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her heels clipping purposefully toward the stairs. Bobby took my arm and the two of us moved out into the hallway.
    Derek was apparently still having trouble believing this was happening. "Is she going to be O.K.?"
    Dr. Kleinert murmured a reply, but I couldn't hear what it was.
    Bobby steered me into a room across the hall and closed the door. "Let's stay out of the way. We'll go downstairs in a bit." He rubbed at the fingers of his bad hand as if it were a talisman. The drag in his voice was back.
    The room was large, with deep-set windows looking out onto the rear of the property. The wall-to-wall carpeting was white, a dense cut-pile so recently vacuumed that I could see Bobby's footprints in places. His double bed seemed diminutive in a room that was probably thirty feet square, with a large dressing room opening off to the left and what was apparently a bathroom beyond that. A television set rested on an antique pine blanket-chest at the foot of the bed. On the wall to my right was a long built-in desk with a white Formica surface. An IBM Selectric II and the keyboard, monitor, and printer for a home computer were lined up along its length. The bookshelves were white Formica too, filled almost exclusively with medical texts. There was a sitting area in the far corner; two overstuffed chairs and an ottoman covered in a plaid fabric of rust, white, and slate blue. The coffee table, reading lamp, books and magazines stacked nearby suggested that this was where Bobby spent his leisure time.
    He went to an intercom on the wall and pressed a button.
    "Callie, we're starving up here. Could you send us a tray? There are two of us and we'll need some white wine too."
    I could hear a hollow clattering in the background: dishes being loaded into the dishwasher. "Yes, Mr. Bobby. I'll have Alicia bring something up."
    "Thank you."
    He limped over to one of the chairs and sat down. "I eat when I'm anxious. I've always done that. Come sit down. Shit, I hate this house. I used to love it. When I was a kid, it was great. Places to run. Places to hide. A yard that went on forever. Now it feels like a cocoon. Insulated. But it doesn't keep bad stuff out. It feels cold. Are you cold?"
    "I'm fine," I said.
    I sat down in the other chair. He pushed the ottoman over and I put my feet up. I wondered what it must be like to live in a house like this where all of your needs were tended to, where someone else was responsible for grocery shopping and food preparation, cleaning, trash removal, landscape maintenance. What did it leave you free to do? "What's it like coming from money like this? I can't even imagine it."
    He hesitated, lifting his head.
    In the distance, we could hear the ambulance approach, the siren reaching a crescendo and then winding down abruptly with a whine of regret. He glanced at me, dabbing self-consciously at his chin. "You think we're spoiled?" The two halves of his face seemed to give contradictory messages: one animated, one dead.
    "How do I know? You live a lot better than most," I said.
    "Hey, we do our share. My mother does a lot of fund raising for local charities and she's on the board for the art museum and the historical society. I don't know about Derek. He plays golf and hangs out at the club. Well, that's not fair. He has some investments he looks after, which is how they met. He was the executor for the trust my grandfather left me. Once he and Mom got married, he left the bank. Anyway, they support a lot of causes so it's not like they're just self-indulgent, grinding the poor underfoot. My mother launched the Santa Teresa Girls' Club just about single-handedly. The Rape Crisis Center too."
    "What about Kitty? What does she do with herself besides get loaded?"
    He looked at me carefully. "Don't make judgments. You don't know what any of us has been through."
    "You're right. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound quite so righteous. Is she in private school?"
    He shook his head. "Not anymore. They moved her over