“Twenty-four hours,” he said. “By then, I should have what you need.”

“Then we’ll move on him tomorrow night,” I said.

“We?” asked Louis.

“We,” I said.

He locked eyes with me.

“This is personal,” he said.

“I understand.”

“We need to be clear on that. You got your way of doing things, and I respect that, but your conscience got no part to play in this. You start doubting, I want you to walk away. That goes for everyone.”

His eyes flicked momentarily toward Walter. I could sense that Walter was about to respond, so I reached out and touched his arm, and he relaxed slightly. Walter would not involve himself in anything that violated his own strict moral code. Even without the badge, Walter was still a cop, and a good one. He had no need to justify himself to Louis.

Nothing more was said. We were done. I told Walter to use the office phone, and he began making some calls. Louis went to wake Martha so that he could bring her back to New York with him. Angel joined me at the front door.

“Does she know about you two?” I asked.

“I’ve never met her before,” said Angel. “Tell you the truth, I wasn’t even sure that the family existed. I figured someone bred him in a cage, then released him into the wild. But I think she’s smart. If she doesn’t know now, she’ll guess soon enough. Then we’ll see.”

We watched as Rachel walked two of her friends to their car. She was beautiful. I loved the way that she carried herself, her poise, her grace. I felt something tear inside me, like a weakness in a wall that slowly begins to expand, threatening the strength and stability of the whole.

“She won’t like it,” said Angel.

“I owe Louis,” I replied.

Angel almost laughed. “You got no debt to him, or to me. Maybe you feel like you do, but we don’t see it that way. You have a family now. You have a woman who loves you, and a daughter who depends on you. Don’t screw it up.”

“I don’t intend to. I know what I have.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

What could I tell him? That I wanted to do this, that I needed to do this? It was part of the reason, I knew. Maybe also, in some low, hidden part of myself, I wanted to force them away, to hasten what I saw as an inevitable end.

But there was one more element, one that I could not explain to Angel, or to Rachel, or even to myself. I felt it as soon as I saw the cab moving along the road, drawing slowly closer and closer to the house. I felt it as I watched the woman step onto the gravel in our drive. I felt it as she told her story, trying to hold back the tears but desperate not to show weakness in front of strangers.

She was gone. Alice was gone, and wherever she now was she would never walk through this world as she once did. I couldn’t say how I knew it, any more than Martha could explain her sense that her daughter was at risk to begin with. This woman, filled with courage and love, was brought here for a reason. There was a connection, and it would not be denied. I had learned this from bitter experience. The troubles of others that found their way to my door were meant for my intervention and could not be ignored.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just know that it has to be done.”

Gradually, most of the guests slipped away. They seemed to take with them whatever gaiety they had brought, leaving none behind in our house. Rachel’s parents, as well as her sister, were staying the night with us. Walter and Lee were due to spend a couple of days with us too, but Martha’s visit had caused the abandonment of that plan, and they were already on their way home so that Walter could talk to cops in person if necessary.

I was clearing up outside when Frank Wolfe cornered me. He was taller than I, and bulkier. He’d played football in high school, and there were colleges sufficiently impressed by him to consider offering him a scholarship, but Vietnam intervened. Frank didn’t even wait for the draft. He was a man who believed in duty and responsibility. Joan was already pregnant when he left, although neither of them knew it at the time. His son, Curtis, was born while he was “in country,” and a daughter followed two years later. Frank won some medals, but he never spoke about how he came by them. When Curtis, who had become a deputy with the county sheriff ’s office, was killed during a bank raid, he didn’t disintegrate or descend into self-pity the way some men might have done but instead held his family close to him, binding them to him so that they would have him to lean upon, so that they would not fall. There was much that was admirable about Frank Wolfe, but we were too dissimilar ever to manage more than a few civil words to each other.

Frank had a beer in his hand, but he wasn’t drunk. I had heard him talking to his wife earlier, and they had witnessed Martha’s arrival and the conclave that resulted. I figured Frank had subsequently slowed down on the booze, either of his own volition or at his wife’s instigation.

I picked up some paper plates and threw them into the garbage bag, still amazed that the weather was mild enough to allow guests to find their way outside, and relieved that I had cleared the lawn of snow a day earlier. Frank watched me but didn’t move to lend a hand.

“Everything okay, Frank?” I said.

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

There was no point in brushing him off. He hadn’t become a good lawyer by lacking persistence. I finished clearing the plates from the garden table, tied up the garbage bag, and went to work on the empty bottles with a new bag. They made a satisfying clink as they hit the bottom.

“I’m doing my best, Frank,” I said softly. I didn’t want to have this discussion with him, not now and not ever, but it was upon us.

“With respect, I don’t think you are. You got duties now, responsibilities.”

I smiled, despite myself. There were those two words again. They defined Frank Wolfe. He would probably have them inscribed on his gravestone.

“I know that.”

“So you got to live up to them.”

He tried to emphasize his point by waggling the beer bottle at me. It diminished him, somehow, making him appear less like a concerned father and more like a garrulous drunk.

“Listen, this thing you do, it’s got Rachel worried. It’s always got her worried, and it’s put her at risk. You don’t put the people you love at risk. A man just doesn’t do that.”

Frank was trying his best to be reasonable with me, but he was already getting under my skin, maybe because all that he was saying was true.

“Look, there are other ways that you can use the skills you have,” he said. “I’m not saying give up on it entirely. I got contacts. I do a lot of work with insurance companies, and they’re always looking for good investigators. It pays well: better than what you earn now, that’s for sure. I can ask around, make some calls.”

I found myself hurling the bottles into the bag with more force. I took a deep breath to rein myself in, and tried to drop the next one as gently as I could.

“I appreciate the offer, Frank, but I don’t want to work as an insurance investigator.”

Frank had run out of “reasonable,” so he was forced to uncork something a little more potent. His voice rose.

“Well, you sure as hell can’t keep doing what you do now. What the hell is wrong with you? Can’t you see what’s happening? You want the same thing to happen a-”

He stopped abruptly, but it was too late. It was out now. It lay, black and bloody, on the grass between us. I was suddenly very, very tired. The energy drained from my body, and I dropped the sack of bottles on the ground. I leaned against the table and lowered my head. There was a shard of sharp wood against the palm of my right hand. I pressed down steadily upon it, and felt skin and flesh give way beneath the pressure.