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considering his next words. 'Forgive me if this sounds tactless. But it seems you're free to leave Boston without uprooting anyone, including yourself. This may be your time for something new.'
    Darrow smiled a little. 'Whose idea
was
this, Lionel''
    Farr gave him an ironic smile of his own. 'Mine. But the last idea I had about your life turned out pretty well.'
    'Except when it didn't,' Darrow answered mildly. But that was not Farr's doing. In all but one respect'that which had come to matter most'Darrow was the luckiest man he knew. His debt to Caldwell College, it seemed, was indistinguishable from his debt to Lionel Farr.
    As if reading his thoughts, Farr spoke quietly: 'There's no place where you could make such a difference. In a few years, you could give our college what it needs. Perhaps you need that as well.'
    Darrow sorted through the jumble of his thoughts, the minefield of memory. The apogee of his young life, and his greatest trauma until Lee's death, had occurred at Caldwell College in the space of sixteen hours. Perhaps that was why he had never returned. 'Do you ever visit Steve Tillman'' Darrow asked.
    This seemingly irrelevant question would have puzzled anyone but Farr. 'On rare occasions. These days we struggle for subjects. As you'd expect, it's very sad.'
    Despite his own guilt, Darrow heard no rebuke. The two men lapsed into silence.
    Darrow finished his martini, feeling its initial jolt filter slowly through his system. 'Give me a day or two, Lionel. You took me by surprise, and there's a lot for me to sift through. And remember.'
    Farr's eyes held understanding and compassion. 'Perhaps more than anyone, I know. That morning we stood at the Spire, looking down at her, is something no one could forget. Certainly not the two of us.'

PART I
The Shadow

1
    S
    IXTEEN YEARS LATER, D ARROW'S MEMORY OF THAT TERRIBLE night and morning remained as fresh as yesterday, as disorienting as the aftershock of a nightmare.
    Moments after ringing the great brass bell, he had descended from the Spire, less triumphant than grateful for his release from its stifling gloom. For a while he was caught up in the jubilation of the crowd. Then he headed for a celebration at the Delta Beta Epsilon house, his pleasure fading into a slightly melancholy sense of life's transience.
    What the campus called fraternity row was, in fact, a grassy oval, surrounded by red-brick houses. Sheltered by trees, each house varied in style: one had filigreed balconies reminiscent of a New Orleans mansion; another reflected the Georgian revival; two had pillars that evoked southern plantations; still another, the greatest departure, resembled a suburban ranch house. The DBE house was a mixture of styles. Three stories high, it had a small portico at one side as its entrance, and steps in the rear that rose from a parking lot to a generous porch. At the front were six tall windows through which brothers congregating in the living room could monitor the abode of their fiercest adversaries, the SAEs, whose stone lions, situated by the front steps like sentries, stared fiercely across the oval.
    For Mark, the sight of the lions summoned a memory shared by only one other person. After the Ohio Lutheran game two years before, he and Steve Tillman, armed with tear gas canisters, had gassed the second floor of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house at four A.M. This act of daring, attributed in legend to suspects as varied as students from Ohio Lutheran and a local motorcycle gang, had caused a cluster of SAEs to flee the house, weeping and vomiting, as the two adrenalized perpetrators watched from DBE's darkened living room. Reaching the house, Mark wondered what memories
this
night would bring.
    On the lawn, Mark passed a band of would-be athletes'his fraternity brothers, fueled by beer'playing a desultory game of touch football. Declining their shouted invitation to join them with a wave and a smile, Mark entered the house. Though it was not yet six o'clock,