“Oh. Four, please,” Liam said.

Four was jarringly modern, carpeted wall to wall in businesslike gray and lined overhead with acoustical tiles. A disappointment, but also a relief. (You wouldn’t want your neurologist to be too old-fashioned.)

An entire column of doctors’ names marched down the plate-glass door of Suite 401, beneath larger lettering that read ST. PAUL NEUROLOGY ASSOCIATES. Even at this early hour, there were quite a few patients in the waiting room. They sat on molded plastic chairs under the bank of receptionists’ windows-a separate window for each doctor. Dr. Morrow’s receptionist had dyed black hair that made her look less cozy than she had sounded on the phone. The minute Liam gave her his name, she handed him a clipboard with a form to fill out. “I’ll need to make a copy of your insurance card, too, and your driver’s license,” she said. Liam had been sincere when he told Dr. Morrow he intended to pay, but somehow he still felt taken aback by the woman’s crass commercialism.

The other patients were in terrible shape. Good Lord, neurology was a distressing specialty! One man shook so violently that his cane kept falling to the floor. A woman held an oversized child who seemed boneless. Another woman kept wiping her blank-faced husband’s mouth with a tissue. Oh, Liam should not be here. He had no business frittering away the doctor’s time on such a trivial complaint. But even so, he continued printing out his new address in large, distinct block letters.

Louise and Jonah came in and settled across from him, although there were seats free on either side of him. Nobody would have guessed they had anything to do with him. They didn’t look his way, and Louise immediately started searching through the magazines on the table to her left. Eventually she came up with a children’s magazine. “Look!” she told Jonah. “Baby rabbits! You love baby rabbits!” Jonah clutched his teddy bear tightly and followed her pointing finger.

To be honest, Liam thought, the Pennywells were a rather homely family. (Himself included.) Louise’s hair was too short and her face too angular. She had on boxy red pedal pushers, not a flattering style for anyone, and flip-flops that showed her long white bony feet. Jonah was breathing through his mouth and he wore a slack, stunned expression as he gazed down at the page.

In a low, clear voice just inches from Liam’s right ear, a woman said, “Verity.”

Liam started and turned.

This was someone young and plump and ringleted, wearing a voluminous Indian-print skirt and cloddish, handmade-looking sandals. One hand was linked through the arm of an old man in a suit.

Liam said, “What?”

But she had already passed him by. She and the old man-her father?-were approaching Dr. Morrow’s receptionist. When they reached the window, she dropped the old man’s arm and stepped back. The old man told the receptionist, “Why, Verity! Good morning! Don’t you look gorgeous today!”

The receptionist said, “Thank you, Mr. Cope,” and she lifted a hand to her dyed hair. “Just have a seat and Dr. Morrow will see you shortly.”

When the couple turned from the window, Liam lowered his eyes so they wouldn’t know he’d been watching them. They took the two chairs next to Jonah. Louise was saying, “Just then, a big, big lion came out from behind the tree,” and neither she nor Jonah glanced in their direction.

“Mr. Pennywell?” a nurse called from the far end of the room.

Liam rose and went over to where she stood waiting. “How are you today?” she asked him.

“Fine, thanks,” he said. “Or, I mean, sort of fine…” but she had already turned to lead him down a corridor.

At the end of the corridor, in a tiny office, Dr. Morrow sat writing something behind an enormous desk. Liam would not have known him. The man had aged past recognition-his red hair a tarnished pink now, and his many freckles faded into wide beige splotches across his face. He wore a sports jacket rather than a white coat, and the only sign of his profession was the plaster model of a brain on the bookcase behind him. “Ah,” he said, setting down his pen. “Mr. Pennywell,” and he half rose in a creaky, stiff way to shake hands.

“It’s good of you to make time for me,” Liam said.

“No trouble at all; no trouble at all. Yes, you do have a bit of a nick there.”

Liam turned the wounded side of his head toward the doctor, in case he might like to examine it more closely, but Dr. Morrow sank back onto his chair and laced his fingers across his shirtfront. “Let’s see: how long has it been?” he asked Liam. “Nineteen eighty, eighty-one…”

“Eighty-two,” Liam told him. He was able to say for sure because it had been his last year at the Fremont School.

“Twenty-some years! Twenty-four; good God. And you’re still teaching?”

“Oh, yes,” Liam said. (No sense getting sidetracked by any long involved explanations.)

“Still hoping to stuff a little history into those rascally Fremont boys,” Dr. Morrow said, chuckling in his new elderly way.

“Well, ah, actually it’s St. Dyfrig boys now,” Liam admitted.

“Oh?” Dr. Morrow frowned.

“And, um, fifth grade.”

“Fifth grade!”

“But anyway,” Liam said hastily. “Tell me how Buddy’s doing.”

“Well, these days we call him Haddon, of course.”

“Why, would you do that?”

“Well, Haddon is his name.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, Haddon’s all grown up now-turned forty back in April, would you believe it? Has his own trucking company. Statewide. Very successful, considering.”

“I’m delighted to hear it.”

“You were awfully kind to him,” Dr. Morrow said, and all at once his voice sounded different-not so bluff and pompous. “I haven’t forgotten the patience you showed.”

“Oh, well,” Liam said, shifting in his seat.

“Yours was about the only course he managed to get fired up about, as I recall. Seneca! Wasn’t that who he wrote his paper on? Yes, we used to hear quite a lot about Seneca at the dinner table. Seneca’s suicide! Big news, as if it happened yesterday.”

Liam gave a little laugh that came out sounding oddly like Dr. Morrow’s chuckle.

“I’ll have to tell him I saw you,” Dr. Morrow said. “Haddon will get a kick out of that. But enough chitchat; let’s hear about your injury.”

“Oh yes,” Liam said, as if that had not been uppermost on his mind the whole time. “Well, evidently I was struck on the head and knocked unconscious.”

“Is that so! By someone you knew?”

“Why no,” Liam said.

“Lord, Lord, what’s the world coming to?” Dr. Morrow asked. “Have they caught the assailant?”

“Uh, not that I’ve heard,” Liam said.

The word assailant momentarily derailed him. It was one of those words you saw only in print, like apparel. Or slain. Or… what was that other word he’d noticed?

“And yet they claim they’re working to make this city safer,” Dr. Morrow said.

“Actually, I live in the county,” Liam told him.

“Oh, really.”

Exclaimed. That was another word you saw only in print.

“But the point is,” Liam said, “I was hit and knocked unconscious, and I don’t remember anything more till I woke up in a hospital bed.”

“They did a CT scan, I assume.”

“That’s what I’m told.”

“And they found no sign of intracranial bleeding.”

“No, but…”

Barbara used to say that he didn’t phrase things strongly enough when he visited his doctor. She’d ask, “Did you tell him about your back? Did you tell him you were in agony?” and Liam would say, “Well, I mentioned I was experiencing some discomfort.” Barbara would roll her eyes. So now he leaned forward in his chair. “I have a very, very serious concern,” he said. “I really need to talk about this. I feel I’m going crazy.”

“Crazy! You told me memory loss.”

“I’m going crazy over my memory loss.”

“What is it you don’t remember, exactly?”