It’s their nightly ritual. Sometime before eight o’clock, Jim Larson lights a candle at the bedside of his 3-year-old daughter, Jessica, and then reaches for Horton Hears a Who, The Cat in the Hat, or Green Eggs and Ham.

Together, they lie side by side on her tiny bed as he reads the sweet nonense of Dr. Seuss:

Sooner or later, after she’s said her prayers and blown out the candle, the little girl with blond hair and giant blue eyes drifts off to sleep. Then, Larson kisses Jessica good night and walks into his own room and his own dreams.

And sometimes, his nightmares. In 1990, a serial killer named Danny Rolling stabbed and killed Larson’s sister, Sonja, in Gainesville, FL. Seven years later, just as Larson had started to put that tragedy behind him, his wife, Carla, was abducted from an Orlando grocery-store parking lot and strangled to death. Two promising lives cut short by random acts of evil.

Today, as Larson struggles to raise his daughter, two men sit on Florida’s death row, convicted of murdering women who meant the world to him.

Larson, 39, is left with memories and bottomless questions. “They did nothing to deserve this,” he says of his sister and wife. “We’re good people. Sonja was good. Carla grew up going to church.”

Now and then, people will spot Larson working at a Home Depot in Orlando and ask if he is the same man they saw on television or in the newspaper. It is a celebrity he would have given anything to avoid. He does not like being seen as a victim. And yet he admits that some days, “Pain is all there is.”

Still, to let himself be consumed by the horror is unthinkable. “I have to keep going,” he says. “I have Jessica.”

The first monster, Larson would say, looked like he could have been one of his fishing buddies, a guy you would open your front door to. But Danny Rolling, 36, the son of a retired police officer from Shreveport, LA, was just wrong inside, according to police and prosecutors. His murder spree (which Rolling claimed was guided by demons) began in August 1990, after he shot his own father, nearly killing him, during an argument. Sometime after that, he boarded a Greyhound bus heading to Gainesville, a college town of strip malls, leafy neighborhoods, and apartments filled with young women.

According to police, on Thursday, August 23, Rolling was buying a tent in Wal-Mart when apparently he spotted Sonja, a pretty 18-year-old, shopping with her roommate, Christina Powell (both were freshmen at the University of Florida). Later that night, Rolling walked through their front door and killed them. It was the women’s first night in their apartment.

Over the next three days, Rolling brutally murdered three more students. Police spent months building a case against another suspect. In the meantime, Rolling was arrested for a string of robberies and bragged to his cell mates about stabbing the students. Nearly a year later, Jim Larson eyed his sister’s killer in a Gainesville courtroom.

“He was a guy who looked like a banker when you dressed him up in a suit,” says Larson. “You kind of expect to see him looking like the maniac that he is. But you can’t tell just by looking at these people what they’re capable of, what evil is inside of them.”

Rolling was a part of Larson’s daily life for years, and, through him, a part of his wife’s. The couple had met while Carla was still in high school in Pompano Beach: they got engaged the year before she graduated from the University of Florida in Gainesville with degrees in architecture and building construction. Sonja would have been a bridesmaid at their wedding.

The Larsons were still newlyweds when Rolling went to trial in 1994. As the lurid details of the murders came to light–Rolling was so callous, he stopped to eat a banana in Sonja’s kitchen after stabbing her–Larson sat in a Florida courtroom, lost in anger and agony. One night, overcome by the horror of the crime, he curled up in a ball in his hotel room.

“I actually kind of lost it. I was crying, and I said, `This is where I want to stay,’” Larson remembers. “Carla was right there to help me.”

Dan Rolling – the murderer in question.

His wife dropped to the floor, cradled him in her arms, and tried to convince him that Rolling, who eventually received the death penalty, was just an aberration; that the world was still a place of love and beauty. Together, she told him, they would get through this.

Slowly, with the help of counseling, Larson began to recover. He and Carla went camping near Denver, Jessica was conceived on that trip. Nine months later, Larson says, pure joy returned to his life: “After Jessica’s birth, it was like I had even more love for Carla. It was just unbelievable.”

During Carla’s pregnancy, her employer gave her a choice of working on two projects: one in Orlando, the other in Miami. The Larsons, whose lives were dictated by Carla’s career, settled on Orlando because they thought it would be a safer place to live.

They bought a tiny mint-colored bungalow on a dead-end street in College Park, one of the city’s quietest neighborhoods, within walking distance of Jessica’s day-care center. They installed a security system in the house, and bought a Ford Explorer with air bags so Carla would be safe driving back and forth to work on Interstate 4. Larson got a job as a salesman at Home Depot.

They juggled work with diaper changes and midnight feedings, rejoiced in their daughter, and tried not to think about Rolling. Then, on June 10, 1997, Larson got a call at work Carla was missing.

A worried colleague told Larson that Carla, who was helping to build the Coronado Springs Resort at Walt Disney World, had gone out at lunchtime to buy some fruit and had never returned.

Larson knew that his wife was not the type to take the afternoon off without telling anyone. He also knew–with the certainty of a man who’d looked a murderer in the eye–that something was terribly wrong. Larson rushed to pick up Jessica at day care, then went home and called the police. For the next several hours, he sat next to the phone, hoping to hear that someone had only kidnapped Carla and that she would be able to come home.

But the call never came. The police and news media did.

As he waited, hoping the media coverage might help to locate his wife, Larson felt numb. “It was like I was so angry, I wasn’t angry,” he says. Some even suspected him of killing Carla. They were puzzled by his calmness and apparent lack of emotion. A local radio talkshow host accused him outright of murdering his wife–and stopped only when one of Larson’s friends, an attorney, called the station and threatened to sue.

“My neighbors were coming up to tell me what they were saying, but really that was the least of my problems,” Larson says now. The police had, in fact, given Larson a polygraph test soon after his wife’s disappearance, but quickly ruled him out as a suspect because he had been seen at work at the time Carla disappeared.

Larson was not surprised, two days later, when his wife’s body, stripped of her clothes and jewelry’, was found at the end of a remote path, half covered by leaves in a shallow grave.

Eventually, the numbness gave way to crushing sadness. “I miss everything about her,” Larson says of the woman he considered his soul mate. “She had this wax, about her, this little smile. Her thriftiness. She could go into the kitchen and make dinner out of nothing. There were so many things. I would have loved to see her grow old.”

Like Rolling, John Huggins was a career criminal with a history of violence. Yet few could have predicted that he was capable of cold-blooded killing. Several years before murdering Carla Larson, Huggins had renounced his life of crime and become religious, volunteering to go on at least five missionary trips to Haiti, where he built churches and schools. One minister called him a “gentle giant.”

In June 1997, Huggins took his estranged wife, Angel, and their children on vacation to Orlando, checking in at a motel across from the grocery store where Carla went to shop for fruit.

On June 10, in broad daylight, Huggins kidnapped Carla, stole her Ford Explorer–with Jessica’s car seat in the back–drove to a remote patch of woods, and killed her.

Angel Huggins eventually led police to her husband after telling them that he had disappeared the morning Carla vanished and had come back to the motel sometime later, sweaty and agitated. Police investigators found Carla’s jewelry, including her pear-shaped diamond engagement ring, in the home of Huggins’s mother-in-law.

Why Huggins murdered a young mother while on his family vacation confounded everyone involved–including police and prosecutors. “In my eighteen years as a prosecutor, I have never seen anything like it,” says Assistant State Attorney Jeff Ashton, who, with another attorney, secured Huggins’s conviction.

Two years later, what troubles Jim Larson the most is thinking about Carla’s last moments. “She sat right beside me during Rolling’s trial, and she knew how bad it could get. There was nothing worse than what happened in Gainesville. Even if it just crossed her mind for a second, that was too much.”

Huggins was sent to death row in February 1998, though Larson expects to endure years of appeals in the ease. “I kept saying that once the trial was over I’d do this or that,” Larson reflects. “That time is here, but it is hard to let go. It means, in some ways, saying goodbye to Carla again.”

Nonetheless, Larson says he is moving on with his life–which means concentrating on his future with his fiancee, Brenda Benson. The couple met two years ago when Benson, a bookkeeper, came to see Larson at work to offer a sympathetic ear. Her husband, Scott, an insurance agent, had died just a year earlier, when an oak tree fell on the truck he was driving.

Benson and Larson met in a park one day and talked for hours, sharing their stories and their feelings of hopelessness. Within a few months, they became inseparable-drawn together, they say, by an understanding of each other’s pain and an ability to accept each other’s enduring love for a lost spouse.

“We know what it is like when one of us is having a bad day or when we hear a song on the radio that reminds us of Scott or Carla,” Benson says, tears welling in her eyes. “It’s okay.”

Most days, Benson goes to Larson’s house straight from work. They walk hand in hand to pick up Jessica from day care and return home to eat dinner together. Although both received counseling after the death of their spouses, they have stopped now that life has fallen into a busy., more normal routine. Recently, they began going to a Presbyterian church so that Jessica can start learning about religion. For his part. Larson says that since Carla’s death, he has difficulty reconciling his beliefs with what happened.

Last spring, the couple held a garage sale and combined households. At first, it was hard, Larson says, to change the home he’d shared with Carla, to take down photos of her to make Benson feel more at home. But now he finds himself looking forward to completing his and Benson’s first project together–remodeling their kitchen. “It’s going to be beautiful,” he declares.

Most family members have been supportive of the relationship, including Carla’s parents, who visit their granddaughter often. Larson’s stepmother, Ada Larson-Vlodek, said she had reservations about the union in the beginning, but now sees it as a blessing. “I know God sent Brenda to take care of him,” Larson-Vlodek says. “She’s an angel.”

Watching the party of three gathered at a local restaurant, it seems clear that Benson, whom Jessica calls Mommy, is warming to her new role. “Come on, Jess,” Benson says, coaxing the toddler to eat a chopped hot dog. When that fails, she gets the waitress to bring crackers. Adding cheese from Jim’s hamburger, she makes a new, impromptu meal for the 3-year-old.

“I’ve learned a lot,” says Benson, 35, about taking care of Jessica. “She is something else. She’s a very special girl.” For now, Larson and Benson say, their hands are full with Jessica; but they don’t rule out the possibility of having children together someday. After they eat, Jessica and Benson hold hands as they walk down to a nearby dock to hunt for turtles. Larson looks on and smiles.

If there’s a bright side to all the sadness, he says, it’s that Jessica was too young to grieve over the loss of her mother. To her, Benson, who has long blond hair like Carla’s, is the same person who took her home from the hospital, breast-fed her, and quieted her latenight cries.

“Jessica never missed a beat,” Larson says. “Through her eyes, everything is the same as it always was.” Still, it is Jessica’s father-and not the kind woman she knows as her mother-who is now responsible for the smallest details of her daily care. He potty-trained her, stays home when she’s sick, and takes her to the doctor. And he reads her to sleep.

One day, Larson says, he will tell his daughter the story of how her aunt and mother died and that Benson isn’t her real mommy. One day.

Although it has often been said that you do not miss something until it is gone, I did not fully understand the truth behind the statement until I lost the use of my right hand for a month. Carpal tunnel syndrome is something of an occupational hazard among writers. When I noticed numbness and weakness in my hand, I began to worry. When holding a pen became excruciating, I panicked.

“This will keep your fingers from moving,” the doctor said as she fitted a strapped contraption onto my right hand. “Don’t use this hand for three weeks,” she added, pressing the last strap in place. “Then, we will see.”

“May I take it off to sleep?” I asked; visions of insomnia loomed before me.

“Only for bathing,” she answered.

“But I’m a writer,” I moaned.

“Just use the other hand,” she said crisply.

It wasn’t until December that evening that the full enormity of this dilemma hit me. Bob and I had been discussing the impending arrival of our second grandchild when I suddenly remembered my promise to help after the baby came.

“What if my hand isn’t better?” I fretted. “What if I still have to wear this?” I dropped my brace onto the table with a loud clunk.

“You can be plenty of help with one hand,” Bob said encouragingly.

True. I could probably manage some simple meals. I could push the vacuum and mop. I could even drive. But I’d hoped to take full care of our first grandchild, Carter, so that Jill could rest and attend to the needs of the new baby.

Perhaps Carter would have mastered the art of dressing herself by the time I arrived. She had been working on buttoning during our last visit, something I certainly couldn’t help her with now.

“But how will I do Carter’s braids?” I wondered out loud to Bob.

“Don’t worry,” he assured me. “She will think having a robotic grandmother is cool.” I threatened to bop him with my brace.

“And how will I play finger games?” I groaned.

Bob looked up, quizzically.

“You know,” I said, “‘Here Sits the Lord Mayor’ and ‘Two Little Men’? And who ever sang ‘I’m a Little Teapot’ with an aluminum and Velcro spout?”

Bob nodded soberly.

One of the delights of being a grandmother, I’ve discovered, has been playing again all the little games I played with my own children. Like bubbles rising slowly to the surface of my memory, songs and riddles, finger games and crafts burst into consciousness. Just like riding a bicycle, one never forgets how to balance a child on one’s knee and, hobbling her gently, sing, “This is the way the lady rides, trot, trot, trot.” The art of making a fort from sofa pillows and blankets is not easily forgotten.

I hadn’t sung “Itsy Bitsy Spider” for years, but the words came right back. With my immobilized hand, however, I would only be able to make half a spider to crawl up the water spout. Nor could I fold my hands together to make the steepled church with its wiggly-finger congregation that always sends Carter into fits of giggles. And forget about making silly pictures.

“Draw me a horsie, Gammy,” Carter orders with the imperious tone that is born of knowing that, for now at least, her word is my command. I draw a horse and, at the last moment, give it an elephant’s trunk.

“No, that’s not right,” she squeals.

“Oh?” I say in mock surprise. “Is this better?” I ask, drawing duck feet on the horse.

“No!” She giggles.

“How about now?” I ask, putting horns on the horse’s head.

Carter hugs me around the neck and says, “Silly Gammy.”

But I cannot even make a straight line with my left hand, so silly pictures are out of the question. Finger painting might work, though.

I always like to bring Carter a surprise each time we visit. Often it is a book that we can read together at bedtime. Sometimes it is a game. Last time we finger-painted.

As I showed Carter the finger-paint designs you can make with your hands, I could almost hear Mrs. Miller, my second grade art teacher, saying, “Now children, if you lay the side of your hand on the paper and wiggle your little finger back and forth it will make a fish.”

I showed Carter that one, then we made snaky vertical movements for underwater plants. Fingers and thumbs made five-petaled sea flowers and our pinkie fingers created bubbles rising from the fishes’ mouths.

For three weeks I wrote stories by computer, picking out about 10 words a minute with the fingers of my left hand. But my right hand still had no strength.

“Sometimes these things take more time than we expect,” the doctor said. “Come back and see me next week.”

But the baby was due soon.

“No signs of imminent arrival,” Drew said when we called that evening. “Although tomorrow would be fine with Jill.”

“Tell that baby to wait a bit longer,” I sighed.

“Take vitamin B complex,” suggested my friend Shirley, who had had carpal tunnel syndrome three years ago.

I faithfully popped two maroon pills morning and evening, but the ache continued. At my next visit, the doctor mentioned surgery. Seeing my face pale, she hurriedly assured me that would be a last resort.

As I slumped my way out through the doctor’s waiting room, I passed two people in wheelchairs and a woman who was almost completely immobilized by an upper-body cast. I suddenly felt ashamed of my self-pity, realizing that my handicap was minor and, hopefully, temporary.

That night the phone rang at 3:00 A.M. “It’s a girl!” Drew announced happily. “Mason Hannah is her name and she’s beautiful.”

“Of course she is,” I said, rolling over and nudging Bob awake. We listened sleepily to all the details.

I made my plane reservation the next morning, doubled my vitamin B dosage, and prayed for recovery. We got daily updates on the baby’s progress: nursing well, gaining weight, sleeping soundly, doing wonderfully. I wished the same could be said of my hand. When Drew corralled Carter long enough to get her to speak on the phone, she shouted, “I’m a big thither, Gammy.”

I told her that was a wonderful thing to be and promised to see her very shortly.

Perhaps my hand just needed a deadline. Four days before my flight, I noticed that it no longer ached; I could pick up light objects. The doctor put me through a few exercises. “I think you may have recovered.”

I sighed. “But don’t rush things,” she cautioned quickly. “I want you to wear the brace at night and do no heavy work with that hand.”

“Is finger painting okay?” I asked.

She looked puzzled, and nodded.

Carter greeted me at the door with a big hug. “I’m almost free,” she declared, holding up three fingers. Her birthday was in two weeks.

“Well, I’m totally free,” I said, smiling and slowly rotating my finally unbound hand.

“Silly Gammy,” she said. “You’re not free; you’re big!”

My hand worked just fine. It poured tea for tea parties and diapered Mason; it played dolls and made dinners; it swept the floor – gently. As I quietly rocked Mason, while Jill read Carter a story about King Midas, I realized that all the money in the world cannot buy wholeness or guarantee a sound mind and body. And without them, nothing else matters.

Did you drink your eight 8-ounce glasses of water today? Sure, it’s a lot to swallow, but you need those 64 ounces of [H.sub.2]O to fight fatigue and boost your energy, says Dr. Clark. Consider this: Even mild dehydration–losing as little as 1/2 cup of body water–affects your physical and mental performance. That’s because your body uses water in every metabolic reaction, especially in breaking down the energy nutrients. It allows carbohydrates, fats, and proteins to be metabolized in the cells, where they create energy and take care of other body functions.

Sleeping better is within your grasp!

“If you notice that certain days you get fatigued and get headaches, ask yourself, `Am I drinking the right amount of water? Or am I drinking too much of the wrong stuff, such as caffeinated products?’” says Dr. Clark. (Beverages with caffeine don’t hydrate your body as effectively as those without caffeine.) If you’re not drinking enough you could develop low-grade but chronic fatigue.

Dr. Clark’s recommendation: Drink 8 to 10 glasses (8 ounces each) of water a day; 4 to 6 glasses more when you exercise.

Put One Foot in Front of the Other

The day is long, your lids are heavy, and the last thing you want to do is exercise. But if you want more energy, you’d better get moving.

Actually, exercise doesn’t produce energy; it uses it, explains Wayne L. Westcott, PhD, author of Strength Training Past 50 (Human Kinetics, 1998) and fitness research director at the South Shore YMCA in Quincy, MA. So why do you feel more alert and energetic after a brisk 30-minute walk around the neighborhood? It’s all in your head–literally.

Physical activity stimulates the release of hormones that affect your brain and make you feel energized almost instantly. An added bonus: Exercising today can help you feel energized tomorrow because it fatigues your muscles and promotes sound sleep, so you’ll awake energized and refreshed. Keep up this exercise habit, and over time you’ll make your body more energy efficient. Result: “You’ll be able to maximize the energy you do have every day,” says Dr. Westcott.

If you’re tired of the same-old, same-old, put a new spin on your exercise routine. Don’t just walk: Form a book-discussion group with your literary friends and discuss the classics–or the latest John Grisham page-turner–as you stroll.

Or try something new, such as tai chi. This ancient Chinese martial art has been gaining followers as a gentle form of exercise that improves balance, builds strength, and encourages relaxation and meditation. An added benefit is that tai chi, or any other exercise that requires intense concentration on body movements, distracts you from the routine of stress or work. “That distraction alone will increase your mental energy,” says Ralph LaForge, managing director of the lipid clinic preceptorship program at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC.

Many fitness centers, hospitals, and YMCAs offer tai chi classes. If you can’t locate a class in your area, try an instructional video or book, such as Complete Tai-Chi: The Definitive Guide to Physical & Emotional Self-Improvement, by Alfred Huang (Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1993), or enroll in a “virtual class”.

Stop and Smell the Rosemary

To surround yourself with an invigorating aroma, place a few drops of an energizing essential oil on a compress or hankie, or use a special aromatherapy diffuser. Essential oils to try: rosemary, basil, pine oil, spruce, eucalyptus, or pink grapefruit.

For an energizing massage, dilute an essential oil in an unscented body lotion or a nonaromatic vegetable oil such as grapeseed, avocado, or sweet almond oil. Use about 9 drops of essential oil to 1 ounce of lotion or vegetable oil. Energizing essential oils that are milder and more appropriate for use on your skin include lime, sweet orange, peppermint, and spearmint. For an added twist, try combining a citrus with a mint. Note: Anyone with sensitive skin should try the prepared massage lotion on a small area first.