I run a bath and emerge an hour later, wrinkled and shivering, to wrap myself in the bathrobe that appeared on the hook one day, no explanation, a typical Lindquist maneuver. I badly want a drink, but to fetch a drink means returning to the main house and Olle’s library, and that is impossible in my present condition, so I light a cigarette instead. I lie on the bed like this, in my bathrobe, smoking in long, deep drags as I stare at the dark wooden beams of the ceiling, and I feel this terrible hole in the bed, where the cat used to sleep, and also a terrible hole in my chest, as if someone has reached inside and torn away some piece of flesh. The cavity grows and grows, splitting my ribs apart, until at last I spring from the bed, crush out the cigarette, and sit down in the chair before the desk, where my life’s work lies in neat stacks of manila folders, carefully labeled.

This is where Leo finds me some time later, when he knocks on the door. I bark, Come in, without looking up, and hear the creak of hinges.

“Irene sent me,” he says, apologetic. “She figured you might be hungry, since you didn’t come to dinner.”

Though I’m afraid of the likely state of my face, I turn anyway. Leo’s carrying a tray with a plate of food on it, a glass of water and also a glass of something else. I can tell from his expression that I’m not myself.

“Thanks. Just set it on the dresser.”

He stares at me another second or two before he steps to the dresser and nudges aside my hairbrush with his knuckles to make room for the tray. “You should eat.”

“I know I should. I’ll eat when I’m hungry.”

“The bourbon was my idea. Thought you could use a drink. Don’t tell Irene.”

“Is it a double?”

“What do you think?”

I scrape back the chair and fetch the bourbon from the tray. It’s a double, neat, as if he read my mind from all the way across the lawn. I thank him sincerely and return to the desk.

“What’re you working on?” he asks.

“This and that,” I tell him, and then I figure I owe him for the bourbon and add, “George Morrow. I’ve been trying to figure out what happened to him. After he called off the search, I mean. There’s nothing in the newspapers. He’s turned into a recluse or something.”

Leo shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “I guess he was pretty upset. She was his wife, right? His whole life was wrapped up in her.”