All the frailty, all the vagueness, all the fretfulness, all the tremors—all the palsies and neural misfires and cosmetic damage he’d been holding at bay all these years—had joined forces and knocked him sideways. He sat on the enormous couch, folded forward over another bright pair of golf slacks, hugging himself tightly and rocking back and forth like someone who is keening. He said, “But.” It was the fourth or fifth time he’d said it. Tuffy stared at him from the doorway to the dining room, his forehead so furrowed he looked like a Basset Hound. He had his hands jammed in his pockets with his fists balled up, the picture of helpless concern. Babe was rattling things around in the kitchen, whipping up something or other that, from the sound of it, involved pans and glasses. “It happened between seven-forty-five and ten,” I said. “Probably closer to ten, because she was alive when I went in, just alive enough to make one sound that I heard over the speakers. You know about the speakers?”
