“Perhaps,” Mrs. Hamilton urged, “you could have a word with him. Talk to him, please, Doctor. I’d feel better knowing you’d looked him up and down, even if you decide there’s nothing amiss, or nothing you can do.”

As I stood there, peering through the small, clear square of windowpane with Felicity Hamilton’s labored breathing puffing against the back of my neck, I would have rather done anything else than to go talk to young Matthew. I wanted to turn, wish the woman a good day, and make an excuse or apology regarding some fictional patient requiring my immediate services.

But I did not. I gathered up my scraps of inner fortitude and forced a smile upon Mrs. Hamilton as I said, “Very well. I’ll do just that.”

She opened the door and saw me out, and when I looked over my shoulder she was still there, watching through the spot I’d smudged to clarity on her window, her nervous eyes darting back and forth between me and her ward.

I took a deep breath.

This was a simple thing—likely the simplest task I’d be asked to perform all day—and it should not have repulsed me so. On countless brief, perfunctory, casual occasions through the years, I’d exchanged more than a handful of words with the fellow out there on the rocks. That lad over there, picking his way between the tide-washed boulders and always moving so that his head was cocked toward the Atlantic . . . he was no stranger. I’d always known him to be the pleasant sort, relatively eager to please and optimistic that any errand might earn him an extra penny for his trouble.

So why did I feel such dread as I slowly trudged toward him? He’s only a boy, I told myself. A simple truth, and one so obvious that it scarcely needed any mention. What else would he be? What was I so afraid of?

I approached him, stepping along the walkway as long as I could, and then only tiptoeing off the planks and onto the sand. I made a show of wanting to keep my shoes clean. It was only a show, but it allowed me to keep some distance—and it kept me off the rocks. I’m not as young as I once was, and I no longer cared to scamper along the boulders like some schoolchild. And this was one more thing I told myself, for show.

“Matthew?” I called.

I stood facing him, my feet half in the wet-packed sand, my toes jostling against the polished pebbles that collected up against the spot where the ocean ended. The wind came up fierce, whipping my coat and nearly stealing my hat. I held the coat shut with one hand and held my hat in place with the other, and I called out again, in case the wind had carried away my first attempt.