Snow buried the beach steps, lay thick and heavy on the rails.

He saw not a single footprint, yet the world outside wasn't empty. Far out in that gray forever he saw something leap-just a blur of shape and movement, here then gone. And he watched gulls wing over the snow, over the sea. In the snow-m.u.f.fled quiet, he heard them laughing.

And thought of Abra.

He glanced back, gave the cross trainer an unenthusiastic study. He'd never liked putting in miles on a machine. If he wanted to work up a sweat, he'd play some round ball.

"Don't have a ball, a hoop," he said to the empty house. "And I do have a couple feet of snow. I should shovel the walk maybe. Why? I'm not going anywhere."

And that last statement, he thought, had been part of the problem for nearly a year.

"Okay, fine. But I'm not doing any freaking power yoga. G.o.d, who thinks of that stuff? Maybe ten or fifteen on that d.a.m.n machine. A couple of miles."

He'd put in some miles on the jogging path along the Charles, usually working it in a couple times a week in decent weather. He'd considered a treadmill at his gym a last resort, but he'd put in plenty of time there, too.

He could certainly handle his grandmother's little cross trainer.

Then he could e-mail her, tell her he'd found the note, done the deed. And if she wanted to communicate with him on something, just communicate. No need to bring her yoga buddy into every d.a.m.n thing.

He approached the cross trainer with inherent dislike, glanced at the flat-screen. No, no TV, he decided. He'd stopped watching when he'd seen his own face on the screen too often, heard the commentary, the debates on his guilt or innocence, the truly horrible rundowns of his personal life, factual and not.

Next time, if there was one, he thought as he stepped on, he'd dig out his iPod, but for now he'd just get it done and stay inside his own head.

To get a feel for it, he gripped the handles, pushed with his feet. And his grandmother's name flashed on the display screen.

"Huh." Curious, he studied the pad, called up her stats.

"Whoa. Go, Gran."

According to her last entry, which he realized was the day she'd taken the fall, she'd logged three miles in forty-eight minutes, thirty-two seconds.

"Not bad. But I can whip ya."

Intrigued now, he programmed for a second user, keyed in his name. He started slowly, giving himself a chance to warm up. Then pushed it.

Fourteen minutes and one-point-two miles later, drenched with sweat, his lungs burning, he surrendered. Gasping for breath, he staggered to the mini-fridge, grabbed a bottle of water. After guzzling, he dropped to the floor, lay flat on his back.

"Jesus Christ. Jesus, I can't even keep up with an old lady. Pitiful. Pathetic."

He stared up at the ceiling, struggling to get his breath back, disgusted to feel the muscles in his legs actually quivering with shock and fatigue.

He'd played basketball for G.o.dd.a.m.n Harvard. At six-three, he'd made up for his relative disadvantage in height with speed and agility-and endurance.

He'd been a f.u.c.king athlete once, and now he was weak and soft, underweight and slow.

He wanted his life back. No, no, that wasn't accurate. Even before the nightmare of Lindsay's murder, his life had been impossibly flawed, deeply unsatisfying.

He wanted himself back. And d.a.m.ned if he knew how to do it.

Where had he gone? He couldn't remember what it felt like to be happy. But he knew he had been. He'd had friends, interests, ambitions. He'd had f.u.c.king pa.s.sion.

He couldn't even find his anger, he thought. He couldn't even dig down and find his anger over what had been taken from him, over what he'd somehow surrendered.

He'd taken the antidepressants, he'd talked to the shrink. He didn't want to go back there. He couldn't.

And he couldn't just lie there on the floor in a sweaty heap. He had to do something, however incidental, however ordinary. Just do the next thing, he told himself.

He pushed to his feet, limped his way to the shower.

Ignoring the voice in his head that urged him to just lie down, sleep off the rest of the day, he dressed for the cold, layering sweatshirt over insulated shirt, getting a ski cap, gloves.

Maybe he wasn't going anywhere, but that didn't mean the walkways, the driveway, even the terraces shouldn't be cleared.

He'd promised to tend to Bluff House, so he'd tend to Bluff House.

It took hours, with s...o...b..ower, snow shovel. He lost count of the times he had to stop, to rest when his pulse beat pounded alarm bells in his head, or his arms shook like palsy. But he cleared the driveway, the front walk, then a decent path across the main terrace to the beach steps.

And thanked G.o.d when the light faded to dusk and made continuing with the other terraces impractical. Inside, he dumped his outdoor gear in the mudroom, walked like a zombie into the kitchen where he slapped some lunch meat and Swiss cheese between two slices of bread and called it dinner.

He washed it down with a beer, simply because it was there, eating and drinking while he stood over the sink and looked out the window.

He'd done something, he told himself. He'd gotten out of bed, always the first hurdle. He'd written. He'd humiliated himself on the cross trainer. And he'd tended to Bluff House.

All in all, a pretty decent day.

He popped four Motrin, then dragged his aching body upstairs. He stripped, crawled into bed, and slept until dawn. Dreamlessly.

It surprised and pleased Abra to find the driveway cleared at Bluff House. She'd fully expected to slog through two feet of untrampled snow.

Normally, she'd have walked from her cottage, but opted against navigating deep snow or thin ice on foot. She pulled her Chevy Volt behind Eli's BMW, grabbed her bag.

She unlocked the front door, c.o.c.ked her head to listen. When silence greeted her, she decided Eli was either still in bed or closed up somewhere in the house.

She hung her coat in the closet, changed her boots for work shoes.

She started a fire in the living room first, to cheer the room, then headed to the kitchen to make coffee.

No dishes in the sink, she noted, and opened the dishwasher.

She could track his meals since he'd arrived. The breakfast she'd made him, a couple of soup bowls, two small plates, two gla.s.ses, two coffee mugs.

She shook her head.

This wouldn't do.

To corroborate, she checked cupboards, the refrigerator.