"Nothing," she said, almost inaudibly.

"I'll never tell anyone," I promised.

She looked into my eyes, seeming to decide whether she could truly trust me. "I have bad thoughts," she said finally. "Terrible thoughts."

"Tell me about them."

She closed her eyes and stayed silent.

"Lilly, you have to let the truth out. You can't tie up your immune system any longer. You need it in order to stay with people you care about."

"I think…" She stopped herself.

"They don't want to lose you," I said. "They don't want to have to say good-bye."

"I think about my grandfather."

"What about him?" I asked. "What are the thoughts, exactly?"

"I think of myself… with him." She closed her eyes and shook her head. "Touching him. Him touching me."

"Were you ever close with your grandfather in that way? Physically?"

"Never." She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. "That's the strangest part." She looked at me. "I'm certain he never did anything like that." Her face was a portrait of confusion. "It feels so awful thinking that way about him."

"And thinking that way is what makes you want to inject yourself," I said.

"I would do it right now, if I could," she said. "It would make me feel so much better."

"To punish yourself," I said.

"Yes. The thoughts would stop."

So there it was, the pathogen attacking Lilly's heart. It had taken on the life of a bacterium, but it had been born in Lilly's psyche. Her guilt-and her infection-stemmed from her sexual feelings for the man who had taken care of her after her father's death. The only question that remained was what had cultivated that desire. Had she been the victim of sexual abuse she later repressed? Or could there be another explanation? "You have to be willing to feel all the pain without using a needle to chase it away," I said. "If you're brave enough to do that, then your stress will start to evaporate. The infection won't have a chance of winning. It won't be able to hide from your immune system."

"I want to try," she said. "Really, I do."

"Good."

"You'll help?" she asked.

"I told you I would stay with you through this," I said. "I meant it."

I made it to Bomboa about twenty minutes before my scheduled meeting with Julia Bishop. The place was unusually busy for lunchtime, but I'm a regular there, and K. C. Hidalgo, one of the owners, offered me my usual table right by the window. I told him I'd rather he find me a quiet table toward the back, and that I'd wait for my guest at the bar.

He looked at me with concern. "The bar? That's a new perch for you."

I'd eaten enough dinners alone at Bomboa for K.C. to hear my whole life story in two-minute installments. He was a slim El Salvadorian man in his early forties, with chiseled features and a smile that would have kept his restaurant full if the food was average. But the food was some of the best in Boston, and K.C. was getting rich. He ran his fingers through his thick black hair. "I thought the bar was off limits. 'Physician, heal thyself,' and all that."

"I'm drinking my usual brew," I said. "Coffee."

"Then my place is your place." He walked me to the bar and caught the attention of the bartender. "Coffee for the doctor," he said.

"You're taking good care of me," I said.

"Somebody ought to do it twenty-four, seven, dude," he said. "Somebody much prettier than me." He slapped me on the back. " 'Cause, let's face it, you don't have a great track record taking care of yourself." He smiled that smile, then headed back to his post near the door.

The bar was about twenty-five feet long, with every variety of alcohol stocked against a mirrored back. I could see my reflection, framed by bottles of gin and scotch and vodka. I didn't like the picture. But that didn't stop me from quietly asking for a Sambuca on the side when the bartender brought me my coffee.

He never came back, disappearing into the kitchen a few minutes, then tidying up the sink a few minutes more. I wondered whether I had whispered my order so softly that he had missed it. I was reluctant to approach him more openly for the booze, so I sat tight.

I was finishing off the last of my coffee when I caught Julia Bishop's reflection in the mirror. My heart started racing like a schoolboy's. She was wearing a whisper-thin, off-the-shoulder black cashmere sweater and hip-hugging tight black pants that flared slightly at the bottoms. Black sandals with three-inch heels made her look taller than I remembered her, like she had stepped out of the pages of Vogue. I glanced around the room and watched heads turning, including K.C.'s.

She walked up to me. "I'm glad you were able to see me," she said.

"Not a problem," I said, already adrift in that azure haze I had experienced the first time I met her. Julia's presence was so absorbing, in fact, that I felt removed in some measure from myself and heard my own words as I spoke them, almost as an echo.

"I don't think I've slept ten hours since Brooke… And now, with Billy missing." She pressed her lips together to keep from breaking down.

The perfume Julia was wearing was more intoxicating than Sambuca. "We'll talk through everything," I said. "They're holding a table for us toward the back. It's quieter."

We moved to the table. Julia ordered a bottle of sparkling water. She said she had no appetite, which was understandable. But taken together with her sleeplessness, it made me worry she might be slipping into another depression. I ordered a few appetizers, to satisfy the waiter.

"I couldn't tell you much when you visited the house," she started, "but there's a lot you need to know about Billy. I think some of it will be critical when he goes to trial. Someone needs to make the judge aware of what he's been through."

"Anything you can tell me would be appreciated," I said.

"I'm sure my husband filled you in on Billy's background in Russia."

Listening to her use the words my husband bothered me. "He did. He told Captain Anderson and me about Billy witnessing the murder of his biological parents, then suffering abuse at the orphanage."

She seemed pained by what she was about to disclose. "What I doubt Darwin would have shared with you is how much trauma Billy has suffered since his arrival in this country."

"He didn't share any of that," I said.

She swallowed hard. " Darwin isn't the man you might think. He's very intelligent. He can be remarkably charming. But he's also very controlling. And he can be cruel."

I decided not to offer up the fact that Billy had shown me the welts on his back. I wanted to hear from Julia firsthand whether she believed Darwin Bishop was physically abusive. "Cruel, in what way?" I said.

"His demands on the boys are extreme," she said. "He expects them to be perfect-in school, athletics, at home. He interprets any emotion other than pride and self-confidence as a sign of weakness." She shook her head. "My son, Garret, is competing in a tennis tournament today, completely against his will," she said. "He pleaded with his father to let him drop out. He's beside himself about the baby, of course. And he's worried about Billy having left the hospital. Win wouldn't hear of him not playing."

"Garret wouldn't defy him?"

"Never," she said. "That's a difference between Garret and Billy. Garret wouldn't risk Darwin 's temper."

"Tell me about his temper."

She dropped her gaze. "I called you because I sensed you were an extraordinary person, Frank. But this still isn't easy to talk about."

"Nothing shocks me anymore," I said.

She looked deep into my eyes-into me. "Why is that?"

"I've seen people at their worst, doing terrible things." Telling her about my pain felt like giving it to her, relieving myself of it.