“No, I’m not,” Stefan said. “The first participant was a woman who broke into a summer cottage up north when she was a teenager and trashed it with her friends. She never even got caught. Those same girls are grown-up women now, and the owners of the cabin are grandparents in their eighties. To make amends, they went up there and fixed up the cabin and stocked it with all kinds of food and wine and stuff. I helped with that.”

Stefan obtained permission from his parole officer to travel for one day to northern Wisconsin, outside his fifty-mile radius. Amelia wrote a letter of apology and her husband Andy and Stefan and a carpenter friend of Andy’s fixed the porch, the roof and the door frames of the old cabin. Then my sister pitched in and they all cleaned it planks to rafters, laying in every manner of canned staple and delicacy for summers to come. The owners barely remembered the break-in but said afterward they were moved literally to tears. Amelia felt as though she’d lost twenty pounds. Stefan proffered Deanie long-ago Polaroids of the destruction, which the couple had given their insurance company, and of the renewed cabin. He also gave her a cardboard rendering of the official logo of The Healing Project, the silver arrow turning to gold.

Deanie laid both the photos and the logo aside, promising that the broadcast would feature them and the number to call The Healing Project. Something walked lightly across the back of my neck. I was like a dog that could feel a thunderstorm coming.

“So to be a participant in The Healing Project, the person has to state their remorse in writing. How about you, Stefan? Have you done that?”

“I have. My remorse was the inspiration for this program. My renewal was starting it.”

“Can you tell the viewers what you said?”

“I said I was responsible for the death of the girl I loved. Belinda McCormack.”

“You hit her with a golf club and killed her.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I really don’t know what happened. I really don’t. I took a lot of drugs in the evening.”

“More than usual?”

“Well there was no usual. At first, it was just that I took...well, methamphetamine to keep up...with school. With Belinda. She was so much smarter, and I was worried all the time.”

“Worried about school?”

“Yes, worried that if I messed up school, I would have to drop out and I would lose her. Because she wouldn’t respect me anymore.”

“So,” Deanie said, leaning in. “Why was this night different?”

“Well, I was upset. So I took a bunch of drugs. Different kinds. Whatever the person I was with offered me. Crack cocaine. Heroin. And I don’t have any memory of anything that night except that I ended up in the hospital.”