“Move it up higher, Georgie. Move your hand a little higher. Reach, buddy. Reach!”

My fingers closed around a branch of some kind, something that bit into my palm but was anchored to the ground. I started the swing. My legs moved, but not together.

Slowly I worked each one around like the hands on a clock.

“That’s it. Keep going, guy. Keep it up.” McFetridge’s voice had dropped to an encouraging whisper. “You’re almost there.”

The idea was to spin my body, get my head uphill from my feet.

I inched around until I could see him. He was hanging off a bush himself, hanging with his right arm, reaching down toward me with his left. If that bush pulled out of the hillside, he was gone. All of his weight would propel him like a missile into the boulders below.

Was McFetridge risking his life to save me? But he wasn’t saving me, was he? He was there and I was here, and at least ten feet of sloped earth was between us.

I had to let go of the root if I was going to get to him. Did I want to do that? He wanted me to. Why? Because he knew I couldn’t.

I tore into the dirt with my fingers. I balanced one foot on a rock that I had to trust would stay in place. I pushed the side of my face into the hill and tried to dig it in as though somehow my skin would create some adhesion, and I spun slowly and deliberately, and all the time McFetridge kept calling to me, telling me I was almost there, that I was going to make it.

He reached, I reached. I touched his fingers. Our hands crept over each other and I grabbed his wrist.

9

.

THE TWO OF US LAY ON OUR BACKS. STARING STRAIGHT UP AT THE sky. What we could see of it. In between the branches there were swabs of gray growing ever darker. Night had not completely fallen, but it was close. We could not stay here any longer, but we could not move, either. At least I couldn’t.

“Why did you jump, George?”

“Because you were shooting at me.”

“Me? Shoot at you? With what?”

“What did you have in that bag you brought? I heard metal clunking around.”

“What did you think it was, a gun? I brought fucking beers, you asshole. Then you pissed me off so much I forgot all about them.”

“So where are they now?”

“Where? I imagine they’re where I dropped them when I heard the shots.”

“You heard the shots? All the way back in the hot tub?” I meant to sound cynical. I was probably too spent to pull it off.

“I was on the trail, coming after you. Because I was sitting there after you left, thinking why the fuck would you do this to me? Be the family’s little errand boy, run out here to check on me, see if I’m still being loyal? And I’m saying to myself, hey, you’re loyal to anyone, it should be to me, for fuck sake.”

Loyal to him. Guy who hadn’t so much as called me since the day we graduated from college.

“And then I keep thinking about it and I realize, wait, you’re not really accusing me, so why am I acting the way I am? I mean, it wasn’t as though you lied to me or anything about what you’re doing here. And suddenly it all started making sense.”

It didn’t to me, whatever he was saying, and I didn’t have the energy to piece it together. I was thinking about the beers, how much I would like to have one.

“I mean,” he said, apparently wanting some reassurance, “it’s like that Florida thing, right?”

What was? Did I get that question out? I must have, because he was answering it.

“Somebody makes a claim against them, it’s not as though the family’s going to hire a hit man or anything. That’s not the way they do things. They got a problem, they put someone in the right place to take care of it.”

He meant me. Being put in the right place.

“It’s just that this one, you know, I thought this one had been taken care of a long time ago. And then I’m thinking, okay, so something must have happened besides that stupid list of crew members the girl’s father was waving around a few years back. Something’s come up and Mitchell White has got to act like he’s doing something about it. So he sends you. I mean, that’s the reason the family’s got you working where you are, in case a problem like this came up.”

I lay even stiller than before. A man in the dirt in a faraway place, having just been told his function in life.

“Which means I shouldn’t be treating you like you’re the fucking enemy or something.”

I’m not the enemy. I’m the Gregorys’ errand boy. I’m one of the beagles they keep in their kennel.

“So that’s what got me out of the tub, running after you.” He shifted his position, lifting himself up onto his forearm.

“I was just trying to apologize for getting defensive like I did. Because all you’re doing is what you’re supposed to be doing. Talk to Cory, talk to the boys, to Jason, to me. Check things off. Everything’s fine, everybody goes on about their business. I didn’t have to get all pissed off like I did. That’s what I was coming to tell you.”

He was telling me something else, as well, although he didn’t seem to realize it. He knew something; he assumed I knew it, too. If I asked him what it was, it would show I didn’t really know it, and then he wouldn’t tell me. It was all very complicated, staring up at the sky, still feeling blessed just to be alive.

“You know where Jason is?” I asked.

“No. Doesn’t Chuck-Chuck?”

“He seems to have disappeared.” I felt that was a safe thing to say, given how long it would take for McFetridge to prove me wrong. Assuming I was wrong.

“I haven’t seen him since that weekend. I went back to New York. He went, I don’t know, wherever he came from. Connecticut, maybe. I didn’t really know him that well. He was Ned’s friend, and Ned was, you know, tied up that night with his au pair. The only reason Jason and I ended up together was that we were the ones who met those girls.”

Girls. The boys on the boat met girls on the night Heidi died. I tried to formulate a question that wouldn’t get me a question back. “You ever hear from them again? Those girls?”

McFetridge snorted. “We never even got their last names. Candy was the one I was with. Candy, Taffy, Cindy. Something like that. All they cared about was they got to go to the Gregory compound. I don’t think we had any in-depth discussions.”

“Yeah,” I said. I tried to snort, too. Dirt came out of my nose. It landed somewhere on my shirt.

“It was like, ‘Okay, here’s the Senator’s house. There’s his brother’s house. His sister’s house. Wanna take a walk down the beach?’ ” McFetridge was quiet for a moment. “He got the better-looking one, I remember that. She was all over him, so I just took the other one, the one with the big tits. Kind of a squishy ass, I think, but she was great doing it in the sand. Cynthia, I’m pretty sure her name was.”

Age and responsibility, I saw, had not completely changed Paul McFetridge.

Out loud, I said, “You don’t think she could be the one who’s talking, do you?”

“Oh, man. She didn’t know anything. Jason and I screwed her and her friend on the beach and then I was hoping we were gonna switch, but Jason kind of liked his, so that didn’t happen. In the end we just brought them back to the house and when we got there nobody was around. We knew where Ned was, of course, but the rest were just gone. So we said, ‘Whoops, party’s over. Gotta go.’ ”

“And they left?”

“They had their own car, so it wasn’t hard getting rid of them. They were going back to Boston anyhow, I think. Roslindale, does that sound right? I really don’t remember. That might have been somebody else. I mean, these were just a couple of skanks down for the weekend to party. They ran into us and extended the partying a little longer. That’s all.”