“I talked to Sarah, as you asked me last time,” she said. “It made me realize how hard this has been for you.”

Thank God someone does, I thought. I gave her the professional answer, hoping that she wouldn’t take it too literally.

“You must do whatever’s right for your husband. That’s all you should be concerned about.”

“I want to say something about Harry, Doctor. He’s a good man and he went through an awful experience. He lost his bearings and did something terrible, but I can’t let him spend the rest of his life in prison. He doesn’t deserve that.”

Nora took off her gardening gloves and rested them on her knee, smoothing them out with one hand. Then she lowered her head and a tear dripped from the end of her nose, leaving a dark spot where it landed on her glove. Her face had turned pale and her mascara was running. I got up and walked over to her desk to retrieve some tissues from a box for her. She blew her nose, then walked to a window that overlooked the drive, through the trees to the guesthouse.

“Sarah’s worried about Margaret suing the hospital, but I’m sure I can stop her from doing it,” she said. “We’ll settle with her over the damages. We’ve got the money. Our lawyer says we’ll be first in line to be sued anyway.”

“That’s very generous of you, Mrs. Shapiro, but I don’t know how much it will help. I could still be accused of misconduct.”

“Sarah thinks she can protect you,” Nora said, her eyes shining with the residue of tears. “I’ve told her she must, for the hospital’s sake. I don’t want your life ruined the way Harry’s has been.”

It was surreal to hear of this negotiation over my fate, and I wondered briefly about Nora treating my problems as equivalent to Harry’s. But her demeanor distracted me. She was smiling brightly and her hands shook slightly. I worried that she might be on the verge of hysteria, so rapid had been her mood swing.

“Have you eaten anything today?” I asked.

“I haven’t, no. The kitchen’s that way.”

She pointed at the wall and I realized she’d been afraid to go there because she would have to pass the crime scene.

“You should sit down. Is there any food in the house?” I said.

“Anna said there would be,” Nora said, obeying.

I walked along the corridor and glanced around as I got to the living room. It felt eerily quiet, with furniture pushed in corners, covered in sheets, and a sharp smell of chemicals in the air. In the kitchen, the cupboards and fridge were full of food and there was milk in the fridge. Anna had kept the place stocked.

I scrambled eggs on toast for both of us and brought them back on a tray. It felt good to be able to help her. Without Anna there and with Harry in jail, she had no one else. She’d regained some color in her face by the time she finished the food.

“I do appreciate your kindness,” I said eventually. “I’ll have to talk to Mrs. Duncan and see what she has in mind.”

“Of course. I just don’t want any more suffering, that’s all. There’s been too much of that already.”

She walked me out to my car, skirting the house across the lawn, and stood there as I got in. She was on the exact spot where I’d stood behind Anna three weeks earlier, watching her as she gazed out to sea.

15

On Wednesday afternoons, when my ward rounds were done, I had a three-hour block of therapy in my office. My final session was Arthur Logue, a patient who’d come to see me after a spell of panic attacks. I knew his life well-his scratchy relationship with his wife, his various neuroses. It was difficult to interrupt his steady narrative of trivia, and I’d almost stopped trying. He was light relief from patients in acute distress.

Mr. Logue left my door half-open when he left, and while I was up writing a few notes on our session, Sarah Duncan arrived.

“Can I come in?” she said, looking around. “This is nice.”

That was a stretch, but it was better than some other offices along therapy row. I had two windows, which was two more than a couple of the other psychs, and I’d refused to move when building services had hatched a conspiracy to shift me. Duncan walked over to the wall on which I’d hung an old poster for Fellini’s 8?, with Marcello Mastroianni in a hat and thick spectacles, surrounded by Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimee, and Sandra Milo. It was at the outer limit of office acceptability, but I claimed it was a reference to Jung.

“My husband loves Fellini,” she said unexpectedly. “We rented Juliet of the Spiritsthe other night.”

“I haven’t seen that one.”

“Oh, you should. It’s wonderful,” she said, looking over at the books on my shelves as if she had a right to examine my possessions. Then she sat in my patients’ chair, crossing her legs at the ankle and adjusting her skirt. She looked happier than before.

“I’ve spoken to Nora Shapiro and she told me she’s talked with you. I think she could save us from a nasty predicament. I’ve told her how grateful I am to her.”

“I wasn’t sure what it would involve,” I said cautiously.

“Don’t worry about the details. The point is that we wouldn’t face any liability over Mr. Shapiro’s discharge.” Duncan held out her arms and widened her eyes with astonishment, like a preacher describing a miracle. “Wouldn’t that be a relief?”

“Mrs. Shapiro’s being very generous by the sound of it,” I said, trying to mimic her enthusiasm. “But what about me?”

Duncan sighed and looked at me as if I were a child who had sorely tried her patience but whom she was prepared to forgive.

“We may have got off on the wrong foot, but that shouldn’t get in our way. We must stick together if we’re going to get through this. I’ve reviewed the files and there are things that worry me about how you handled Mr. Shapiro’s case. I’ve discussed them with Dr. Whitehead. You made no mention of Mr. Shapiro bringing a gun, and I’d have taken a different view if I’d known that.”

You too?I thought. It was plain enough what Jim and Duncan had talked about when they’d met. They’d assembled their excuse-that I’d been negligent in not telling either of them about the weapon, even though it hadn’t been used for murder. My anger was laced with contempt for them both. Here was I, faithfully hiding the news about Harry’s lover from my lawyer and Pagonis, while they scurried to cover themselves.

“Anyway, the point is that I’m sure you can learn lessons from this case. I wouldn’t want it to bring your promising career to a premature end. Nora will take care of the civil suit and I shall try to prevent any misconduct complaint. Meanwhile, I think it would be best if you said nothing, don’t you?”

She didn’t wait for my answer but rose and walked to the door, where she turned and nodded to me as if I’d already agreed.

After she’d gone, I stood at a window looking at the hospital’s exterior walls, which the architect had tiled in white, shaping the windows in Gothic arches like a cathedral. He had a point, I thought: plenty of East Side matrons treated it as a place of worship. The list of people wanting me to keep quiet was growing-Anna, Jim, and now Duncan. Harry didn’t deserve my silence, though. He was a narcissist who didn’t care about others, not Nora and probably not his mistress. If I’d got him into therapy and delved beneath his hard-nosed ascent on Wall Street, his two marriages, and his affair, I might have found a shy boy with an unfeeling father who hadn’t been able to cope with humiliation. So what?I thought. He’s a murderer.

I thought of Anna’s words about her own shrink: I could have been a terrible person. He wouldn’t have known. Harry was a terrible person, and I didn’t want to be his vassal. If I refused to talk, I’d have Pagonis and Baer on my trail, pushing me to tell them everything. The only way I could get them off my back was by letting Joe cut me a deal.