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business. By then he was well into his second marriage, with Janie. Rocky and Geena were little kids, and he’d lost whatever interest he had in his first family.
    Libbigail didn’t miss him. The lawyers completed the arrangements for The Gift, and she laid up with Tino in a swanky Manhattan hotel for a week, stoned.
    Her money lasted for almost five years, a stretch of time that included two husbands, numerous live-ins, two arrests, three lengthy lockdowns in detox units, and a car wreck that almost took her left leg.
    Her current husband was an ex-biker she’d met in rehab. He weighed 320 pounds and had a gray frizzy beard that fell to his chest. He went by the name of Spike, and he had actually evolved into a decent sort. He built cabinets in a shop behind their modest home in the Baltimore suburb of Lutherville.
    ________
    L IBBIGAIL’S LAWYER was a rumpled fellow named Wally Bright, and she went straight to his office after leaving Hark’s. She made a full report of everything Hark had said. Wally was a small-timer who advertised quickie divorces on bus benches in the Bethesda area. He’d handled one of Libbigail’s divorces and waited a year before he was paid for it. But he’d been patient with her. She was, after all, a Phelan. She would be his ticket to the fat fees he’d never quite been able to command.
    In her presence, Wally called Hark Gettys and started a vicious phone fight that raged for fifteen minutes. He stomped around behind his desk, arms flailing, screaming obscenities into the phone. “I will kill for my client!” he raged at one point, and Libbigail was most impressed.
    When he finished, he walked her gently to the door and kissed her on the cheek. He stroked her and patted her and fussed over her. He gave her the attention she had craved all her life. She was not a bad-looking woman; a bit heavy and showing the effects of a hard life, but Wally had seen much worse. Wally had slept with much worse. Given the right moment, Wally might make a move.

EIGHT
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    N ate’s little mountain was covered with six inches of new snow when he was awakened by the stirring sounds of Chopin piped through his walls. Last week it had been Mozart. The week before, he couldn’t remember. Vivaldi had been in his recent past, but so much of it was a haze.
    As he had done every morning for almost four months, Nate walked to his window and gazed at the Shenandoah Valley spread before him, three thousand feet below. It too was covered with white, and he remembered that it was almost Christmas.
    He would be out in time for Christmas. They—his doctors and Josh Stafford—had promised him that much. He thought about Christmas and became saddened by it. There had been some pleasant ones in the not too distant past, when the kids were small and life was stable. But the kids were gone now, either grown or taken away by their mothers, and the last thing Nate wanted was another Christmas in a bar with other miserable drunks singing carols and pretending all was merry.
    The valley was white and still, a few cars moving like ants far away.
    He was supposed to meditate for ten minutes, either in prayer or with the yoga they’d tried to teach him at Walnut Hill. Instead he did sit-ups, then went for a swim.
    Breakfast was black coffee and a muffin, which he took with Sergio, his counselor/therapist/guru. And for the past four months, Sergio had also been his best friend. He knew everything about the miserable life of Nate O’Riley.
    “You have a guest today,” Sergio said.
    “Who?”
    “Mr. Stafford.”
    “Wonderful.”
    Any contact with the outside was welcome, primarily because it was so restricted. Josh had visited once a month. Two other friends from the firm had made the three-hour drive from D.C., but they were busy and Nate understood.
    Television was prohibited at Walnut Hill because of the beer ads and because so many of the shows and movies glorified drinking, even drugs. Most popular magazines