He turned lights off and sat next to me. For a while he rubbed my neck while I stared out the window. The snow-sky looked gray and wet, but not dreary as when it rained. I wondered about the difference, why snow seemed soft while rain felt hard and somehow colder.

It had been bitterly cold and raining in Richmond the Christmas when police discovered Eddie Heath’s frail, naked body. He was propped against a Dumpster behind an abandoned building with windows boarded up, and though he would never regain consciousness, he was not yet dead. Gault had abducted him from a convenience store where Eddie had been sent by his mother to pick up a can of soup.

I would never forget the desolation of that filthy spot where the boy had been found or Gault’s gratuitous cruelty of placing near the body the small bag containing the can of soup and candy bar Eddie had purchased before his death. The details made him so real that even the Henrico County officer wept. I envisioned Eddie’s wounds and remembered the warm pressure of his hand when I examined him in pediatric intensive care before he was disconnected from life support.

‘Oh God,’ I muttered in this dim room. ‘Oh God, I’m so tired of all this.’

Wesley did not reply. He had gotten up and was standing before the window, drink in hand.

‘I’m so tired of cruelty. I’m so tired of people beating horses and killing little boys and head-injured women.’

Wesley did not turn around. He said, ‘It’s Christmas. You should call your family.’

‘You’re right. That’s just what I need to cheer me up.’ I blew my nose and reached for the phone.

At my sister’s house in Miami, no one answered. I dug an address book out of my purse and called the hospital where my mother had been for weeks. A nurse in the intensive care unit said Dorothy was with my mother and she would get her.

‘Hello?’

‘Merry Christmas,’ I said to my only sibling.

‘I guess that’s an irony when you consider where I am. There’s certainly nothing merry about this place, not that you would know since you aren’t here.’

‘I’m quite familiar with intensive care,’ I said. ‘Where is Lucy and how is she?’

‘She’s out running errands with her friend. They dropped me off and will be back in an hour or so. Then we’re going to Mass. Well, I don’t know if the friend will since she’s not Catholic.’

‘Lucy’s friend has a name. Her name is Janet, and she is very nice.’

‘I’m not going to get into that.’

‘How is Mother?’

‘The same.’

‘The same as what, Dorothy,’ I said, and she was beginning to get to me.