Shane shook her head, a small smile crossing her lips.

“So are you okay now?”

“No,” Alice said after a moment of weary thought, “but I’m beginning to think that someday I might be.”

“You might want to start with a shower.”

“Do I stink?” asked Alice, giving herself a quick sniff.

“Not that so much as you look like shit and you’re about to have more company.”

Alice stepped back, rolling her eyes.

“Did they take out an ad in the morning paper? She eyed Shane warily. “What, precisely, have they told everyone?”

“Not that much. Just that you’d been holding too many things about Dana and the way she died too close to your heart, blaming yourself for things over which you had no control and that needed your family. We’re all under orders to get our asses here by 1:00.”

“Jeez, that’s pretty much everything,” murmured Alice, as she steadied herself against the counter. “What the fuck were they thinking?”

“That we all love you and you need to reconnect with that,” Shane said, Yoda-like and unaware of it. “What the fuck were you thinking, Al? You could have talked to any of us.”

“Apparently talking to one of you is talking to all of you,” Alice cracked.

“Seriously, Al, why didn’t you tell someone before it came to this?”

"Dane was the only person in the world I ever told my most intimate truths,” Alice answered without missing a beat.

Before Carmen, Shane could never have accepted that answer. She didn’t know what to say and was grateful to be saved when Alice was struck with a wicked thought.

“C’mon, let’s go help them wake up before I shower.”

Three minutes later, as Alice and Shane inched the bedroom curtains open, Bette Porter and Helena Peabody greeted the new day by gazing deeply into the other’s confused eyes, trying to figure out how it was, exactly, that they woke up wrapped in the other’s arms.

Monday afternoon arrived and Alice was pacing in a conference room of the white shoes law firm of Stevens, Tate, et al. like it was an Olympic event. Her movements were lithe and her eyes catlike as she covered every inch of open space.

“I don’t think this is such a good idea,” Tina said, her eyes never leaving Alice. They’d all tried to get her to settle into her chair at the conference table, to no avail.