She was in her late twenties, I guessed, but had a girlish affect, from her unbridled smile to her dewy skin and red fingernails. She wore a lime green T-shirt, and as she’d turned away to climb into the car, I’d seen the tiny blond hairs on her swanlike neck. She seemed to straddle the border between innocence and experience.

“Beautiful gardens, aren’t they?” I said, looking out to my right.

She laughed. “They’re crazy, some of them. Look over there on the right, by that white house.”

We swung round a corner and passed a long hedge with a tall gate in the middle. Arrayed along both sides of the hedge were six plane trees, each trunk held vertical by three duckbill cables pegged to the ground.

“None of those trees were there last week. They all went up on Sunday.”

“You’re joking.”

“That’s how they do things here. They don’t believe in delayed gratification.”

“There’s a lot of security.”

She laughed. “You’re telling me. They’re all paranoid someone might break into their little paradise. I went with Nora to a cocktail party once, a place over near Water Mill some billionaire owns with his blond Hungarian model third wife-she’s about seven feet tall. We were in a room at the back and they had these giant screens showing shots of the beach and the ocean. Nora asked her what they were for.”

Anna put on an Eastern European accent. “ ‘Our security is gutfrom the bay side, but we are wulnerablefrom the south,’ ” she said, then switched back to her normal voice. “Ha! Wulnerable from the south! What was she scared of? A platoon of Marines and a beach landing?”

We were getting close to the ocean. I could smell the sea air, and the light had gone a milky white, as if the sun were being refracted through frosted glass. We turned down a lane with a line of houses on the ocean side, perched along a high dune. Anna slowed at the end by a gray split-rail fence. Two weeping willow trees flanked the entrance to a pink gravel drive, which she followed as it curved back on itself and up the steep rise of the dune. Nature had been tamed on this side of the slope. It was planted with sculpted bushes and lawn, divided up the middle by a stone path. We passed two gardeners giving a hedge a morning shave and halted on a square of gravel by one of the prettiest houses I’d ever seen.

It was more cottage than house, like something out of a fairy tale: an oblong stuccoed in pale green, the same color as the lichen spreading over the stones on the ocean side. The roof was tiled in brown cedar shingles that curved over the eaves and around the top of each doorway like a thatch. To the west, where we stood, was a small tower topped with a wizard’s hat of shingle. On the side facing the ocean was a pristine lawn ending at a ridge from which the dune tumbled to the beach. A swimming pool edged with white stone, no more than thirty feet long, was cut into the lawn, and beyond was a view of dunes, pristine beach, and ocean that ran for miles.

Sitting on the lawn, gazing out to sea, was Harry.

The girl walked toward a small sign by the side entrance that read SERVICE. I wasn’t sure whether it was a comment on our status or just the easiest way to go, but she led me into a light-filled, slate-surfaced kitchen with big stainless-steel appliances. She went over to a brushed-steel intercom on the wall and prodded a button.

“Nora, your guest is here,” she said, hardly louder than her normal speaking voice, and gestured to me to pass by her through another door.

On the far side was a large living room with two white sofas facing each other across a broad wool rug with a geometric pattern in gray and black. There was a low table on which sat an antique brass sculpture of a hand grasping a ball. Above was a light housed in a globelike shade studded with colored tiles that looked like a piece of art. The room led out onto a veranda facing the lawn with a long wooden table, set with white napkins and glass candleholders like a ship’s lanterns. The whole thing was perfectly ordered and restful, an aesthetic intelligence behind it.

After I’d stood there by myself for a minute, Nora entered from the far side. She wore a pale linen shift with an embroidered front and linen pants, and she looked far more at ease than she’d been at the hospital. She walked across to me and, before I could shake hands with professional formality, kissed me on the cheek. It left a pleasant impression of soft skin and expensive scent.

“How is your father? I’ve been worried about him,” she said, gesturing to me to take a seat on one of the sofas. It seemed unlikely that she really had, since she’d never met him and she hardly knew me, yet she sounded genuine.

“He’s doing okay, thank you. I think he’ll recover all right if he follows his doctor’s advice.”

Nora smiled knowingly. “Getting middle-aged men to do what they’re told can be hard, can’t it?”

I found her hard to argue with, but I felt the need to restore some of my authority after the manner in which I’d been brought there. I tried to sound stern.

“It was kind of you to arrange the flight, but I’d expected to see Mr. Shapiro back in New York, as we’d agreed.”

Nora gave an embarrassed grimace. “I’m sorry. Harry wanted to come here to rest, and I didn’t want to agitate him. I hope you understand. Would you like to see him now?”

I walked through the living room to the conservatory and onto the lawn. It was a blissful sensation to step straight out of that ordered house into an infinity of nature and ocean, with the breeze blowing in my face. Harry had his back to me and was reading a book through half-moon glasses. As I reached him, he looked up and studied my face for a while. His own was tense but less agitated than before.

“Sit down,” he said.

There were chairs at the table, all of them soft and cushioned. I looked around for a solid seat-something suggesting formality-but there was none in sight, so I sank into one of them. I tried to compensate by perching forward on the edge with my hands clasped.

“Move around so I can see you,” Harry instructed.

I dragged my chair over to the spot he’d indicated and found myself squinting at him with the sun in my eyes. It was an old maneuver of his, I suspected. It irritated me, but it was at least encouraging that Harry was getting his game back.

“How have you been feeling, Mr. Shapiro?” I asked.

He had a cup of tea resting on the arm of his chair, and he pulled at the string of the bag a few times while he mulled the question. Then he laughed bitterly. “I’ve had better weeks. You try being locked up, having your razor taken away every morning, and someone shining a flashlight in your room during the night.”

“Patients often find the precautions difficult, but there are reasons for them.”

“Maybe for some people. Not for me.”

He did some more stage business with the tea bag and gazed away from me out to sea. He was talking faster than in hospital, which was a good sign-the psychomotor retardation was easing as his brain started to function better.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’ve slept some more.”

“You haven’t had any thoughts of death?”

He glanced at me with a creased brow, as if he couldn’t grasp what I was getting at. Then he frowned, gazing down at the lawn.

“I’m not going to kill myself.”

He hadn’t looked me in the eye, but it was at least a firm declaration of the kind he hadn’t given before. A good thing. Harry levered himself upright and looked across the lawn to where a row of flower beds lined the edge of the dune. “Let’s take a walk,” he said, striding to a break in the beds, through which lay a wooden platform.

Joining him, I saw that it marked the top of a stairway leading down the dune onto a line of cracked, weathered planks. The planks formed a rolling path up and down the sand and sea grass until they ran out after thirty yards, leaving only a sandy path the rest of the way to the beach. It would have been a wonderful place for children playing hide-and-seek, an amorphous territory between habitation and nature. We walked down the steps in silence: it was so narrow that I had to follow behind him.