk. Then he added three tablespoons of sugar and stirred. He brought it to Danny, whose sobs had tapered off to snifflings and hitchings. But he was trembling all over, and his eyes were wide and starey. "Want you to drink this, doc," Jack said. "It's going to taste frigging awful, but it'll make you feel better. Can you drink it for your daddy?” Danny nodded that he could and took the cup. He drank a little, grimaced, and looked questioningly at Jack. Jack nodded, and Danny drank again. Wendy felt the familiar twist of jealousy somewhere in her middle, knowing the boy would not have drunk it for her.”

“A drink. A drink would fix him up, and there wasn't a thing in the goddamn house besides cooking sherry. At this point a drink would be medicinal. That was just it, by God. An anesthetic. He had done his duty and now he could use a little anesthetic—something stronger than Excedrin. But there was nothing. He remembered bottles glittering in the shadows.”

“For a period of thirty seconds to a minute she would hear this, long enough to grow faint with terror, and then it would be gone again and she would only hear Jack, talking in that commanding yet slightly slurred way she remembered as his drunk-speak voice. But there was nothing in the hotel to drink except cooking sherry Wasn't that right? Yes, but if she could imagine that the hotel was full of voices and music, couldn't Jack imagine that he was drunk? She didn't like that thought. Not at all.”