The cancer that was eating away at her. The cancer Much talked about being so unexpected, so sudden. The way Alan always felt like Much was keeping something about it secret and assumed it was personal.
But maybe it was that he knew it was a curse, and a curse that had come from Apollo. A curse from the god his girlfriend loved more than anything else. A curse that Alan would have had to tell her about if he'd known.
Alan's mind was racing, and suddenly he was thinking about all the stories he'd read about Apollo and mortal women, thinking about all the veiled (and not veiled) comments others had made about Olympians forcing themselves on people...
"How would she have been close enough to him to stab him with a knife?" Alan asked carefully, already picturing one way and not liking it. "Melpomene," he said carefully, "could- could Apollo have been doing something to Marcie to make her do this?"