“Back here,” she called, gathering Theresa to her as the girl’s song murmured to a whisper, whispered into silence.

Janet stood rigid, as if the blow might yet come, but Brian rose in possession of the tire iron.

Braided leather gun belts creaking, hands on the grips of their holstered pistols, two policemen entered the kitchen, solid men and alert. One told Brian to put down the tire iron, and Brian placed it on the table.

Carl Brockman clambered to his feet, left hand bleeding from a shard of embedded bottle glass. Once burning bright with anger, his tear-streaked face had paled to ashes, and his mouth had gone soft with self-pity.

“Help me, Jan,” he pleaded, reaching out to her with his bloody hand. “What am I gonna do now? Baby, help me.”

She took a step toward him, but halted. She glanced at Amy, then at Theresa.

With her thumb, the child had corked her song inside, and she had closed her eyes. Throughout these events, her face had remained expressionless, as though she might be deaf to all the threats of violence and to the crash of iron on oak.

The only indication that the girl had any connection to reality was the fierceness of her grip on Amy’s hand.

“He’s my husband,” Janet told the police. “He hit me.” She put a hand to her mouth, but then lowered it. “My husband hit me.”

“Oh, Jan, please don’t do this.”

“He hit our little boy. Bloodied his nose. Our Jimmy.”

One of the officers took the tire iron off the table, propped it in a corner beyond easy reach, and instructed Carl to sit in a dinette chair.

Now came questions and inadequate answers and gradually a new kind of awfulness: the recognition of lost promise and the bitter cost of vows not kept.

After Amy had told her story to the police, and while the others told theirs, she led Theresa out of the kitchen, along the hallway, seeking the boy. He might have been anywhere in the house, but she was drawn to the open front door.

The porch smelled of the night-blooming jasmine that braided through the white laths of a trellis. She had not detected the scent earlier.

The breeze had died. In the stillness, the eucalyptus trees stood as grim as mourners.

Past the dark patrol car at the curb, in the middle of the moon-washed street, boy and dog seemed to be at play.

The tailgate of the Expedition was open. The boy must have let Nickie out of the SUV.

On second look, Amy realized that Jimmy was not playing a game with the retriever, that instead he was trying to run away. The dog blocked him, thwarted him, strove to herd him back to the house.

The boy fell to the pavement and stayed where he dropped, on his side. He drew his knees up in the fetal position.

The dog lay next to him, as though keeping a watch over him.

Settling Theresa on a porch step, Amy said, “Don’t move, honey. All right? Don’t move.”

The girl did not reply and perhaps was not capable of replying.

Through a night as quiet as an abandoned church, breathing eucalyptic incense, Amy hurried into the street.

Nickie watched her as she approached. Under the moon, the golden looked silver, and all the light of that high lamp seemed to be given to her, leaving everything else in the night to be brightened only by her reflection.

Kneeling beside Jimmy, Amy heard him weeping. She put a hand on his shoulder, and he did not flinch from her touch.

She and the dog regarded each other across the grieving boy.

The retriever’s face was noble, with at this moment none of the comic expression of which the breed was so capable. Noble and solemn.

All the houses but one remained dark, and the silence of the stars filled the street, disturbed only by the boy’s softly expressed anguish, which grew quiet as Amy smoothed his hair.

“Nickie,” she whispered.

The dog did not raise its ears or cock its head, or in any way respond, but it stared at her, and stared.

After a while, Amy encouraged the boy to sit up. “Put your arms around my neck, sweetheart.”

Jimmy was small, and she scooped him off the pavement, carrying him in the cradle of her arms. “Never again, sweetheart. That’s all over.”

The dog led the way to the Expedition, ran the last few steps, and sprang through the open tailgate.

While Amy deposited the boy in the backseat, Nickie watched from the cargo space.

“Never again,” Amy said, and kissed the boy on the forehead. “I promise you, honey.”

The promise surprised and daunted her. This boy was not hers, and the arcs of their lives likely would have only this intersection and a short parallel course. She could not do for a stranger’s child what she could do for dogs, and sometimes she could not even save the dogs.

Yet she heard herself repeat, “I promise.”

She closed the door and stood for a moment at the back of the SUV, shivering in the mild September night, watching Theresa on the front-porch steps.

The moon painted faux ice on the concrete driveway and faux frost on the eucalyptus leaves.

Amy remembered a winter night with blood upon the snow and a turbulence of sea gulls thrashing into flight from the eaves of the high catwalk, white wings briefly dazzling as they oared skyward through the sweeping beam of the lighthouse, like an honor guard of angels escorting home a sinless soul.

Chapter 3

Brian McCarthy and Associates occupied offices on the ground floor of a modest two-story building in Newport Beach. He lived on the upper floor.

Amy braked to a stop in the small parking lot beside the place. Leaving Janet, the two children, and the dog, Nickie, in the SUV, she accompanied Brian to the exterior stairs that led to his apartment.

A lamp glowed at the top of the long flight, but here at the bottom, the darkness was unrelieved.

She said, “You smell like tequila.”

“I think I’ve still got a slice of lime in my shoe.”

“Climbing the table to jump him-that was reckless.”

“Just trying to impress my date.”

“It worked.”

“I’d sure like to kiss you now,” he said.

“As long as we don’t generate enough heat to bring the global-warming police down on us, go ahead.”

He looked at the Expedition. “Everybody’s watching.”

“After Carl, maybe they need to see people kissing.”

He kissed her. She was good at it.

“Even the dog’s watching,” he said.

“She’s wondering-if I paid two thousand for her, how much did I pay for you.”

“You can put a collar on me anytime.”

“Let’s leave it at kisses for now.” She kissed him again before returning to the Expedition.

After watching her drive away, he went upstairs. His apartment was spacious, with Santos-mahogany floors and butter-yellow walls.

The minimalist contemporary furnishings and serene Japanese art suggested less a bachelor pad than a monk’s quarters. He had gutted, rebuilt, and furnished these rooms before he met Amy. He didn’t want to be either a bachelor or a monk anymore.

After stripping out of his tequila-marinated clothes, he took a shower. Maybe the hot water would make him sleepy.

Still feeling as alert and wide-eyed as an owl, he dressed in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt. At 2:56 A.M., he was awake for the day.

With a mug of fresh-brewed coffee, he settled at the computer in his study. He needed to get work done before sleep deprivation melted the edge off his concentration.

Two e-mails awaited him. The sender was pigkeeper.

Vanessa. She hadn’t contacted him in over five months. He had begun to think he would never hear from her again.

For a while, he stared at the screen, reluctant to let her into his life once more. If he never again read her messages, if he never answered them, he might be rid of her in time.

Hope would be gone with her, however. Hope would be lost. The price of freezing Vanessa out of his life was too great.