“Just tell me about today,” Grantham said. “Tell me the rest of it.”

I pictured Grace: the heat of her skin beneath my palm, the fierce resentment, the undertones of something more. I knew what this cop was looking for. He had his story from Grace and wanted corroboration; to hell with objectivity. Part of me wanted to give it to him. Why? Because screw it.

“I rubbed lotion on her back. She kissed me. She said that she hates me.” I looked Grantham in the eye. “She ran away.”

“Did you chase her?” Grantham asked.

“It wasn’t that kind of running away.”

“It doesn’t sound like the kind of reunion most would expect, either.”

My voice came low and hard. “Thinking that I raped Grace Shepherd is like saying I raped my own daughter.”

Grantham did not blink. “Yet, daughters are raped with great consistency by their fathers, Mr. Chase.”

I knew that he was right. “It’s not like it sounds,” I said. “She was angry at me.”

“Why?” Grantham asked.

“Because I left her. She was making a point.”

“What else?”

“She said that she had lots of boyfriends. She wanted me to know that. She wanted me to hurt, too, I think.”

“Are you saying that she’s promiscuous?” Grantham asked.

“I’m not saying anything like that. How would I know something like that?”

“She told you.”

“She also kissed me. She was hurt. She was lashing out. I was her family and I left her when she was fifteen years old.”

“She’s not your daughter, Mr. Chase.”

“That’s irrelevant.”

Grantham looked at Robin, then back at me. He clasped his hands in front of his waist. “Very well. Go on.”

“She was wearing a white bikini and sunglasses. Nothing else. She was wet, just out of the river. When she ran away, she ran south along the bank. There’s a trail that’s been there forever. It leads to Dolf’s house, about a mile down.”

“Did you assault Ms. Shepherd?”

“I did not.”

Grantham pursed his lips. “Okay, Mr. Chase. That’ll do for now. We’ll speak again later.”

“Am I a suspect?” I asked.

“I rarely speculate on such things this early in an investigation. However, Detective Alexander has stated, quite emphatically, that she does not believe you capable.” He paused, looked at Alexander, and I saw flakes of dried skin on his glasses. “Of course, I have to consider the fact that you and Detective Alexander apparently have some kind of relationship. That complicates matters. We’ll have a better idea about all of this once we can speak to the victim”-he caught himself-“to Grace.”

“When will that be?” I asked.

“Just waiting for the doctor to clear it.” Grantham’s cell phone chirped and he looked at the caller ID. “I need to get this.” He answered the phone and walked away. Robin moved next to me, yet I found it hard to look at her. It was like she had two faces: the one I saw above me in the half-light of her bedroom and the one I’d seen most recently, the cop.

“I shouldn’t have tested you,” she said.

“No.”

“I apologize.”

She stood in front of me, and her face was the softest I’d seen since my return. “It’s complicated, Adam. For five years, all I’ve had is the job. I take it seriously. I’m good at it but it’s not all good. Not all the time.”

“What do you mean?”

“You get isolated. You see shadows.” She shrugged, dug deeper for the explanation. “Even the good guys will lie to a cop. Eventually, you get used to it. Then you start to expect it.” She was struggling. “I know it’s not right. I don’t like it either, but it’s who I am. It’s what I became when you left.”

“You never doubted me, Robin, not even during the worst of it.”

She reached for my hand. I let her take it.

“She was so innocent,” I said. I spoke of Grace.

“She’ll get over this, Adam. People get over worse.”

But I was already shaking my head. “I’m not talking about what happened today. I’m talking about when I left. When she was a child. It was like a light came off of her. That’s what Dolf used to say.”

“How so?”

“He said that most people walk in light and dark. That’s the way the world usually works. But some people carry the light with them. Grace was like that.”

“She’s not the child you remember, Adam. She hasn’t been for a long time.”

There was something in Robin’s voice. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“About six months ago, a state trooper caught her doing one-twenty down the interstate at two in the morning on a stolen motorcycle. She wasn’t even wearing a helmet.”

“Was she drunk?” I asked.

“No.”

“Was she prosecuted?”

“Not for stealing the bike.”

“Why not?”

“It was Danny Faith’s bike. I guess he didn’t know that she’s the one who took it. He reported it stolen but wouldn’t press charges. They locked her up, but the D.A. dropped the case. Dolf hired a lawyer to handle the speeding charge. She lost her license.”

I could picture the bike, a big Kawasaki that Danny had had forever. Grace would be very small on it, but I could see her, too: the speed, the torrent of noise, and her hair straight out behind her. Like she’d looked the first time she’d ridden my father’s horse.

Fearless.

“You don’t know her,” I said.

“A hundred and twenty miles an hour, Adam. Two in the morning. No helmet. It took the patrolman five miles to catch up with her.”

I thought of Grace now, damaged in one of those antiseptic rooms behind me. I rubbed at my eyes. “What am I supposed to feel, Robin? You’ve seen this before.”

“Anger. Emptiness. I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?”

She shrugged. “It’s never been someone I love.”

“And Grace?”

Her eyes were impregnable. “I’ve not known Grace for some time, Adam.”

I was silent, thinking of Grace’s words on the dock.

Who else cared about me?

“Are you okay?” Robin asked.

I was not, not even close. “If I could find the guy that did this, I’d kill him.” I showed her my eyes. “I would kill that motherfucker dead.”

Robin looked around; no one was close. “Don’t say that, Adam. Not here. Not ever.”

Grantham finished his phone call and met us at the hospital door. We walked in together. Dolf and my father were speaking to the attending physician. Grantham interrupted them.

“Can we see her yet?”

The doctor was a young, earnest-looking man with black-framed glasses and a thin nose. He seemed small and prematurely bent; he held a clipboard against his chest as if it could armor him from the injuries that surrounded him. His voice was surprisingly firm.

“Physically, she’s sound enough. But I don’t know that she’ll be responsive. She has not really said anything since she came in, except for once in the first hour. She asked for somebody named Adam.”

People turned as one: my father, Dolf, Robin, and Detective Grantham. Eventually, the doctor looked at me as well. “Are you Adam?” he asked. I nodded, and my father’s mouth opened in the silence. The doctor looked uncertain. “Maybe if you spoke to her…”

“We need to speak to her first,” Grantham said.

“Very well,” the doctor said. “I will need to be in the room as well.”

“No problem.”

The doctor led us down a narrow hall with empty gurneys along the wall. We rounded a corner and he stopped next to a pale wooden door with a small window in it. I caught a glimpse of Grace under a thin blanket.

“The rest of you wait out here,” he said, then held the door for the detectives.

Cool air moved against my face and then they were inside. Dolf and my father watched through the window while I paced small circles and thought of the last thing Grace had said to me. Five minutes later the door opened. The doctor looked at me.

“She’s asking for you,” he said.

I started for the door, but Grantham stopped me with a hand against my chest. “She wouldn’t speak to us. We’ve agreed to let you in because the doc here thinks it will help her snap out of it.” I met his gaze and held it. “Don’t do anything to make me regret this.”