“If you could indulge me for just a moment longer, Dave,” Grace said smoothly. “I’d just like to establish the groundwork, you might say, for our future discussion.”

  I settled back into my chair, a gesture he rightly took as my permission to continue.

  “Now, that was the last hospitalization,” Grace said. “But not the first, I believe.”

  “Not the first,” I admitted. “When was the first time?”

  I immediately recalled the day before he’d been taken to Brigham, his explosive rage, the sound of water running in a bath upstairs while I sat, bouncing a red rubber ball, then Diana bursting, breathless, through the front door, a fearful gleam in her eyes, Where’s Dad?

  “I was five.”

  “Do you remember why he was committed?”

  “No.”

  “He wasn’t behaving in a bizarre fashion?”

  “Not any more than usual,” I said.

  “What do you remember about that first … intervention?”

  “Diana came home from school,” I said. “We hung around together all day.

  Then …” I stopped. “Then?”

  I saw it as if on film, a series of frozen movie frames. Diana sleeping in the chair beside my bed that same night, jerking awake each time she heard the Old Man’s footsteps in the hall. The arrival of two officials the next morning, one of them an older woman whose gray hair peeped out from beneath her cap. The Old Man led down the stairs and into a waiting car that had large white letters printed on its side. Diana and I hustled into a completely different car and taken to a ward of some sort, where there were other children.

  “Then they came and got him,” I said. “The next day.” I shrugged. “He may have done something that night.”

  “Gone out and done something,” Grace said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Something we never learned about. Maybe gone into town, done something. Who knows what? Like he did at the university. Screaming. Throwing rocks. Something threatening, so that someone called the authorities and they came and got him and took him to Brigham.”

  “How long was your father in Brigham?”

  “That first time? Three weeks.”

  Grace smiled softly. “Interesting to hear your family history.”

  “I get the feeling Mark has already given you my family history,” I said. “Yes,” Grace said. “But only in very general terms.” He reached for a leather-bound pad, opened it, then plucked a pen from his jacket pocket, a rosewood Montblanc. “What was your father’s diagnosis?” he asked.

  “Paranoid schizophrenia,” I said.

  Grace jotted the words in his pad. “And I understand the child was mentally ill as well?”

  So this was the line of dark causality Mark had drawn, and which I had already affirmed. It was in us, yes. It always would be.

  “Schizophrenia,” I answered. “Early onset.”

  Grace wrote this down, too, then looked up at me with an expression that struck me as genuinely sympathetic, even tender, the regard of the blessed for the cursed. “I’m glad you escaped it, Dave,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said, because nothing else seemed appropriate.

  “I think we all want to help your sister,” Grace said. “It’s really a matter of how best to do that.”

  “What does Mark think best?” I asked.

  “Is it up to Mark?” Grace asked. He looked at me pointedly. “Mark is a divorced man. He has no actual connection to Diana. You’re her brother. What do you propose?”

  He could not have asked a more paralyzing question, and he knew it. For what did I propose really, save to watch and wait? Which was exactly the proposition

  I offered, though less directly.

  “There’s no indication that Diana’s dangerous,” I said. “Really, Dave? Are you sure?”

  I knew Grace was getting at something, but I couldn’t tell what it was until he reached into his desk. “Mark was quite distracted after he spoke to you a few days ago. But that’s not why he called me, and that’s not why we’re having this conversation.” He handed me several sheets of paper. “It’s these,” he said. “He received these e-mails this morning. Each came separately over a period of five or six minutes. As you can see, they are quite disturbing.”

  One by one, I read the quotations Diana had sent him.

  How easily murder is discovered!

  Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, act ii, scene iii

  Murder most foul, as in the best it is,

  But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.

  Shakespeare, Hamlet, act i, scene v

  For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak

  With most miraculous organ.

  Shakespeare, Hamlet, act ii, scene ii

  One sin I know another doth provoke.

  Shakespeare, Pericles, act i, scene i

  I handed the papers back to Grace and labored to conceal how shaken I was by what Diana had done, how, in the final stages, the Old Man had done the same, spoken almost exclusively in quotations, as if he were but a helpless, wooden dummy, Shakespeare the ventriloquist, and if not him, then some other figure from the canon.

  “Murder. Foul. Unnatural.” Grace leveled his steady gaze upon me. “These are not pleasant words.”

  I nodded, but said nothing.

  “As you can imagine,” he added, “Mark finds such words very disturbing.

  They’re accusations, really. And threats. Particularly the last one.”

  “But only words,” I offered quietly.

  “Yes, only words,” Grace added. “For now. And so the question for Mark is, what next? But really, that question is not for Mark. It’s for you, Dave.”

  I was out of my league with Grace, and I knew it, and in his august presence I felt again as I had when I was a little boy, sitting at the dinner table, waiting for the Old Man’s question, certain I would not be able to answer it to his satisfaction.

  “I think you should be aware that this matter comes at a particularly difficult time for Mark,” Grace added. “He is near a breakthrough, and so his efforts at the moment are highly focused.” He looked at me sternly. “It would be a shame—in fact, Dave, it would be unacceptable—for him to be distracted.”

  Under Grace’s commanding gaze, I withered in the same way I’d withered beneath the Old Man’s intimidating glare. I dried up, became dust.

  “So, we have a dilemma,” Grace continued. “And really, Dave, the dilemma is for you. I’ll pose it as a question: What if Diana committed some act of actual aggression against Mark?”

  I had no answer to this question, so I simply waited for him to complete the circle.

  “You would come to her aid, would you not?” Grace asked. “You would act to help her. You would intervene.”

  He was asking for a pledge, my word that if Diana committed “some act of actual aggression,” I would join forces with him and Mark, do whatever had to be done to restrain her.

  “Yes,” I said. “I would.”

  Grace appeared satisfied with my answer. “She’s not currently under care, I understand.”

  “No, but I spoke to a psychiatrist about her.”

  “Really?” The pen perked up. “Who?”

  “Robert Santori.”

  Grace smiled broadly. “Ah, Robert. I know him. Good man.” The pen briefly skirted across the page then abruptly stopped. “What did Robert advise you to do?”

  “He wanted Diana to come in for a visit.”

  “Did you tell her that?”

  “Not yet, but I will.”

  Grace nodded softly, then closed the notebook. “Well, I don’t think there’s any need to belabor this matter any further, Dave,” he said. “We’re prepared to wait before taking any additional action.” He smiled. “I have no doubt that you’ll keep your part of the bargain.”

  “I’ll keep it,” I told him.

  Grace looked at me gravely. “I’m also sure you’ll do all you can to prevent Diana from endangering herself further.”

  “Yes,” I promised. “I will.”

  “Good,” Grace said. “Let’s hope Diana stays out of harm’s way.”

  Then, as if I were a schoolboy and he the beneficent headmaster, Grace walked me to the door, opened it, and with a soft nudge returned me to the dusty little playground of my life.

  Charlie was in his office when I arrived. He looked up from his desk as I walked by.

  “Dave, talk to you a minute?” he asked. I slumped at the door. “What is it?”

  “Ed Leary called,” Charlie said. “He wanted to know if you’d heard from Ethel about that latest offer.”

  “Actually, I haven’t made the offer yet.”

  Charlie looked as if he’d expected this answer, and that it confirmed other suspicions. “Why not, Dave?” he asked.

  My excuse was utterly empty. “I’ve had some problems, Charlie,” I said. “I’ve been …”

  “Distracted, yes, I know,” Charlie said. He leaned back in his chair. “Do you want to take off a few days?”

  I shook my head.

  “Do you want me to take over some of your cases?”

  “No, please, I’m sorry, Charlie,” I told him. “I’ll speak to Bill Carnegie right away, tell him what Ed’s decided.”

  “Actually, I think you should talk this whole thing over with Ed first,” Charlie said. “When he called, he told me about this blank-check-type deal he wanted to give Ethel. I don’t think it’s a very good idea.”

  “I know and—”

  “We are supposed to keep clients on the right track. That’s why they call us ‘counselors.’”

  “I know that, Charlie.”

  Charlie didn’t look entirely convinced, but at the same time he clearly didn’t want to pursue the point. He’d never been one to show his muscle, so I knew he had more concerns, and probably deeper ones, than just whether or not I’d sufficiently advised Ed Leary.

  “Okay, Dave,” he said.

  “I’m on it,” I assured him. “Ed Leary. Right away.”

  He was at his shop, leaning over a slab of granite, running his large hands over its polished surface.

  “People don’t like seams,” he said as I came over to him. “They think it’s disrespectful. So that means—”

  “Listen, Ed, I want to talk to you about that offer to Ethel,” I interrupted. “What about it?”

  “I don’t think you should give her a blank check like that,” I said. “Why not?” Ed asked. “You know how I feel.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t act on feeling,” I told him. “It can be dangerous.” He looked at me warily. “Dangerous?”

  “I think you should reconsider, that’s what I’m saying.”

  “And do what?”

  “Make another offer. A little more generous, if that’s what you prefer, but not a blank check.”

  Ed didn’t look convinced.

  “Step by step, Ed,” I added. “That’s the way to go.”

  Ed shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said hesitantly. “When I had that talk with Diana—”

  “Diana should keep her mouth shut,” I blurted sharply. Ed looked at me, stunned. “What?”

  “Diana’s not a lawyer,” I said hotly. “She shouldn’t be giving legal advice.” Now Ed looked genuinely hostile. “It wasn’t legal advice she was giving me,

  Dave,” he said. “It was advice about life, and she said that—”

  “Why do people listen to her?” I interrupted, now thinking how I’d listened to her, too, and that Patty had, and that there might be many, many more out there, rootless people, uncritical, easily undone … her victims. “She can be very seductive,” I added. “Especially with people who aren’t very …” I stopped abruptly, but Ed heard the word I didn’t speak.

  “Smart?” he asked. “People who aren’t very smart?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” I told him. “I just meant people who …” Ed’s gaze was pure steel, and it stopped me in my tracks.

  “I think you better go, Dave,” he said. I stared at him silently.

  “I don’t want you handling my case anymore,” he added. “Look, Ed, I didn’t mean …”

  “No,” Ed said firmly. “I don’t want you as my lawyer anymore.”

  I could see that his mind was made up. “All right,” I said. “Let me know who takes over the case. Your new lawyer, I mean. I’ll send your papers over to him.”

  Ed nodded coolly, but said nothing as I turned away.

  Nor did he say anything as I headed for the door, though I knew something must be building in him. I could feel it like a dark surge rising behind me. I’d reached the door and already opened it when it broke over me in a loud, accusatory call.

  “Diana deserves a better brother,” Ed yelled.

  But I could barely hear him over the roar of my own anger, soaked as I was in the flammable liquid of the day’s humiliations, a mere flicker, as it seemed to me, from explosion.

  You lift the forefinger of your right hand. “Fear.” Then you lift the forefinger of your left hand. “Anger.” You bring the two fingers together and entwine them. “It works like that in me.”

  You cannot discern the way in which those two foul streams at last flowed together. Their merging has been too long and too subtle, and so the backup eluded you, as did the annihilating torrent it was bound to release, like great falls shrouded in fog, all that violent churning beyond view, lost in a cloud of unknowing.

  “And Ed Leary brought this out?” Petrie asks. “Ed. Stewart Grace. All of it because of … her.”

  You recall the utter rage that swept over you, Diana in your face, interfering with your life, a dreadful intervention that dropped like a stone into the even flow of things, chaotic, disruptive, humiliating.

  “I was tired of it all,” you say. “Tired of having to …”

  “To what?”

  “Deal with her.”

  Petrie nods softly. “I see.”

  “So I decided to do something,” you tell him.

  “And that’s when you confronted her?” Petrie asks.

  You see it all again, the whole desperate scene, the two of you no longer seeing or hearing each other, both reduced to primitive bits of psychic flint, good for nothing but producing sparks, setting lives on fire.

  NINETEEN

  On the way back to the office, I glimpsed Diana’s car in the lot beside the library. She was no doubt inside, up in the little cubicle Adele had described, hunched over her books, using her own strange sorcery to build her case against Mark.

  I hurtled past, a little meteor determined to avoid the destructive gravity of her madness, now feeling no less threatened by it than Mark, and thus in league with him against her.

  Charlie was in court that afternoon, and so, with the exception of Dorothy and Lily, the office was empty. I took advantage of the lull to dive into the mass of paper that weighed down my in-box. I held my focus entirely on that purpose, reading letters and dictating responses.

  “This one is to Bill Carnegie,” I told Lily when I finally arrived at Ed’s file. “Dear Bill: Please be advised that my representation of Edward J. Leary in the matter of—”

  Dorothy appeared at the door. “This just came for you,” she said. “From your sister.”

  She stepped into my office and placed the package on my desk.

  I stared at it like a ticking bomb. “We’ll finish this later,” I told my secretary. I waited until she’d safely left the room then opened the package Diana had sent me.

  The stack of pages was almost a foot thick, and all written, as I noticed, on the Old Man’s battered Royal, though they were not his ravings. Instead, every word on these hundreds of pages had been written by Diana, essays on scores of famous writers, from the Greek dramatists, through Shakespeare and the Elizabethans, then to the poetry of Milton and Donne, and further on through the Romantics. She’d written on novelists, as well, Trollope and George Sand, Dickens and Melville, Hawthorne and George Eliot.

  I had no doubt it had taken Diana years to write these essays, years of rereading the texts and searching references on the Internet, doing all this scholarly work in the little snatches of time she allowed herself while the Old Man, and later Jason and Mark, slept in their separate rooms.

  She’d placed a white sheet of paper at the top of the stack, and there typed out her single sentence message: Offered in evidence that I’m not like Dad. These are not the disjointed, paranoid writings of a crazy person. Conclusion? I know what I’m doing, Davey.

  I knew that this was Diana’s way of explaining the dreadful quotations she’d e-mailed to Mark. She was saying that she wasn’t “like Dad” because she was perfectly aware of what she’d done, which was to let literature speak for her, and by that means assert the truth, though at a slant. In effect, she’d placed Shakespeare in the witness-box, let him lift his arm, point toward Mark, mouth a timeless truth, For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak / With most miraculous organ, using the Great Bard as her voice, voicing what she knew.

  But what did she know? I asked myself as I returned Diana’s writings to the box. Nothing. What real evidence did she have? None.

  And yet she’d taken a dangerously crazy step down the accusatory road she’d been following since Jason’s death. I had no doubt that she’d take another one as well, and another and another, maliciously and obsessively focused on the one name she’d placed on her enemies list. For now, only one. But the list would grow, I decided. Like Dad, she would add other names to it, people in league with Mark, people bent upon concealing what he’d done, protecting him from the consequences of it. In my mind I saw her tap, tap, tapping at the Old Man’s Royal, adding name after name, Bill Carnegie, Stewart Grace. It would not take long, I knew, until she added mine.

  I knocked at the door of Diana’s apartment a little past eight. There was a rustle behind it, a shuffle of papers, the screech of a chair across bare floor, footsteps. Then the door opened, but cautiously, a single eye staring at me from a narrow slant of light.