“So I tried to wean him from me, having him talk to other psychologists and seeing him less often. I probably should have had him transferred to another facility altogether, but his conduct with me didn’t seem to change, at least on the surface. Because of his feelings for me, he couldn’t let himself think the fault was mine. He couldn’t believe that I had made a decision to reject him. So he blamed my wife and daughter. Not all at once, of course. But over a period of a few months he started believing that, without them in his path, I’d have no hesitation about adopting him. I see now it was a mistake to live at the school. I don’t mean that ironically. By living there I wanted to present an example of what a home could be. I didn’t realize it could make some of the children envious and bitter. With Stanley, it made him murderous. He thought he could set a fire that would kill Meg and Lily but that would also seem accidental, so he wouldn’t be blamed.”

“That’s awful,” said Kate.

“Yes,” said Hawthorne. He thought how in his many retellings of this story he had simplified it until it was just the bare bones of what had really happened. He wondered if he would ever tell Kate the more complete version and he looked at her quickly, her cheeks flushed from their walk, her black hair damp along the scalp line, her red coat unzipped and fluttering in the breeze. He found her very pretty, and his response to this was guilt.

“And how were you burned?”

Again Hawthorne presented the censored account. “Our quarters were separated from the rest of the school by a hallway. The fire started around ten at night. I’d been at a dinner meeting . . .” He paused, recalling Chip’s remark about “the cute psychologist.” Claire de Lune. Certainly Kate would realize that Claire was missing from the story. “Stanley knew that, of course. When I got back, the building was on fire. The hallway was burning. I tried to get through and . . .” Hawthorne raised his arm as if gesturing with the scar tissue itself. “But I couldn’t. Luckily, a fireman dragged me out.”

“How terrible.” They had stopped and Kate was staring at him.

For a moment it seemed that Hawthorne could see the flames, could even hear Meg’s screams. No, it wasn’t simply screaming, it was his name she was screaming.

“My wife and daughter died of smoke inhalation, mercifully, I expect.”

Another lie. Hawthorne looked at the multicolored leaves at his feet and thought he would fall, tumble out of sanity into a deep and benign unconsciousness. He took hold of himself. But he thought, Wouldn’t falling be better in the long run? Wouldn’t it stop all this thinking? And suddenly in his recollection he saw Meg and Lily as they had appeared in the picture on his desk—standing before the Christmas tree in their matching green robes. Who had put it there?

They were at the edge of the parking lot and began walking again. It was approaching five-thirty.

“If something ever happened to Todd,” said Kate, “I don’t think I’d get over it.”

Hawthorne nodded. Many people told him things like that.

“I don’t expect I have, at least not yet. Now I’m in a different place, a different part of the country. And time, you know, makes a difference, just like they say. You think it never will, but things fade. Their faces aren’t as clear to me now.” Hawthorne stopped. It wouldn’t do to weep. He watched two chipmunks pursuing each other around the base of an old oak. He heard chickadees. Ahead of him he saw the white bell tower on top of Emerson Hall. He had heard that the view from up there was breathtaking. They began passing between the parked cars. Hawthorne was still looking at the ground, while Kate was watching him, trying to read his expression. As a result, neither of them saw Chip Campbell until he was about six feet away. He wore an old leather jacket and he was swaying slightly.

“I forgot to give you something before I left,” said Chip. “It’s for your book.”

Hawthorne had just time enough to see that the other man was drunk before Chip hit him in the jaw, knocking him against a parked car so he banged his head on the door.

“Chip, don’t!” Kate screamed at the same time.

Hawthorne was on his hands and knees staring down at the asphalt. His glasses had fallen off. There was shouting that he couldn’t understand. Looking up into the unfocused blur, he thought he saw not Chip but Frank LeBrun in his white jacket. LeBrun was holding someone. There was a loud grunt. Hawthorne felt around for his glasses, then found them and put them on. Looking up again, he saw that LeBrun had grabbed Chip around the neck and was holding him tight, choking him.

“Stop it!” said Kate.

Hawthorne, still dazed, got to his feet, pulling himself up by grabbing the back bumper of a pickup. He couldn’t understand where LeBrun had come from.

LeBrun shook Chip, then, holding him with one hand, brought the other back in a fist.

“Stop it,” said Kate. “Jim, make him stop.”

Chip raised an arm to protect himself but LeBrun hit him in the nose. Hawthorne swayed toward LeBrun, wiping the blood from his face.

“Frank, stop!” he called. Hawthorne grabbed LeBrun and dragged him back.

Ferociously, LeBrun turned on him. There were splotches of blood on LeBrun’s white jacket.

“Are you going to beat me too, Frank?” Hawthorne managed to say, speaking as calmly as he could. He was close enough to smell the garlic on LeBrun’s breath.

LeBrun’s brow contorted with fierce intention. From somewhere out of sight, Chip was groaning.

“That’s enough, don’t you think, Frank?” asked Hawthorne.

LeBrun seemed about to say something, then abruptly turned away and stared off toward the woods with his back to them all.

Hawthorne put a hand on LeBrun’s shoulder. “That’s all right. You got excited.”

LeBrun jerked away and Hawthorne again put his hand on the man’s shoulder.

After a moment LeBrun said, “Dumb, you know? I just don’t catch on.”

“What do you mean?” asked Hawthorne. “You were trying to help. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“What d’you call a Canuck with an IQ of 167?”

Hawthorne didn’t answer and LeBrun said nothing else but kept staring at the woods. Kate had given Chip a handkerchief. He knelt on the asphalt and wiped the blood from his nose. The sleeve of his leather jacket was torn. “Jesus, Jesus,” he kept repeating.

PART TWO

Five

High against the sky the scaffolding of weathered two-by-fours around the bell tower of Emerson Hall formed a web of crisscrossing lines the same gray color as the overhanging clouds. At the corners of the rooftop, the crude alligatorlike gargoyles dribbled raindrops, and the scaffolding rose above the roof like a cage. Kevin Krueger, as he stood next to his State of New Hampshire Ford Taurus, found the scene oppressive. For Jim Hawthorne, however, the scaffolding was a source of celebration.

“I’ve spoken to groups from Plymouth down to Laconia,” he was saying. “Kiwanis, Rotary, Lions. And I’ve written to alumni. I hadn’t a hope of starting these repairs before spring, but then the gifts began to come in. Not a lot, but enough to get started.”

“I’m impressed,” said Krueger, trying to put enthusiasm into his voice.

“If we’d waited, there could have been water damage up in the attic rooms. Now it should be watertight before the snow starts, though we had flurries just the other day.”

It was midmorning on Monday, November 9, and Kevin Krueger had just driven up from Concord. Officially, he was here to look at the school for the Department of Education, but he also wanted to see his ex-teacher and friend, from whom his only communication had been a phone call in September, then a postcard at the beginning of October making an obscure reference to the successes of Sisyphus. It was nearly seven weeks since he had last seen Hawthorne, and in that time Hawthorne appeared to have lost about ten pounds and aged five years. His face was even more angular and the hollows in his cheeks were small pockets of shadow.