Bror smiled a disarming smile. “There’s a definite spring in your step today.”

I looked at him. “You want to guess Tvist’s reaction to my piece?”

“Misdirection?”

“He asked me who might have provided the Andersens with logistical support.”

Bror gave a cynical little laugh. “And whom did you suppose him to mean?”

“You.”

“Well, I’m an easy target, am I not? We’ve established that.” He gestured at the rabbits. “Shall we carry two each, my friend?”

I looked at him. He was not exactly my friend, I thought. But he listened. A part of me almost wanted to confide in him.

I bent down beside him. The rabbits were still soft, their fur silky, their bodies warm.

I said, “I’ve come to understand that the police and I are not on the same side.”

“Yes. That’s what I see, I think.” He smiled, as if he found an answer in my eyes. “You, Cal Curtis, are . . . a man reborn.”

“Is that a blessing?”

He raised his right arm, his forefinger and middle finger held almost straight, ring finger and pinkie curled. “Would you like it to be?”

I stood up, a rabbit in each hand. “Actually, I had an almost religious experience. In the waters of Garden Island.”

He picked up the two remaining rabbits in his left hand. He stood up beside me. He laughed gently, walked to where the rifles stood, knelt and picked them up in his right hand. “And did you see the face of the Godhead?”

“I saw the faces of my family.”

“Good. Very good indeed.” He was nodding, as if to himself, serious now. We began to walk toward the farmhouse. “There is something heroic at your core. You did not believe me when I hinted at it before. But you are beginning to discover what I meant.”

“Am I?” I laughed. He turned and looked at me almost gravely. I stopped laughing.

“Follow.” He marched into the house, along the stone-flagged hall and on into the kitchen, where he laid the rabbits on the workbench by the sink.

I said, “Arno seems . . .”

“ . . . better? Much, though he hasn’t uttered a word since he arrived. And the girls terrify him. We quarter as many as eight a time. All of them exceptional. So hard to be a teenage boy these days. Even without Arno’s additional challenges. And yet still I say to Arno, you may open any door, enter any room, but you must not climb the stairs to the girls’ dormitory! Because even in the land of equality, men are still men.”

“You’re schooling him in the chivalric virtues?”