Her look across the bed was level and silent. Then she repeated simply, “I need it, Adam.”

Her eyes held mine without wavering. Softly, I asked, “Do you know how to use that?”

“I haven’t in years. But Henry taught me when I was younger, for target practice. His father was a crack pistol shot.” She paused, then added, “He taught Jason, too.”

For a long time I stared at the gun. “Put the safety on,” I finally said, “and stick it in a drawer.”

She silently placed the gun in the drawer of her nightstand and closed it. I lit a cigarette.

“I’m sorry, Adam.”

She turned out the lights and got in bed.

There was nothing more said, or done.

In the morning we sat in the sunroom as we usually did, with coffee and the paper. The headline read, CANTWELL FAMILY CENTER OF PROBE. We said little about that or anything else, and nothing about the gun. Riffling the back pages I found Kris Ann’s picture above the caption “Mrs. Kris Ann Shaw, Chairman of the Junior League Volunteers for Retarded Children.” In the picture she smiled as she had the day I’d watched her kneeling in a circle of the children she taught, seemingly oblivious to dirty hair or tantrums or runny noses as she helped them shape clay into whatever they imagined. At the circle’s edge a small girl with taffy hair and guileless clear eyes had hung back watching her, unnoticed in the clamor of children thrusting lumps of clay toward Kris Ann for the smile she gave. Then the girl had put down her clay and walked to Kris Ann, touching her hair. Kris Ann had looked up, and then her smile had faded and she pulled the girl close, her eyes shut.

“I’m glad you still work with those children,” I told her now. “You’re good with them.”

She took a sip of coffee, her face abstracted. “Art’s something they need, that’s all. There are no wrong answers.” She rose, touching my shoulder, and went upstairs.

I stared out the window. Above me Kris Ann started running her shower. I got up abruptly, called the university for Jason Cantwell’s address, and left.

In the aftermath of rain, the morning was lush and bright and fresh as Creation. The campus—tan brick buildings with no trees around them—looked scrubbed clean. I found Jason’s apartment at its edge, a worn brick building stuck between an orthodontist and a marriage counselor. I parked, climbed one flight to the end of a dark hallway, and knocked.

The door was opened by an olive-skinned man with full black beard, flat cheekbones like hammered bronze, and black liquid eyes. His chest strained the dark T-shirt, and his arms were ridged and heavy.

“What do you want?” he demanded, surprised and ready to be hostile.

“I’m Adam Shaw. You remember. I represent your father now.”