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should I know what they would or wouldn't do," she said. "All I know is that he was the only one who believed me, and now he's dead."
    "I'm sorry."
    "Sure you're sorry," she said. "Everyone's sorry now. That doesn't help me live with it. Hearing his footsteps in the hall at night. All those games we played when I was little." Her voice had developed a girlish singsong quality. "Bouncing on his lap. A game for me. Masturbation for him."
    The harsh thought crossed my mind that she was rehearsing lines for a court appearance. "You just forgot all this until now?" My question brought the cold tone back.
    "It happens to a lot of us women," she said. "Even in families that seem picture-perfect on the outside." She looked at me hard. "In your shoes, with your history, I'd take a look in my own mirror. I doubt you'll find the risen Christ among the men in your family. And don't overlook your precious Maximilian Harding. He's no different than the rest of them." She stood up, flung the bloody rag into the trash can, and marched out of the office, leaving me no time to smooth things over.
    "I have nothing to do with Max," I called out after her. Silence.
    Nice work, Cassandra. If golf doesn't pan out, you've got a real future in the helping professions.
    Ten minutes later, unable to tolerate further procrastination, I followed Kaitlin back into the pro shop. News crews from Channel 14, Channel 8, and Channel 2 had arranged themselves in a circle, covered wagon-style, outside the door. Technicians had wrapped wires around the wrought-iron hitching posts in front of the door, and halogen spotlights rested on the chowder pot and the cannon. The area was lit up like a ballfield at night. Four anchor-people shouted questions at Kaitlin. I let myself out the back door and slunk around the adjacent building, past the locker rooms, to eavesdrop.
    "Can you tell us something about the details of the sexual abuse?" asked one anchor, her face composed into a mask of concern in distinct contrast to her intrusive questions. "Did you remember this in the process of psychotherapy or had it come up before you contacted Dr. Bencher?"
    "Did your doctor make suggestions that your father had abused you?"
    "Do you have any ideas about who murdered Dr. Bencher? Did he have any enemies that you were aware of?"
    "How will Bencher's death affect the lawsuit against your father?"
    In spite of my instinctive dislike for this girl, I felt a rush of sympathy. The bright lights of the cameras washed her features out to shadows. With her eyes wide and her mouth open in confusion, she looked young and lost. Even so, I had to believe she would lash out at anyone who had the misguided urge to try to help her get her bearings.
    Now there was a conflict a good shrink could seize upon. Unless, of course, your shrink was lying in the morgue with a bullet hole in his carotid artery.
    I jumped in alarm when Odell tapped me on the shoulder. "Your junior clinic golfers are here," he said. "I'd suggest you start early and get them away from this zoo." I nodded, ashamed to be caught snooping.
    I developed a hunch early on in the session that the seven kids Odell had me working with had been sprung from an expensive reform school just that morning. For the next hour, I was too busy to worry any more about either Kaitlin's dilemma or my own whopping failure as peer counselor.
    "Swing it like a baseball bat," I told Angela, a chunky girl with pigtails and a broad band of freckles across her nose. "Slow it down at the top just long enough that a bird could sit and rest for a minute on your club. Then let her rip." Angela coiled up and belted a shot out past the fifty-yard marker. "Good girl," I said. "Now you're getting the hang of it!"
    I left her to separate James and Joshua, twins with a death wish who were using their nine-irons to conduct a sword fight. They weren't bad kids, I had to remind myself, just a little swollen with overprivilege and dangerous to themselves and others