More to the point, why hadn’t he? Was it simply his ingrained cop inclination to control situations by controlling information?

Or was it the elephant in the room? His too-slow recovery from his injury. His fear that his abilities had been diminished—that he wasn’t as strong, as sharp, as quick as he had once been—that there was a time when he wouldn’t have fallen on his face, wouldn’t have let the whisperer escape.

“You’ll figure it out,” said Madeleine, sliding a cutting board’s worth of chopped mushrooms and onions into a large skillet on the stove.

He realized she’d been watching him and was demonstrating yet again her uncanny ability to read his mind—to see his thoughts and feelings in his eyes as clearly as if he’d spoken them. Earlier in their marriage, he’d found this faculty of hers almost frightening. Now he had come to regard it as one of the most benign and precious realities of their life together.

The skillet began to sizzle, and a pleasant aroma drifted across the room.

“Hey, that reminds me,” said Kyle, looking around. “Dad’s birthday present—he never finished opening it at dinner last night.”

Madeleine pointed to the sideboard. The box, still in its light blue wrapping, lay next to the arrow. Kyle, grinning, retrieved it and placed it on the table in front of his father.

“Well …” said Gurney, vaguely embarrassed. He began removing the paper.

“David, for Godsake,” said Madeleine, “you look like you’re defusing a bomb.”

He laughed nervously, pulled off the remaining paper, and opened the box, which was a matching blue. After unfolding several layers of crinkly white tissue paper, he found a handsome eight-by-ten sterling-silver frame. In the frame was a newspaper clipping, beginning to yellow with age. He stared at it, blinking.

“Read it out loud,” said Kyle.

“I … uh … I don’t have my reading glasses.”

Madeleine regarded him with a combination of curiosity and concern. She turned down the gas under the skillet, came across the room, and took the framed clipping from him. She glanced through it quickly.