“I never said I had sex with him.” Dr. Self goes cold inside. “When would that have happened? In my goddamn room with a goddamn view? I was drugged. I couldn’t have had sex with anyone unless it was against my will. He drugged me.”

“I’m not talking about now.”

“While I was unconscious, he opened my gown and fondled me. He said he loved my body.”

“Because he remembered it.”

“Who said I had sex with him? Did that goddamn bitch say that? What would she know about what happened when I checked in? You must have told her I’m a patient. I’ll sue you. I said he couldn’t help himself, couldn’t resist, and then he fled. I said he knew what he’d done was wrong and so he fled to Italy. I never said I had sex with him. I never told you that. He drugged me and took advantage of me, and I should have known he would. Why wouldn’t he?”

It excites her. It did then and it still does, and she had no idea it would. At the time she chided him but didn’t tell him to stop. She said, “Why is it necessary to examine me so enthusiastically?” And he said, “Because it’s important I know.” And she said, “Yes. You should know what isn’t yours.” And he said as he explored, “It’s like a special place you once visited and haven’t seen in many years. You want to find out what’s changed and what hasn’t and whether you could live it again.” And she said, “Could you?” And he said, “No.” Then he fled, and that was the worst thing he did, because he’d done it before.

“I’m talking about a very long time ago,” Benton says.

Water laps quietly.

Will Rambo is surrounded by water and the night as he rows away from Sullivan’s Island, where he left the Cadillac in a secluded spot an easy walk from where he borrowed the bass boat. He has borrowed it before. He uses the outboard engine when needed. When he wants quiet, he rows. Water laps. In the dark.

Into the Grotta Bianca, the place he took the first one. The feeling, the familiarity, as fragments come together in a deep cavern in his mind among dripstones of limestone, and moss where sunlight touched. He walked her beyond the Column of Hercules into an underworld of stone corridors with prisms of minerals and the constant sound of water dripping.