“One thing I hate to do is drink alone,” she said, putting the bottle and glasses back under her desk. “No wonder I hang around bars so much.”

Kilburn smiled. “Which reminds me, has Kyra called this morning?”

She shook her head.

“I have to get the kids back to her today,” he said, speaking more to himself.

Louise sighed. “Frankly, Dr. Kilburn, sometimes I don’t know how you put up with her and her drinking.”

He shrugged self-consciously. “Maybe it’s because I’m partly to blame.”

She frowned. “What does it have to do with you?”

He hesitated, then said, “I never told you about Toronto, huh?”

Louise shook her head.

He hesitated. Michelle was the only person he had ever told. But looking into Louise’s understanding eyes, he began talking without consciously deciding to. “I spent the summer after second year university working as a lab assistant.” His voice lowered out of reflex. “Kyra had just finished eleventh grade. She begged our parents to let her fly East to visit me there.” He shrugged. “I thought it would be fun to have my little sister around. She was a good kid.” He cleared his throat. “I worked with a pretty wild crowd of students in the lab. Especially this one kid, Dale McLean. Rich. Good looking. Edgy. He had his parents’ swank house in Rosedale all to himself for the summer. Dale’s parties were legendary. I never got invited, until—” Kilburn broke off the story and eye contact, flooded with the familiar sense of shame.

“Until Kyra showed up?” Louise prompted, leaning forward in her seat.

Kilburn nodded. “One day Kyra came to meet me at work. Dale took a shine to her. Suddenly, I—we—were invited to the best party in town. I knew what he was up to, but I was nineteen and desperate to get into the Playboy Mansion, as we used to call the place.”

“And what happened to Kyra there?” Louise asked.

“I know she had a few drinks by the time she was seventeen. Maybe even smoked a joint or two before.” His face flushed. “But that night I was preoccupied with the girls, the beer, and the pool. By the time I found Kyra in one of the upstairs bedrooms she was so drunk and stoned she couldn’t even talk. She was lying in her underwear on top of the bed with Dale. He was nearly as far-gone as she was. Maybe that’s why I didn’t kill him.”

“I doubt they were the first two teenagers to get too drunk and fool around,” Louise said with a half-hearted smile. “What’s the big deal?”