Sam shook her head. 'There's grief, and then there's grief. But with you… I mean, Neil keeps kicking you and kicking you, and you just lie there. It's like you're suffering from… from abused wife syndrome or something.'

Dead. Weight.

Thomas blinked more tears from his eyes.

'It's called conditioned helplessness,' he said.

'What?'

'Conditioned helplessness,' he repeated. 'People stranded in circumstances over which they have no control eventually become conditioned to think themselves helpless. Even when circumstances change.' He looked at her, his heart itching with an odd sense of wonder. All along he'd known what was wrong, but without knowing. 'It's a crucial component of depressive disorders.'

'Well that's it, then,' Sam said. 'Circumstances have changed. You gotta shake this off!'

He laughed bitterly. 'But that's the irony, Sam. People simply assume that depression skews a person's outlook. But it's not so.'

'What do you mean?'

'You'd think depressives would consistently underestimate how much control they have over events, but it turns out the exact opposite is true. In tests, they're surprisingly accurate in their estimations. It's the well-adjusted who are deluded. They consistently overestimate their control over events.'

Sam flashed him a go-figure smile. 'Do we now?' she said.

Thomas looked down. 'Turns out you have to be deluded to be happy.'

Could the world be any more fucked up?

He was crying now, and she was watching. It was okay. Expected. There was the grief that clenched, and the grief that let go, that opened all the little cages hidden in our souls. It seemed he could feel things fall through him in sheets, the remorse, the shame, the rage… All the little animals.

He could feel himself empty.

Sam watched him. When he looked at her, she seemed to shine with a high-altitude clarity. He held out his hand the way a beggar would, his face his only sign.

She laughed, then did what she always did.

She gave.

He awoke to the light of the television, Sam's naked body crowded against his own on the couch. Images of what must have been the latest Chiropractor crime scene floated in the darkness. For a while he remained absolutely still, watching the parade of images the way tired children sometimes do, blinking and staring thoughtlessly, as though stuck between channels.

He remembered Ripley, cursed himself for an idiot, though he was too drowsy, too numb, to feel any real regret. Mia would understand—even with Sam's car in the driveway. A shot of a harnessed German Shepherd snarling at a French eco-protester stirred thoughts of Bartender. He squeezed tears from his eyes with thumb and forefinger. Poor Bart. What was he going to tell Frankie?

His brain wasn't wired the way ours is, son. He had no awareness, no experience. He was just a blind machine that your Uncle Cass broke.