He doesn’t want to be a burden, she said. I know him. He has to pay his own way. She looked back out the window again. I can’t even imagine what it was like. For a man like Kyle to lie there so helpless as— She shook her head slowly, and a single tear rolled down her cheek.

Truthfully, I could imagine very well what it had been like, and I had done so many times already. What I was having difficulty with was this new side of Deborah. She had cried at her mother’s funeral, and at her father’s, but not since then, as far as I knew. And now here she was practically flooding the car over what I had come to regard as an infatuation with someone who was a little bit of an oaf. Even worse, he was now a disabled oaf, which should mean that a logical person would move on and find somebody else with all the proper pieces still attached. But Deborah seemed even more concerned with Chutsky now that he was permanently damaged. Could this be love after all? Deborah in love? It didn’t seem possible. I knew that theoretically she was capable of it, of course, but—I mean, after all, she was my sister.

It was pointless to wonder. I knew nothing at all about love and I never would. It didn’t seem like such a terrible lack to me, although it does make it difficult to understand popular music.

Since there was nothing else I could possibly say about it, I changed the subject. Should I call Captain Matthews and tell him that Doakes is gone? I said.

Deborah wiped a tear off her cheek with one fingertip and shook her head. That’s for Kyle to decide, she said.

Yes, of course, but Deborah, under the circumstances—

She slammed a fist onto her leg, which seemed pointless as well as painful. GodDAMN it, Dexter, I won’t lose him!

Every now and then I feel like I am only receiving one track of a stereo recording, and this was one such time. I had no idea what—well, to be honest, I didn’t even have an idea what to have an idea about. What did she mean? What did it have to do with what I had said, and why had she reacted so violently? And how can so many fat women think they look good in a belly shirt?

I suppose some of my confusion must have showed on my face, because Deborah unclenched her fist and took a deep breath. Kyle is going to need to stay focused, keep working. He needs to be in charge, or this will finish him.

How can you know that?