“Your relationship with Dr. Harrison was professional,” I said.

“If you’re asking was he my doctor, the answer is yes. He treated us both—Pierce and me. Separately, neither of us knew it at the time. With Pierce it was the drugs. With me it was . . . I was going through . . . a depression. A situational reaction, Dr. Harrison called it. After my mother passed. She was ninety-three, and I’d been taking care of her for so long that being alone was . . . all the responsibility started bearing down on me. I tried to go it alone, then it got to be too much. I knew what Dr. Harrison was, had always liked his smile. So one day I got up the courage to talk to him.”

The admission—the confession of weakness—clenched her jaws. I said, “Was Dr. Harrison the one who introduced you to Pierce?”

“I met Pierce at the end of . . . by the time I was better, able to take care of things, again. I was still talking to Dr. Harrison from time to time but was off the antidepressants, just like he said I’d be.”

She leaned forward, suddenly. “Do you really know Dr. H? Well enough to understand what kind of man he is? When we first started talking, he used to come over every day to see how I was doing. Every day. One time I came down with the flu and couldn’t do my chores and he did them for me. Everything—vacuumed the house, washed and dried the dishes, fed the horses, cleaned up the stables. He did that for four days running, even made trips into town for supplies. If I’d paid him by the hour, I’d be dead broke.”

I knew Bert was a good man and a master therapist, but her account astonished me. I pictured him tiny, aged, purple-clad, sweeping and hosing horse stalls and wondered what I’d have done in the same situation. Knew damn well I’d have fallen far short of that degree of caring.

What I was doing right now had nothing to do with caring. Not for the living.

How much was owed to the dead?

I said, “So you met Pierce when things had smoothed out.” Sounding wooden, formulaic. Shrinky.