Emma can feel that her mouth has dropped open, so she closes it. Looks over at Bell and immediately thinks of a quote: And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on. The expression on Bell’s face is unbearable. But even as she watches, he composes himself, with a gargantuan effort, into impassivity.

“Anyway.” Kristin clears her throat, smiles to lift her mood. “I don’t know if I’d bring up that subject with my brother. But there are lots of other things you could chat about. You could appeal to his intellect, too—he enjoys puzzles. And he must get very bored, sitting around all day long at St. Elizabeths.”

Emma recovers enough to speak. “You’re saying Simon might help us because he’s bored?”

“Oh yes.” Kristin nods. “He hates being bored. And your mysterious murder investigation is just the sort of thing he would like. He’d make a wonderful detective if he weren’t so…” Kristin searches for the right term.

Evil? Emma thinks. Then she looks quickly at Bell, willing him not to say it.

“… him,” Kristin concludes, oblivious to the interchange and distracted by something in the middle distance. “Oh, look, here come the puppies!”

It’s like something out of a dream: Up the verdant hill, following the path of a white-aproned woman carrying a silver tray with a coffee service, an old golden Labrador bitch comes with tongue lolling. In the adult dog’s wake, four puppies try to keep up.

The staff member arrives and sets the tray on the rattan table in front of the couch, dogs milling about her heels. “I told them to shoo, Miss Kristin, but they wouldn’t.”

“You must never apologize for the puppies,” Kristin declares. “I love them. Come here, Sheba. Oh, Emma, look at them! Here, you must cuddle a puppy.” She scoops up one of the pups and deposits it in Emma’s lap, then pets the old mother dog, attracting the whines of the others, all of them wanting attention at once.

Emma’s fingers are suddenly full of wriggling-soft puppy. The creamy fur is like old silk. She maneuvers the warm body to see the pup’s face. Its eyes are liquid chocolate, and so wet they seem to brim with tears.

Kristin smiles, sits on the ground, and piles puppies on herself as the aproned woman pours the coffee. The sun filters through the oak leaves. A strand of spiderweb drifts in a graceful ballet into shrubs nearby. If she were ever to go insane, Emma reflects, she would like this to be her resting place: a bungalow in a honeysuckle garden, with a gambol of puppies and thoughtful staff.

She sees Bell, his stoic mask softening as he squats to pet the mother dog, who pushes him over and licks his face. Later, in the cab of the Dodge as they drive back to Quantico against the end-of-day commuter traffic, Emma will notice how quiet he is, and that he has grass in his hair.