“Alista loved HorsePower—and like every teenage girl, she was totally gaga over Gabriel Wire.” Something crossed his face. He looked away, lost. “Alista’s birthday was coming up. Sweet sixteen. I didn’t have the money to throw her a big party, but I knew that HorsePower was going to play a concert at Madison Square Garden. I guess they didn’t play many concerts—I never really followed them—but I knew that there was this Ticketmaster on the basement level of this Marshalls Department Store on Route Four. So I woke up at, like, five in the morning and got on line. You should have seen it. No one else there was over thirty, and I’m standing there, waiting for two hours, to buy tickets to the concert. When I got to the window, the woman started typing into the computer and first she tells me that it’s sold out and then, well, then she says, ‘No, wait, I have only two left,’ ” and I was never so happy to buy something in my life. Like it was kismet, you know? Like it was supposed to happen.”

Myron nodded as noncommittally as he could.

“So I get home and Alista’s birthday is still a week away so I figure I’m going to wait. I tell Kimberly about them. And we’re both dying. I mean, those tickets are burning a hole in my pocket. You ever have that? Where you buy someone something so special that you just can’t wait to give it?”

“Sure,” Myron said softly.

“So that’s how it is with me and Kimberly. We end up driving to Alista’s high school. We park there and I get Kimberly out and into her chair and Alista comes out and we’re just smiling like two cats that ate the canary. Alista makes a face at us, the way teenage girls do, and she says, ‘What?’ ” and I just held up the tickets and Alista”—he stopped, his world rolling back all those years—“she just screamed and threw her arms around my neck and squeezed so hard . . .”

His voice faded away. He pulled a napkin from the dispenser, started to go for his eyes, decided against it. He stared down at the table.

“So anyway, Alista took her best friend to the concert. They were supposed to go back to the friend’s house afterward. For a sleepover. But they didn’t. You know the rest.”

“I’m sorry.”

Karl Snow shook his head. “A long time ago.”

“And you don’t blame Gabriel Wire?”