As Spencer sat in Chris’s Prius, he wondered how he’d gotten to the address on South Washington. Was it because of Marielle not coming back that day four years ago? It had always been simple to blame. Then he could rant and rail at fate and do another line, light another joint, or refill his glass. But he’d found himself wondering of late whether the rot had started earlier, whether some weakness had actually been smoldering within, and Marielle’s death had simply been a fan to the flame. Last week, Abby had been reciting her little-known facts. She read out that kind of stuff all the time, but one fact about the Titanic had stuck in Spencer’s head. Apparently, there’d been a fire going in one of the ship’s coal bunkers for the whole voyage. The crew couldn’t put it out.

Doomed from within.

He thought about the coke, the drink, the weed, the antidepressants. He needed them to function, yet he knew he needed to stop. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw a child’s body silhouetted in fire, like one of those Tibetan monks that torched themselves. And he saw Milt, or rather the shape of Milt, under the sheet, gliding through the bleached strobe lights of ambulance and cruisers, the gas station looking like some way station to the afterlife.

Spencer had been here several times. But tonight, he could see himself sitting in the car on the dark street. He yelled at himself. He hollered and pounded, but the window was stronger than those used to shield bank cashiers from shotguns or to keep out the sea in the bathyspheres that plumbed the ocean depths. And so the man at the wheel, if he heard anything, then it was just the slightest of thuds, like moths hitting glass.

The Common Ground building looked just like a normal house with its white painted shutters and flower-filled pots. Inside, he’d get support for his drinking, for his drug dependency, and even for his grief. He took another swig from the hip flask.