The neurologist looked down in embarrassment, pursed his lips. 'But you don't understand. I have to tell her. Otherwise I'd be treating her son under false pretenses. It's not simply an ethical matter, Mr Bible, it's legal.'

Fucking lawyers. Even when they weren't in the room, they were in the room, which meant they were everywhere.

'I'll tell her,' Thomas said drily. 'Nora always blames the messenger.'

When Dr Chadapaddai raised his eyebrows, Thomas added, 'She already hates me.'

They fought in the hall, one of those high-intensity hissing matches with the volume just low enough that everyone could pretend not to hear. When he told her she was using Frankie as an excuse to feel sorry for herself, she actually struck him. Driving home, he could swear he felt blood trickling in his right ear, but every time he poked around, his fingertip was clean.

Everything was falling apart.

The plan had been to go to Mia's to collect Ripley. It was important, one of the doctors had said, for at least one of them to spend time with her, so he and Nora had agreed to stay with Frankie in shifts. The thought of his little boy alone and derelict in the hospital was nothing short of overwhelming. It was like someone shoveling hot beach sand into his chest and gut. Wave after wave. Shovel after shovel.

Ripley, he told himself. Be strong for Ripley.

But after pulling into the driveway, he found himself walking to his own door, wandering into the air-conditioned gloom of his living room. He sat on the couch, suffused with a body-wide hum of distress, everything wired to the fragility in his eyes. He stared into the silence. The fridge clicked on in the kitchen.

Something… He had to do something. Keeping vigil was not an option.

He didn't hear the knocking at first, though afterward it seemed he had jumped at the sound. He caught his breath at the glimpse of a shadow through his window. He rubbed palms across his face, hooked fingers through his hair. The clinician in him laughed, thinking this was what people did when they were about to fall apart: try to clutch themselves together.

He pulled the door open, confused, hot with a cold sweat.

Theodoros Gyges stared at him, a dapper version of the disheveled wreck Thomas had first met several days earlier. He wore the too-studied casual attire of someone wealthy trying to blend with the middle classes: a yellow, short-sleeved dress-shirt and blue jeans cinched too high on his thick waist. He both looked and smelled clean, like a born-again Christian.

'Could I speak to Professor Thomas Bible?' he said politely.

A surreal moment passed, silent except for the sunny noise of birds, kids, and traffic from the nearby parkway—the noise he heard every time he opened his door in summer.

'Yeah,' Thomas replied. 'I mean, it's me, Mr Gyges.'