Later—no, he wasn’t hungry and no, he wasn’t about to sit down to dinner and have to face everybody in the house, Tim especially—he took the back staircase down to Lori’s room and checked for what must have been the twentieth time to be sure her backpack was still in the closet. It was. He flipped open the nylon flap and inspected the contents, but as far as he could see nothing had been removed—or added—which told him something he didn’t really want to know. For a long while he sat there on her bed while the sun backed away from him inch by inch across the carpet till it hung suspended in the window and finally dropped out of sight. He was putting off what he most needed to do, which was go to Tim and explain himself, apologize, and at the same time see about the one thing that could begin to make this right, this whole day, this scene, as Charlie would put it, this terrible winnowing scene. Tim was the gander and he was the gosling. And though he’d been drinking brandy steadily off and on throughout the day, he couldn’t feel it on any level beyond the physical, and what was the use of that? The sacrament, that was what he needed, revelation, the shining path. If ever he was ready, it was now.

There was music coming from the main room, a murmur of voices, the usual current of people plugged in and operating on the same wavelength. He avoided them and tiptoed up the stairs, hoping he’d find Tim alone in his room, which wasn’t all that unlikely. Tim was up there most evenings now, at least while he was home and not out on the lecture circuit spreading the word and making the cash registers ring—it was as if he was withdrawing himself strategically, preparing them all for the break that was coming at the end of the year when he would fly off to India with his Nordic princess and leave them behind. Fitz listened at the door a moment, unsure of himself—he didn’t want to intrude or interrupt anything, especially after what Ken had said about Tim being furious with him, though he couldn’t really imagine Tim being furious with anybody for long.

At first he heard nothing, and then a sound came to him that froze him inside, a voice, a girl’s voice, nasal and echoing, and wasn’t that Lori? Wasn’t that Lori’s voice? Before he could think he gave the door a sharp declamatory thump with the heel of his fist and shoved his way in, ready for anything—only to find . . . Tim, dressed all in white in his long trailing sherwani and flowing trousers, sitting at his desk, alone. “Oh,” he murmured, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—can I come in?”