But something in me understood that to walk in would be to break the thing I was watching, that my presence would turn a moment of grace into a performance for the master of the house, and that whatever I had to offer, it was not what that room needed.

So I went, silent on the thick carpet, and carried the image of it away with me like a splinter I could not stop pressing.

Chapter 4 — The Summons

I did not sleep well that night, which was unusual.

I was a man who slept the untroubled sleep of someone who had long ago stopped letting his conscience keep him up.

But I lay awake turning the scene over, and the more I turned it, the more it bothered me, though I could not at first have told you why.