Hardy killed a minute lifting a perfect backbone out of the whole sea bass he’d ordered for lunch. Hardy had cabbed back from Glass’s office and picked up Glitsky in front of the Hall of Justice, thinking maybe some great Greek food would cheer them both up. But so far, halfway through the meal, it wasn’t working too well.

They’d covered Zachary’s situation on the drive over. The doctors were recommending a few more days in the hospital before proceeding to the next operation to replace the dura mater early the next week. The boy had apparently recognized everybody in the family on the visit last night, going so far as to reach out and poke his sister, who’d come along to the hospital for the first time, in the arm, after which he’d broken into a short-lived smile. He still hadn’t spoken yet, which everyone agreed might be a little worrisome-Glitsky loved the word, worrisome!-but his other motor skills had clearly improved. The diagnosis had moved from critical to guarded, and the general tone of the medical team was one of optimism.

Although very little of that optimism had rubbed off on Abe.

The usually glib Hardy kept his peace as he squeezed lemon on his fish. Self-loathing was about the last reaction he’d ever expected to run into from his hard-assed longtime best friend. Glitsky hadn’t before harbored too many doubts about who he was or what he was all about.

Or if he did, he didn’t show it.

Now Zachary’s accident seemed to have unleashed a pride of demons set upon undermining his confidence and self-respect.

Hardy chewed, then put his fork down. “You know,” he began, “I was the one who changed Michael’s diaper before I put him in bed that last night. I had all the time in the world to lift the side of the crib. I mean, there I was, leaning over the damn thing, tucking him in. It was halfway up and all I had to do was stand and pull it up the rest of the way. Easiest thing in the world. Piece of cake. Unfortunately, the thought never crossed my mind.”

Glitsky put his iced tea down halfway to his mouth. “Unfortunately. Think that’s strong enough?”

Hardy’s heart thumped in his chest with an unexpected jolt of rage that it took several seconds to control. Finally, he let out a breath. “It’s how I’ve come to see it, Abe. It’s what I’ve had to get to so I could live with it. You think I’ve been lying to myself all these years?”

“You said it yourself-the thought never crossed your mind.”

Hardy took a sip of his club soda, picking his way with care. “So you’re standing there being a good dad, taking Zack out on his new bike. You get him settled on the seat and think, ‘Oh, yeah, the helmet…’ ”

Glitsky cut him off, his volume up a notch. “I know what I did.”

“I don’t know if you do.”

“Don’t push me, Diz. I mean it.”

Hardy drew a breath. “I’m not pushing you. I’m saying you didn’t do anything that caused it. The thought never crossed your mind.”

“It should have.”

“Why? Anything remotely like that ever happen before? You’ve got to think of every single contingency that can happen? If that were true, you’d never let your kids out of your sight. Ever. Hell, you might not let ’em get out of bed because something might happen.”

“Something did happen.”

“You didn’t make it happen.”

“I could have prevented it. If I’d have thought-”

Hardy put a flat palm on the table between them. “If you’d have thought,” he said. “But there was no reason you should have. Nothing like that had ever happened before. Next time, okay, you’ll think to put the helmet on first. But not thinking of it then wasn’t negligence, Abe. It was a freak accident. You could do everything exactly the same a thousand times and nothing bad would ever happen again. It wasn’t your fault.”

Glitsky sat hunched forward over his plate. Their table was by a window and he glared out at the blustering day. Finally, he came back to Hardy, seemed to force the words out one at a time. “How can it not be my fault when he was my responsibility? If it happens on my watch, I’m at fault.”

“This isn’t police bureaucracy, Abe. This is your life.”

“Being a cop is my life.”

“Don’t give me that shit. Being a cop is what you do. The rest of you is your life. The problem you’ve got here is this really happened to you, to your boy. So you’re both victims of it. And since the one thing you won’t do, ever, is be a victim, that leaves you holding the bag and taking responsibility for it. ’Cause that’s who you are. That’s what you do. It’s automatic.”

Glitsky spit it out. “It’s not wrong either.”

“I’m not saying it is. Not all the time, not usually. But this once, this one time, it’s beating you down when you’re going to need to be strong, when Treya and Rachel and even poor fucking attorneys like me need you to get over it so your troops don’t go riding roughshod over their cases. You didn’t do this. You didn’t cause it. It happened, that’s all. You’re a victim of that, okay, fine. Legitimately. But that doesn’t make you any kind of unworthy human, not if you don’t let it.”

Glitsky’s scar burned white through his lips. His heavy brows hung like a precipice over hooded eyes, which remained fixed on the plate before him and refused to meet Hardy’s, who thought it wasn’t impossible that his friend would suddenly either physically explode at him across the table or throw something and storm out. Instead, though, the eyes came up. “You done?”

“Pretty much.”

Glitsky nodded. “I’ll give it some thought.”

It was a bit of an extra drive-several other churches, and even St. Mary’s Cathedral, were closer to her house-but Maya Townshend felt a special energy connecting her with St. Ignatius, the church at the edge of the USF campus, and it was where she had driven now. She needed all the divine intervention she could get, and here is where she most often came to pray for forgiveness. Those prayers she had prayed here had, for the most part, been answered.

Answered in the form of Joel and her life with him. Their healthy family. Their wonderful home and financial security. If God had not forgiven her, surely he would not have showered such beneficence upon her.

Or so she had come to believe.

But now she was suddenly not so sure. She knew that killing was a mortal sin and wondered if God’s apparent acceptance of her penance and prayers was really just the first stage in a punishment that would strip from her all that she loved and cherished. If, because of all this, if she lost Joel now, or the children, or even their home and fortune, it would be far more devastating than if she’d never known such love and contentment. God demanded justice as well as he dispensed mercy. The Church taught that there was no sin that God would not forgive, and that the failure to believe that was the worst sin of all-despair. God’s mercy was infinite. But the key to any claim to that mercy was confession. And she could not confess.

She could never confess.

And that truth, she believed, stood to damn her for eternity.

A regular here, she went to her usual back pew and knelt, making the sign of the cross, then bringing her hands together and bowing her head.

But no prayers would come. Her mind kept returning to the lies she had told Joel just last night; the lies she’d been living now for so long; the truths that were even worse.

The padded wooden rail on which she knelt had a gap in the middle of the pew, and after only a minute of attempting to pray she moved down and again went to her knees, but directly onto that gap now, putting all of her weight onto it, offering up the pain even as it shot up her leg and became nearly unbearable.

“Please, God. Please, please forgive me. I am so, so sorry.”

She raised her head and through tearful eyes tried to focus on the crucifix above the altar far away up front, on the suffering of Christ.