He did not, at first, even seem to see Lucas, or me, or the gravity of the place he had walked into.

He saw only a situation that had inconvenienced him.

That, in a single observation, was the whole of Arthur Vance.

Even now, even here, walking into a hospital where his grandson lay recovering from what he himself had done, his first frame for the situation was not the child but the inconvenience to himself.

Someone had made a fuss.

Police had been involved.

His evening had been disrupted, his authority questioned, his weekend intruded upon by the tiresome overreaction of lesser people.