Rutledge realized that the motorcar had not moved, and the wain was nearly out of sight down the Sherham Road. He drove on past the intersection and pulled into a tiny lane that ran between two houses. There he put the gears in neutral, set the brake, and leaned back to rub his hands over his face as if to erase the emotion there.

It was something he had tried to shut out from Hamish. But the Scot, used to burrowing deep into his secrets, had ferreted it out.

In truth, it had little to do with Scotland. . . .

On the night of his second surgery, he had heard the doctors telling Frances that the odds were against him; he might not survive going under the knife. “Too close to be sure,” one of them had said, and he had listened to Frances’s voice in his drugged state halfway between consciousness and sleep.

“He won’t leave me alone,” she said fiercely. “He won’t.”

And then someone had leaned over his bed, hovering in what appeared to be a mist but was only the anesthetic taking hold. At the time it had given the white hair and the kind face an insubstantial air, as if half dreamed.

“There’s nothing to fear, son. Whatever happens. But if you want to live—He’ll listen. Be sure of it.” The South Country voice speaking softly in Rutledge’s ear was confident, serene.

After that, the darkness had come down, and there had been no pain, only peace. It was not until many hours later that Rutledge had come back, in worse pain, to wakefulness.

It had startled him, to find himself alive. And he had been terrified that he’d begged to live, when he had no right . . . no right at all.

Much later, Frances had brought the corpulent little clergyman in to meet him. The doctors, Rutledge learned, had sent for the man to offer comfort to her if her brother died. In the light of day, Mr. Crosson was neither insubstantial nor half dreamed, but a practical and straightforward rector who regarded the patient with sharp blue eyes and said, “Well, then, Mr. Rutledge. I’m glad to see you know your own mind!”

It was far from the solace that Mr. Crosson had intended. Instead it had shaken Rutledge as deeply as the lines of sleeplessness on Frances’s face. And it confused him as well; all his energies for so very long had been concentrated on dying and to live was something he wasn’t— couldn’t be—prepared for.

“Oh, aye, was that it, then?” Hamish asked derisively. “Most men would ha’ been glad to live to see an end to the case. You went to hospital and buried your head in sand! You went back to work to bury your head in sand. And you stay here in Norfolk to bury it again.”