It didn't seem like the worst place to go to die.

Palms and blooming shrubs. Pathways winding down to a park on the waterfront with benches and still more palm trees and a few small fountains-a kneeling stone woman pouring water onto stone flowers from a jug, a small petrified birdbath replete with immobilized birds.

Scarlett imagined herself old, in an Adirondack chair, listening to the fountains' trickles, then wondered about where this Adirondack chair obsession of hers had come from.

She had parked the car facing the Gulf.

The whole of it was shiny and gray, like dolphin skin.

"What's our plan?" she asked as they approached the double gla.s.s doors of the main building.

"We're friends of the family," Lucas said.

"No, really." She stopped walking.

He stopped, too. "Yes, really." He tilted his head toward the door in encouragement, totally confident.

But then . . .

What if they'd been kept here?

The whole place seemed suddenly shadowed in gloom.

Like some light filter had fallen over it.

Every window might have been a room where they'd been locked.

Every person there might have been an accomplice.

They shouldn't have come. "Scar," he said, "it's just a nursing home. We're just going to try to talk to an old writer."

"But what if . . ."

". . . it's really him?"

"Then we'll deal with that." He nodded.

"What if it's him and we don't know it?"

"Then we'll deal with that."

She couldn't move her feet for a moment.

But knew she . . .

. . . had to.

Inside, the air smelled like lavender bleach, and the floor was so bouncy that she actually looked down to see what she was standing on. It was just carpet but it was padded beyond reason.

No one would ever break a hip here.

A large floral arrangement on the front desk partially explained the scent but also obscured the view of the woman sitting there, so Scarlett and Lucas stepped to the side of it, and Scarlett met the eyes of a middle-aged nurse with short bleached-blond hair. She wore navy-blue scrubs and looked up at them like they were nothing out of the ordinary.

Relief.

Disappointment.

Had Scarlett wanted someone to recognize them?

Wanted alarms to sound?

Gates to drop?

Maybe.

Maybe if it would end the

clicking in her head.

"We're here to visit Daniel Orlean," Lucas said.

The nurse looked at him, then at Scarlett, then back at him.

"We're friends of the family," he said. "Old friends of his son's."

"Oh, just awful," the nurse said, hand to heart. "What happened to him. Just awful."

"Yes," Lucas said. "Truly."

"So you're familiar with Danny's condition, then?" The nurse pushed a sign-in sheet on a clipboard forward, and Scarlett decided to make herself useful. She searched her brain for made-up names and signed them in as Matt Jones and Anne Shepherd.

"Of course," Lucas said.

"You been here before, right?" she said.

"First time," Lucas said.

"Oh." She seemed unconvinced.

Scarlett set the clipboard down and nodded solemnly.

"Well, he'll be happy to see you. Most of his visitors are from the lab." She came around from behind the desk. "He's usually in the courtyard around this time of day. I'll show you."

Scarlett followed the nurse down a long hallway-Lucas at her side.

Past a dining room with high ceilings and heavy curtains on huge windows.

Split-pea soup weighted the air.

Then out a set of double gla.s.s doors that opened automatically as they approached.

Outside, old people with walkers inched like zombies across the concrete patio.

A few trellises held creeping vines, and some large pots presented tall, leafy plumes.

The nurse headed for a man seated on a bench on the far side of the courtyard and said, "Daniel! You have visitors!"

"You don't say!" He squinted up at them.

So very old.

The skin on his face like shriveled fruit.

His white hair, lifeless and dry.

His eyes, bright but . . . vacant.

Like a baby's.

"Friends of your family. I'm sure they'll reintroduce themselves." The nurse turned and presented them, and Lucas held out a hand to shake. Daniel shook it back.

"I'll leave you to it." The nurse walked away.

"Well, go on," Daniel said. "Pull over a chair." He turned to Scarlett. "You, my dear, can sit right next to me."