Willow was sitting outside on the front steps of their home in Vermont, savoring the early autumn chill in the air. It wasn't quite seven, but already the sun was behind the mountains to the west, offering only a strip of red against an otherwise colorless dusk sky. She'd brought the phone out here so her parents wouldn't overhear her conversation.

"I'm not worried about getting caught. I'm worried about having to lie in the first place. We're going to have to take oaths, you know."

"So, what are you saying?"

"I'm saying we should tell them everything."

"No way. Why would you want to get Gwen in trouble?"

"Charlotte-"

"Look, they probably won't even ask us the sorts of questions where we'd have to lie. What are they going to do, say, 'Willow, were you smoking marijuana the night your cousin found a loaded rifle in the trunk of your dad's car?' I don't think so. They have no idea we did that."

"But we did. And that's important. We were both stoned. You wouldn't have shot your dad if you weren't stoned."

"Don't put it that way. It makes me sound dreadful. And I feel lousy enough as it is. Besides..."

"Yes?"

"Besides, none of this would have happened if your dad hadn't left a loaded gun sitting around in the first place."

"I realize that. He feels terrible, too, you know."

"Well, so do I."

"Look, Charlotte, I didn't call to fight. I called because I'm scared. I'm scared I'm either going to have to lie under oath or I'm going to have to tell the truth-and I don't know which would be worse."

"I do. Trust me: Lie."

"But I don't want to, this is too important. My dad's a lawyer and I know about oaths. I know how these things work. And..."

"Yes?"

"And it would be wrong. That's all. It would be wrong."

"Telling the truth would only make things worse. I know that doesn't seem possible, but-believe it or not-it is. Things actually could get worse. A lot worse."

Willow sensed someone was standing behind her in the mudroom just inside the screen door, and when she turned around her mother held up two fingers to signal that dinner was about two minutes away. Her mother was smiling, and Willow thought she had mouthed the sentence, "Say hi to Charlotte for us."

"Look, I don't believe this accident would have happened if you hadn't been a little bit tipsy and a little bit stoned," she said to her cousin when her mother once more was out of earshot. "And maybe more than a little bit."

Charlotte sighed, a gust of wind she heard in her ear. "I don't know about that."

"What?"

"I said, I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"This week I start seeing a psychiatrist-a friend of your mom's, I guess. And I'm really glad, because sometimes I wonder if I have even the slightest idea of just how screwed up I am. Sometimes I think I'm keeping it together really well, and then when I'm alone I'll just lose it completely. And while most of the time I'm only mad at myself, there are other times when I'll find myself mad at my dad, and then I'll wonder..."

"You'll wonder what?"

"I'll wonder if I would have taken the gun even if I hadn't been stoned."

"You think so?"

"Sometimes, yeah. Maybe I wouldn't have fired it. Then again, maybe I would have. Sometimes I even wonder if I really thought I was firing at a..."

Her cousin's voice trailed off, and she was about to ask Charlotte to continue when the older girl abruptly resumed speaking, her voice once more rich with its characteristic flippancy.

"Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing the shrink. Excuse me, the therapist. It'll be good for me! It'll be good for my dad's lawsuit, it'll be good for the work he does for FERAL. So, I'm serious about this, my country cousin: You don't need to get Gwen involved, you don't need to bring up the teenagers. You don't need to say anything-not a word-about the marijuana or the beer. Your dad's gun would still have been in the trunk of your car even if we hadn't smoked a little dope and had a couple of beers, and I still would have taken it. Okay?"

"I don't know," she said, aware they had hit some sort of impa.s.se. "I should go in for dinner."

"You do that. We're about to have dinner here, too."

Before hanging up Charlotte announced that she would be busy memorizing lines and songs and doing the mountains of homework demanded of someone in the eighth grade, but they could still talk next week if the prospect of the deposition continued to frighten her.

At dinner that night Willow's parents wanted to know all about Charlotte and The Secret Garden The Secret Garden-and, simply, how the child was bearing up-and she was sorry that despite the length of their phone call, there was very little she could report.

CHARLOTTE HAD TROUBLE falling asleep that Sat.u.r.day night, because she was aware that she had made an important connection: Initially she hadn't wanted Willow to tell anyone about the marijuana and the beer for the simple reasons that she was afraid she would get in even more trouble and because she didn't want to imperil what she considered her friendship with the older teenager. Now, however, she understood that secrecy mattered for another reason: She feared if it came out that she had been a little bit high, a little bit drunk, it would jeopardize both her father's lawsuit against the gun company and the way FERAL was using the accident to tell people that hunting was disgusting and guns were unsafe. And after what had happened (oh, h.e.l.l, falling asleep that Sat.u.r.day night, because she was aware that she had made an important connection: Initially she hadn't wanted Willow to tell anyone about the marijuana and the beer for the simple reasons that she was afraid she would get in even more trouble and because she didn't want to imperil what she considered her friendship with the older teenager. Now, however, she understood that secrecy mattered for another reason: She feared if it came out that she had been a little bit high, a little bit drunk, it would jeopardize both her father's lawsuit against the gun company and the way FERAL was using the accident to tell people that hunting was disgusting and guns were unsafe. And after what had happened (oh, h.e.l.l, after what she had done after what she had done) she owed it to her father not to imperil either the lawsuit or his organization's antihunting media campaign.

It was the strangest thing: Her father had spent forty-five minutes with her that afternoon helping her start learning her lines. He'd spent another half hour on the Web finding her photos of the original Broadway production of the musical, so she could see what Mary and Martha and Colin and d.i.c.kon had looked like on the stage at the St. James Theater. He would never have taken the time to do either before the accident.

He'd even marked the date-the dates, all five performances of the show-on the calendar in the kitchen, and painstakingly typed e-mails with his left hand to his a.s.sistants at FERAL and to Dominique informing them that he absolutely could not be booked anywhere on those days.

Outside her open bedroom window she heard the sirens and the garbage trucks and the occasional car alarm that filled the night, and she wondered why this evening they seemed so very loud and intrusive.

Twenty-three

"Meat is a social food-a shared food," Howard Mansfield told John over lunch, dabbing at his mouth with a paper napkin between bites of his patty-melt sandwich on rye. "The family or the tribe gathers together after the hunt. They celebrate, they reaffirm their bonds, they rejoice in their kinship. It's been that way forever. And though most of us these days are pretty d.a.m.n far removed from the meat when it was living and breathing, we still approach it as a ritual food."

"Thanksgiving," John murmured. "Or the great Easter ham."

"Or even the backyard barbecue. Nothing like the smell of a little seared flesh to awaken in all of us that great tribal need for connection." Mansfield was a month shy of fifty. When John had first moved to Vermont, the older man had been a partner in the Burlington firm where John practiced. Then Mansfield left to be a judge and John left to be a public defender: a job John thought would be more interesting than handling the city's munic.i.p.al and real estate business-his specialty at the firm-and allow him to feel better about himself when he came home at night. And feeling good about what he did was important: He knew how ent.i.tled his childhood had been, and he understood exactly what had driven his mother to volunteer her time in the dingiest cla.s.srooms she could find in the city. Now Mansfield was on the Vermont Supreme Court, and John was running the county public defenders' office. They saw each other infrequently, no more than once a season, but it was Mansfield who had taken him hunting last fall, and it was Mansfield who had suggested ten months ago that he simply use a ramrod to extricate the jammed cartridge from his gun's chamber. The two of them were having lunch now at a Burlington diner with the improbable name of the Oasis, a cla.s.sic aluminum-sided train car with a green rendering of a palm tree on the restaurant's neon sign.

"My brother-in-law would argue that meat is about power," he told Mansfield. "The only reason it became a social food was because peasants got to eat it so rarely. When they did, it was a big deal. A feast."

"Vegetarians-people who choose not to eat meat even when it's available-have always been comfortable with their nonconformism. They're not social misfits, but they are social renegades. I'd wager there has always been a little distance between them and the bonfire."

"You know, I don't believe Spencer has a lot of friends other than his FERAL cronies. He moved a lot as a kid, so he has no buddies from childhood. And he and Catherine have been their own little world since they fell in love as freshmen, so he doesn't have many pals from college, either."

"Your sister's a vegetarian, too, right?"

"Yes, but not a vegan. And, for the record, she does have friends."

"Women friends?"

"And men."

"Really?"

"She's a magnificent flirt."

"Brothers always think their sisters are flirts."

"Are you speaking as a Freudian?"

He smiled. "Nope. As an older brother."

Outside a dairy delivery truck began to back into an alley across the street, the vehicle's horn automatically emitting the loud whooping cries it made whenever it moved in reverse, and the two men grew silent. When it was parked Mansfield continued, "So: You want my opinion on who your lawyer should be."

"That's right."

"I hate to be predictable, but I believe your best bet is our old firm. I'd ask Chris Tuttle or perhaps even your friend Paul Maroney."

The two attorneys were indeed among the candidates John was considering. And though he was pleased that Mansfield was validating his choices, he wanted to know why the older man had said perhaps even perhaps even Paul: It suggested there was a c.h.i.n.k in Paul's armor that he hadn't considered. And so he asked Mansfield whether he had a preference. Paul: It suggested there was a c.h.i.n.k in Paul's armor that he hadn't considered. And so he asked Mansfield whether he had a preference.

Mansfield raised his gray, beetling eyebrows, and put down his sandwich. "You and Paul are a little closer than you and Chris. True?"

"I don't think I've spoken to Chris in a year. Maybe longer. I see Paul every so often for lunch or a beer and sometimes at events at Willow's school. Paul has a son a year younger than Willow."

"Well, they're both equally capable. But Chris is more likely to approach your situation with complete objectivity. And that's what you need." Mansfield was known among Vermont attorneys for both his fairness and his preternatural patience-attributes that made him an excellent hunter as well as a justice. With the exception of his three years at law school in Pennsylvania, he had never lived anywhere but Vermont.

"And you believe I need objectivity because I can't see my situation well enough on my own-because this is my brother-in-law and my niece?"

"Yes. Also, Chris hunts. Paul doesn't. It might be nice to have another hunter in the room with you when the lawyers from Adirondack are deposing you. They are, of course, your real adversaries."

"I must confess, these days I feel pretty d.a.m.n antagonistic toward Spencer, too. He won't even talk to me. Refuses to take my calls, doesn't answer my e-mails."

"You have indeed widened that hunters versus gatherers canyon that seems the salient feature of your family's topography."

"Spencer and I used to be friends! Really. We used to be friends."

"Are you and your sister speaking?"

"Yes. And the girls are talking: Willow and Charlotte. I presume they all think I'm a moron-all the women, that is. My sister. My wife. My daughter. My mother. My niece..."

Mansfield nodded, and John watched as he put the last three shoestring potatoes on his plate in his mouth at once. John had barely touched his own lunch, a turkey sandwich. His appet.i.te had been decreasing ever since the accident, and these days, it seemed, he never was hungry. He'd lost ten or eleven pounds from a frame that even before the last day in July had tended toward lanky.

"You're not a moron," Mansfield said when he had swallowed the French fries. "You just didn't know."

"Actually, I just didn't cope. There's a difference."

"Tell me: What kind of ammunition were you using?"

He shrugged. "Menzer Premium. Why?"

"I had a thought this morning. The lab with the gun will check this out, but I wouldn't be surprised if the trouble stemmed from the sh.e.l.l's casing-not the gun's extractor. Maybe it was the casing that made it so difficult for you to remove the round."

"I doubt that. I never loaded anything in that gun but Menzer Premiums, and they always worked fine when I was learning to use it."

"Adirondack machine-tools their rifles with extreme precision. Same with their ammunition. In my experience, nothing works as well in an Adirondack rifle as an Adirondack cartridge. The company is a bit like Remington in that regard: Remington rifles, in my opinion, work best with Remington ammunition."

"What are you saying, the cartridge was faulty?"

"Just conjecture. Maybe the rim on that one round was a tiny fraction of an inch too shallow for the extractor-or too wide. All it would take is one minuscule imperfection that might not make a difference with a Menzer rifle or a Winchester or perhaps even a Remington-but it did on your Adirondack. That's all."

Abruptly he felt a little sick, a little faint. He bowed his head against the sensation, and the sounds of all the conversations around him faded into one indistinguishable drone. A single thought dominated his mind: What if the problem were indeed with the casing, and the casing was gone? He knew the New Hampshire State Police had returned the gun to him on the...the eleventh of August. He knew the date because it was the day after Spencer had returned to his mother's house, and the very day he and his family had returned to Vermont. If, in fact, that trooper had arrived with his rifle an hour later, they already would have been on the road home.

He knew there was no reason why anyone in New Hampshire would have removed the spent casing from the chamber, but he had no recollection of seeing it in the gun when it was returned. Absolutely no visual picture whatsoever. Granted, he had barely looked at the rifle. He'd actually been repulsed by it.

But he had checked the magazine and the chamber before handing it to the paralegal who had driven up from Paige's firm in New York to retrieve it. The last thing he wanted to do was accidentally turn a loaded rifle over to someone who'd probably never handled a gun in his life.

And though he wasn't absolutely sure, he simply could not recall seeing the spent casing in the chamber. He could, however, see in his head exactly what the chamber looked like...empty.

"John?"

He opened his eyes and gazed up at Mansfield. "Yes?"

"You okay?"

"I..."

"Yes?"

"I actually thought I was going to faint for a moment."

"I'd say it was something you ate, but you've eaten so little I'd say it was the opposite: It's because you haven't eaten."

He reached for the sandwich and took a small bite, then washed it down by finishing most of the water in his gla.s.s. "I don't recall seeing the casing in the gun when I got it back from the state police in New Hampshire," he said.

"You checked?"

"I wanted to be sure the gun was unloaded before I turned it over to Paige's firm."

Mansfield was staring at him. The justice looked as if he had instantly digested this information and drawn a conclusion. He didn't look anxious-Mansfield never looked anxious-but he did seem concerned. John sensed that the older man had thus come to the same conclusion he had: If the problem had been with the cartridge's casing and the casing was gone, then there would be no apparent reason for his inability to extricate the cartridge other than mind-numbing incompetence. Yes, FERAL would still proceed with the lawsuit against the gun company, insisting that Adirondack was producing an inherently defective product because a live round remained in the chamber when you unloaded the magazine...but he himself would be crucified. It was bad enough to be perceived as a person who failed to take a broken rifle to a gunsmith; it was even worse to be viewed as a person incapable of extracting a cartridge from a functioning one.