Something Ted James had told me years before came back to me. He'd been trying to help me let go of my anger toward my father, which I was never fully able to do. "Eventually," James had said, "you'll realize there's no one to blame and no one to hate. Your father was a victim, just like you."

I looked at Lilly. "Maybe the reason your grandfather looks confused," I said, "is because he never understood why your relationship turned toxic-the dynamics that drove it in a destructive direction. Maybe he didn't understand it any better than you did."

"In other words," she said, "he didn't mean to screw me up?"

"Maybe not," I said.

She seemed to be grappling with that notion.

"Do you say anything to him when he's looking at you with that confusion in his eyes?" I asked. "After you've cut him?"

"No," she said. "That's when I wake up."

"What would you say to him?" I asked.

She shook her head. "I don't know."

"Think about it," I said.

She smiled, then squinted past me, presumably imagining the situation. After a few moments, she looked back at me. "Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite," she said. She laughed.

I let myself laugh with her, to drain the tension from the moment. Were she a long-term patient of mine, her words and the tone of voice in which she had delivered them-combining innocence, rage, and something vaguely sensual-would have been a perfect launching pad for a longer flight over the terrain of her trauma. That was a very good sign indeed. "You're going to be okay," I said.

"Think so?" she said.

"I know so." I extended my hand. She took it. "Good luck," I said. "I'll be thinking about you."

Billy was scheduled to be released later that day, but the gears of the legal system always grind. He wasn't released that day, or the next. He and I joked about him being set free on Independence Day, but that didn't happen, either. It took ten days for the relevant paperwork to flow between the D.A.'s office and the jail. Finally, on July 10, I went to the Suffolk County House of Corrections and watched him walk through the two sets of sliding steel doors that pretend to separate good from evil. He glanced back just once as he half-jogged to me. "I can't believe I'm out of there," he said. "Thank you."

"If you really want to thank me," I said, "you'll worry with me."

"Worry about what?" he said.

"About yourself. The stealing, hurting animals, setting fires-it can't go on."

"That's past history," he said. "I'm not gonna screw up."

"Past is future, as long as you run from it," I said. "Losing your parents, leaving Russia, living with Darwin-I promise you every shortcut you take to avoid facing those things leads back here. I've seen it happen. Dozens of times. Kids with hearts every bit as good as yours."

He glowed with that last phrase. "Will you help me?" he said.

"I will if you want me to," I said.

"I really do," he said.

Treating a sociopath is much harder than treating someone with depression, or even psychosis. The trouble is that sociopaths don't think they're sick. Everyone else is the problem. If the world would just get off their backs, cough up what they've got coming to them, everything would be fine. "We'll give it a try," I said.

He held out his hand. We shook on it. "So where are we going?" he said.

The way Billy asked that question made it plain he remembered my promise that I'd consider letting him live with me. I remembered, too. It was easy to deliver on it, at least temporarily, because I had been staying with Julia and Garret at Julia's mother's West Tisbury house on Martha's Vineyard. Julia had been released from Mass General just three days before and was still feeling unsteady, physically and emotionally. "We're going to your grandmother's house on Martha's Vineyard," I said. "I've been staying in the guest cottage while things come back together."

"So we get to hang out, like you said," he said.

"Sure looks that way."

"Will Garret be there?" Billy asked.

"He's moved most of his things in," I said.

Billy nodded over his shoulder. "I have better memories of the House of Corrections than Darwin's house," he said. "At least everyone agrees this is a prison. You kind of know what to expect."

Garret testified before the grand jury two days later. Carl Rossetti was there, as was District Attorney Tom Harrigan.

Rossetti told me the scene was heart-rending. Garret had been a mess, trembling and sweating, needing much more reassurance than he had at Boston Police headquarters. Still, by the end of his testimony, he had nailed Darwin Bishop's coffin shut with an eyewitness account that put the plastic sealant in Bishop's hand and the bottle of nortriptyline in his desk. That complemented the fingerprint evidence perfectly. An indictment of Darwin Bishop for murder in the first degree, with extreme atrocity and cruelty (a special add-on in the Massachusetts courts), along with two counts of attempted murder (Tess and Julia) was issued within an hour of Garret stepping down from the witness stand.

"I've been in this business long enough that most things don't get to me, you know?" Rossetti had told me. "But when Garret broke down, crying how he still loved his father but couldn't understand why, I almost got choked up myself."

"Almost," I had said.

"Honestly, Franko, the only time I really lose it is when I lose at the track. I drop more than a grand, I cry like a baby. Anything else, it's no skin off mine, if you know what I mean."

"So you did get choked up," I said.

"Pretty much," he said.

When Garret returned home, I sat down with him. "I talked to Carl Rossetti," I said. "I know how hard it was for you today."

"I didn't think it would be," Garret said. "I thought it would be easier than last time. Maybe it's that we're getting closer to the trial."

"And the trial itself will be even harder," I said. "With everything Darwin has done, it's normal for you to feel a strange sort of devotion to him."

"That's what I don't get," he said. "Why would you worry about what happens to someone who's tortured you?"

The answer to that question brings up another strange human calculus. Most children would rather preserve the fantasy of a loving connection with their fathers and mothers, at all costs, even if it costs them their self-esteem. When you're three or seven years old, it's less frightening to think of yourself as an unlovable, disappointing screwup than to recognize the fact that you're living with a monster. "Questioning your love for Darwin would mean questioning whether he ever loved you" I said. "That's a tough one, at seventeen or forty-seven. Take it from me."

"Was your father… abusive?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "He beat me."

"Shit," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Thanks," I said.

He shook his head, took a deep breath, let it out. "With everything Darwin did to me, I've always assumed he didn't really mean it. But he must have. He couldn't have cared about me. Not in any normal way."

I could hear the guilt in Garret's voice. He was about to put his father away for life, after all. "It's not a question you can figure out in one sitting," I said. "But if you keep coming back to it, you'll get closer and closer to the truth. And you'll be less and less afraid of it. Even when it hurts."

We sat for several seconds, without saying anything else.

Garret broke the silence. "I'm glad you're here-living with us for a while, I mean," he said.

I reached out, squeezed his shoulder. "I am, too," I said.