“You’re kind to say that.”

I placed a hand on his shoulder. Beneath the purple polyester he was soft and frail and small. “Is everything okay, Bert?”

“Everything is as it should be.” He reached up and patted my hand. “Lovely seeing you, son. Don’t give up.”

“On the case?”

“On anything that matters.”

I drove down the hill, paused to look through the rearview mirror. He remained standing in the driveway. Waved. A tired wave.

Definitely distracted, I thought as I drove away. And the sudden mood swings—the tears. A different Bert from the buoyant man I’d known.

The allusions to senility.

Nothing beyond my age norms.

As if he’d tested himself. Maybe he had.

An impressive man, afraid . . .

He called me son several times. I realized that for all his travels and adventures, the first-time mention of being married, he’d never spoken of having children.

Alone, in a house full of toys.

If I reached his age, how would I be living?

I got home just before dark, with a head full of road glare and lungs teeming with smog. No numeral blinked on my phone machine, but two messages had been left with my service: someone wanting to sell me earthquake insurance and a request to call Dr. Allison Gwynn.

A young female voice answered at Allison’s office.

“Hi, Dr. Delaware, I’m Connie Martino, Dr. Gwynn’s psych assistant. She’s in session right now but she told me to let you know that she’d like to speak with you. Her last patient’s finished by eight and you can drop by the office if you’d like. Or let me know what works for you.”

“Eight works for me.”

“Great. I’ll tell her.”

At seven-forty, I set out for Santa Monica. Allison Gwynn’s building was on Montana Avenue, just east of the beach city’s boutique row, a pale, one-story late-forties moderne affair with rounded corners and grilled slat windows and apricot-tinted accent lighting. A small patch of daylilies sprouted near the front door, bleached white by the night. Inside were four suites: a three-woman obstetric-gynecology group, a plastic surgeon, an endodontist, and, at the rear, A. GWYNN, PH.D. AND ASSOCIATES.

Allison’s waiting room was empty and smelled of face powder and perfume and the merest nuance of stress. The decor was soft chairs and thick wool carpeting and marine prints, everything tinted in variants of soft aqua and beige, as if someone were trying to bring the beach indoors. Halogen spots tuned to dim cast a golden white glow—the beach at twilight. Magazines were stacked neatly. A trio of red call buttons next to the door listed Allison’s name above those of two assistants: C. MARTINO, M.A. AND E. BRACHT, PH.D. I rang in, and, a moment later, she opened the door.