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so low his chin was touching his chest. His hands were now gripping the arms of the chair and the tips of his fingers were white.
    I leaned forward on my elbows, looking at him hard, trying to get him to look at me. He wouldn’t do it.
    “But you’re not going to, are you?” I said. “Love her again, I mean.”
    Chin still down, he shook his head. No. Then he looked up at me, looked me full in the eyes, no flinching. I saw dark pain in those eyes.
    “What she wants from me, what she needs from me . . . I think it’s a genuine need, I’ll give her that . . . I don’t have it to give her. Do you understand? It’s not my fault.”
    Graham pushed himself up from the chair and, as he spoke, walked back and forth across my office, his steps measured and unhurried.
    “It is not within me. And I can’t manufacture the pretense anymore. But there she is, following me, dogging my heels, trying to make things right, trying to find the magic button. And there is no magic button.
    “This is what it’s like, living in that house with her. It’s like living with a starving child. You don’t have any food to give the child, but the child doesn’t know that, can’t understand, and their eyes follow you all the time, hoping, begging, pleading. Starving. The child is always either losing it completely, and screaming like a mad thing, or doing things, trying to please you, as though if only they’re good enough, you’ll give them some food.
    “But you don’t have any goddamn food.”
    He stopped in front of me and leaned over. His blue eyes were unblinking. I pushed my chair back.
    “If I stay with her, it’s going to kill me, Bear.”
    “Have you prayed about this, Graham?” I was shaken by how strong he was coming on.
    He made a sharp chopping movement with his hand, dismissing my suggestion. The look he gave me was of cynical complicity.
    “I don’t talk that talk, Bear.” He flung himself back into the chair.
    Evidently he didn’t think I walked that talk, either. That shook me, too. I went back to my previous question.
    “So why don’t you just divorce her? I don’t understand.”
    It obviously wasn’t the money. If Graham had been old-time Church of Christ, I might have understood. There was a time in the Church when the only permissible reason to leave a spouse was for “the sin of infidelity.” In my parents’ day, there were couples who lived together separately, furiously feuding and secretly praying that the other would slip into an affair, leaving the “righteous” partner free. I knew of wives who had stayed in physically abusive marriages rather than challenge that injunction. God preserve us from that kind of sick thinking.
    He shut his eyes tight, his mouth thin and bitter. He stood up. Touched the knot in his tie. Reached into his pants pocket and pulled out an iPhone and turned it on. He started walking, stopped, and faced me again.
    “I know you don’t understand. But I need you to get her to divorce me, Bear. Talk to her, not to me. And you get her to do it soon. That’s something you better understand. Time is of the essence. Something bad is coming. It’s not my fault. It’s on you now.”
    “Your saying so doesn’t make it so, Graham.”
    He reached the door and looked at me, his hand on the doorknob.
    “It’s on you.” And he left.

    I looked around me at the Bridgewater golf course. Everything green and clean. Everything so ordered and affluent. But Graham Garcia had died out there just hours ago, when the moon was pouring its milky light down. And it was on me now.

Seven
    M y cell phone rang as I headed for my car—the first four notes of “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” Merrie made that custom ringtone for me. She’d gotten hold of my phone when I left it at home one day and downloaded Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus,” the whole thing. It was embarrassing. I asked her to instead change it to play the first four notes of “Onward, Christian Soldiers,”