"WRONG," I SAID. "Bylight-years."

Dugger smiled. "About what?"

"About you. About lots of things."

It was eleven A.M., three days after I'd watched Cheryl Duke die.

During that time Robin had left one message on the machine. Sorry I missed you. I'll try to call again. . . . No home number was listed for her friend Debby, and when I tried Debby's dental office, I got voice mail informing me the doctor was out for a week.

For three days my life had been stagnating, but Ben Dugger had traveled: from the ambulance I'd called, to the E.R. at St. John's, to three and a half hours of surgery—tying together blood vessels in his thigh—to recovery, then two nights in a private room at the hospital.

Now this place, bright yellow and vast and dim, the air sweet with cinnamon and antiseptic, lots of inlaid French furniture—everything ornate and antique except the bed, which was all function and much too small for the room. The IV stand, the bank of medical gizmos.

The room was on the third floor of his father's mansion. Doting nurses hovered round the clock, but he seemed mostly to want to rest.

I'd phoned yesterday to request permission, waited half a day for the call back from a woman who identified herself as Tony Duke's personal assistant's assistant, had been allowed through the copper gates an hour ago.

I'd driven up, sat scrutinized as the closed-circuit camera rotated for several minutes, then the tentacles parted and a mountainous bouncer type in a fudge brown suit stepped out and showed me where to park. When I exited the car he was there. Escorted me through a fern grove and a pine forest to the peach-colored, blue-roofed house. Stayed with me as we entered the building, exerting the merest pressure at my elbow, propelling me across an acre of black granite iced by two tons of Baccarat chandelier hanging three stories above, the entry hall commodious enough for a presidential convention. Flemish paintings, carved, gilded baseboards and moldings, gold velvet walls, the elevator cut so seamlessly into the plush fabric that I could've walked past it.

Finally, this room, with its canary-colored damask walls. Bad color for recuperation. Dugger looked jaundiced.

He coughed.

I said, "Need anything?"

Smiling again, he shook his head. Pillows surrounded him, a percale halo. His thin hair was plastered across his brow, and beneath the sallow-ness his skin tone was dirty snow. The IV taped to his arm dripped, and the instruments monitoring his vitals blinked and bleeped and graphed his mortality. The ceiling above him was a trompe 1'oeil grape arbor painted in garish hues. Silly in any context, but especially so now. If not for the way I felt, I might've smiled.

"Anyway," I said. "I just wanted to—"

"Whatever you think you did, you made up for it." He pointed shakily at his bandaged leg. Irving's stray bullet had passed through his thigh, nicked his femoral artery. I'd tied back the wound, stanched as much of the bleeding as I could, used the cell phone in the pocket of Irving's sweatpants to call 911.

"Not even close to a tie," I said. "If you hadn't shown up—"

"Hey, it's a soft science," he said. "Psychology. We study, we guess, sometimes we're right, other times ..." Weak smile.

The door opened, and Dr. Rene Maccaferri marched in. Those same appraising eyes. White lab coat over black turtleneck and slacks, pointy little lizardskin shoes on too-small feet. He looked like a goombah playing doctor, and I told myself I could be forgiven my theories.

Mr. Wrong.

Maccaferri ignored me, checked the monitors, approached Dugger's bedside. "They taking good care of you?"

"Too good, Rene."

"What's too good?"

"I'm not used to it."

"Try," Maccaferri told him. "I talked to the vascular surgeon. He'll be over today to look you over, monitor you for infection, make sure no thromboses. You look good to me, but better to make sure."

"Whatever you say, Rene. How's Dad?"

Maccaferri's thick, black, fuzzy-caterpillar brows knitted, and he glanced at me.

"It's okay, Rene."

"Daddy is about the same," said the doctor, turning to leave.

"Okay, Rene. Thanks. As always."

Maccaferri stopped at the door. "There's always, and there's always."

Dugger's eyes went moist.

When the door closed I said, "I'm sorry to add to your burden."

Both of us knew what I meant: Life had thrown him a double dose of grief. Anticipation of the loss to come, pining for the sister he'd never really gotten to know.

Meeting her, losing her.

He turned his head to the side and fought back tears. "I know the road to hell's paved with good intentions, but I'm one of those people who still takes intention into account. Whatever you did, it was because you cared about Lauren— My throat's a little dry, could you please hand me that7UP?"

I poured soda into a paper cup, held it to his lips.

He drank. "Thanks— How long did you actually treat her? Tell me about that&............