Frank shook his head. His mouth opened, then closed again without uttering a word. He was not a man given to apologies. Anyway, why should a man apologize for telling the truth? He was right. Everything that he had said was right.

And the terrible thing was that Frank and I were closer in spirit than he realized: we had both buried children, and both of us feared more than anything else a repetition of that act. Had I chosen to do so, I could have spoken at that moment. I could have told him about Jennifer, about the sight of the small white coffin disappearing beneath the first clods of earth, about organizing her clothes and her shoes so that they could be passed on to children still living, about the appalling sense of absence that followed, of the gaping holes in my being that could never be filled, of how I could not walk down a street without being reminded of her by every passing child. And Frank would have understood, because in every young man fulfilling his duty he saw his absent son, and in that brief truce some of the tension between us might have been erased forever.

But I did not speak. I was retreating from them all, and the old resentments were coming to the fore. A guilty man, confronted by the self-righteousness of others, will plead bitter innocence or find a way to turn his guilt upon his accusers.

“Go to your family, Frank,” I told him. “We’re done here.”

And I gathered up the garbage and left him in the evening darkness.

Rachel was in the kitchen when I returned, making coffee for her parents and trying to clean up some of the mess left on the table. I started to help her. It was the first time we had been alone since we had returned from the church. Rachel’s mother came in to offer help, but Rachel told her that we could take care of it. Her mother tried to insist.

“Mom, we’re fine,” said Rachel, and there was an edge to her voice that caused Joan to beat a hasty retreat, pausing only to give me a look that was equal parts sympathy and blame.

Rachel used the blade of a knife to begin scraping the food from a plate into the trash can. The plate had a dark blue pattern upon its rim, although it wouldn’t have it for much longer if Rachel continued to scratch at it.

“So, what’s going on?” she asked. She didn’t look at me as she spoke.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“What does that mean?”

“You were kind of hard on Angel and Louis today, weren’t you? You hardly spoke a word to them while they were here. In fact, you’ve hardly spoken a word to me.”

“Maybe if you hadn’t spent the afternoon cloistered in your office, we might have found time to speak.”

It was a fair criticism, although we had been in the office for less than an hour.

“I’m sorry. Something came up.”

Rachel slammed the plate down on the edge of the sink. A small blue chip flew from the rim and was lost on the floor.

“What do you mean, ‘something came up’? It’s your daughter’s fucking christening!”

The voices in the living room went quiet. When the conversation picked up again, it sounded muted and strained.

I moved toward her.

“Rach-” I began.

She raised her hands and backed away.

“Don’t. Just don’t.”

I couldn’t move. My hands felt awkward and useless. I didn’t know what to do with them. I settled for putting them behind my back and leaning against the wall. It was as close as I could come to a gesture of surrender without raising them above my head or exposing my neck to the blade. I didn’t want to fight with Rachel. It was all too fragile. The slightest misstep, and we would be surrounded by the fragments and shards of our relationship. I felt my right hand stick to the wall. When I looked down there was blood upon it, left by the splinter cut.

“What did that woman want?” said Rachel. Her head was down, loose strands of hair falling over her cheeks and eyes. I wanted to see her face clearly. I wanted to push back her hair and touch her warm skin. Like this, her features hidden, she reminded me too much of another.

“She’s Louis’s aunt. Her daughter has gone missing in New York. I think she came to Louis as a last resort.”

“Did he ask you for help?”

“No, I offered to help.”

“What does she do, her daughter?”

“She was a street prostitute, and an addict. Her disappearance won’t be a priority for the cops, so someone else will have to look for her.”

Rachel ran her hands through her hair in frustration. This time, she did not try to stop me as I moved to hold her. Instead, she allowed me to press her head gently to my chest.

“It will just take a couple of days,” I said. “Walter has made some calls. We have a lead on her pimp. It may be that she’s safe somewhere, or in hiding. Sometimes women in the life drop out for a time. You know that.”

Slowly, her arms reached around my back and held me.

“Was,” she whispered.

“What?”

“You said ‘was.’ She was a prostitute.”

“It’s just the way that I phrased it.”

Her head moved against me in denial of the lie.

“No, it’s not. You know, don’t you? I don’t understand how you can tell, but I think you just know when there’s no hope. How can you carry that with you? How can you take the strain of that knowledge?”

I said nothing.

“I’m frightened,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t talk to Angel and Louis after the christening. I’m frightened of what they represent. When we spoke about them being godfathers to Sam, before she was born, it was like, well, it was like it was a joke. Not that I didn’t want them to do it, or that I didn’t mean it when I agreed, but it seemed like no harm could come of it. But today, when I saw them there, I didn’t want them to have anything to do with her, not in that way, and at the same time I know that each of them, without a second thought, would lay down his life to save Sam. They’d do the same for you, or for me. It’s just…I feel that they bring…”

“Trouble?” I said.

“Yes,” she whispered. “They don’t mean to, but they do. It follows them.”

Then I asked the question that I had been afraid to ask.

“And do you think that it follows me too?”

I loved her for her answer, even as another fissure appeared in all that we had.

“Yes,” she said. “I think those in need find you, but with them come those who cause misery and hurt.”

Her arms gripped me tighter, and her nails dug sharply into my back.

“And I love you for the fact that it pains you to turn away. I love you for wanting to help them, and I’ve seen the way you’ve been these last weeks. I’ve seen you after you walked away from someone you thought you could help.”

She was talking about Ellis Chambers from Camden, who had approached me a week earlier about his son. Neil Chambers was involved with some men in Kansas City, and they had their hooks pretty deep in him. Ellis couldn’t afford to buy him out of his trouble, so somebody was going to have to intervene on Neil’s behalf. It was a muscle job, but taking it would have separated me from Sam and Rachel, and would also have involved a degree of risk. Neil Chambers’s creditors were not the kind of individuals who took kindly to being told how to run their affairs, and they were not sophisticated in their methods of intimidation and punishment. In addition, Kansas City was way off my turf, and I told Ellis that he might find the men involved were more amenable to some local intervention than the involvement of a stranger. I made some inquiries, and passed on some names to him, but I could see that he was disappointed. For better or worse, I’d gained a reputation as a “go-to” guy. Ellis had expected more than a referral. Somewhere inside, I also believed that he deserved more.

“You did it for me, and for Sam,” said Rachel, “but I could tell the effort that it caused you. You see, that’s the thing of it: whichever way you turn, there will be pain for you. I just didn’t know how much longer you could keep turning away from those who reached out to you. I guess now I know. It ended today.”