Death and Resurrection

Sutta

PART I

Summer and Ewen Becomes a Delog

Chapter One

Ewen Young liked drawing from life. He was good at it.

The drawing of his that the gallery visitor was now looking at was one of his own favorites. Ewen tried not to look at it or the man, but that was not possible.

I love this, the visitor said. Ewen was the closest person about, but he had to turn toward the man to hear him clearly. The thing’s both a hawk and a man, which is cool, and the man looks like he could be someone in particular. Like a real guy.

It’s Willy. He is a real guy. Ewen pointed to the scrap of paper thumbtacked under the matted drawing. It said: The way Willy looks at you.

Another potential customer drew up beside them, holding her glass of mediocre champagne. He looks to me like an Indian shaman in one of those wooden hat things. That is, if the shaman were wearing a sport jacket.

Ewen didn’t know if this was a compliment or not, but at least she was expressing interest. That was good. The whole show was going well, except for the fact he had to be there. He stepped back to allow the two well-dressed art patrons to discuss his work. By their clothes—or by the way they wore them—they were wealthy.

In his red silk turtleneck and black jeans, Ewen’s trim figure was utterly compatible with the gallery scene. That was his intent, but really he would rather have been standing in a pail of ice water. Ewen was seeming to be a part of this cultured scene only by light meditation and breath control. He lived daily in a world of paint, of shifting light and the smell of turpentine, but as for the rest of this being an artist he’d rather have been standing with his feet in a tub of ice water.

Another woman was regarding one of his larger paintings with such intensity she was squinting. Pulled by her concentration, he strolled over. It was another work he liked, and of which he almost felt protective. He wondered what the stranger saw.

As though answering his very thoughts, she spoke to him. The eye is led from the rose leaves in the foreground to the red in the back of the garden, and finally to the subject’s face. It’s so cleanly done I can see the line of shadow from the cloud cutting right across his blue eyes.

She paused and squinted more fiercely. It’s only after you decide his expression is not quite as peaceful as it first seems that you notice his hand is gripping a wickedly thorned branch of the rose bush. The woman turned to Ewen and he saw her squint had more to do with the thickness of her glasses than an angry mood. She was not as nattily dressed as most of the visitors, and her hands were stained with pigment. I look at this and want to . . . to befriend the man. Is that what you felt when you painted it? Is he one of your sister’s patients?

Ewen blinked. I’m sorry, but have we met? I have a terrible memory for . . .

I’m Enid Buhl. I paint.

Now Ewen blushed and put his hands together behind his back, like a repentant child. Yes ma’am. You certainly are. You certainly do. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you. How do you know about my sister?

Buhl shrugged. Recognize me? How could you recognize me? It’s not like we have our photos on the backs of our canvases, eh? And I know of your sister because my husband is in her field. Small world and all that.

But I’ve seen a couple of your self-portraits, and they were . . .

Without my glasses. I cheated. Love to do self-portraits—the model works cheap and never complains about the pose.

Ewen, who had started to lose his hard-won cool in meeting this very famous and influential artist, found he was beginning to smile for the first time all evening. It was probably a stupid smile. I—uh—love your work, Ms. Buhl.

Enid. I think yours is kinda cute too. Tell me about this one.

This one was a sketch of very economical lines: a watercolor of a nandina bush with a nuthatch hanging off a branch upside down. That’s from my Chinese-American period, he said promptly.

Enid Buhl sputtered in laughter. Okay. Good one. Her eyes, enlarged by the thick bifocals, looked at him merrily. I’ve been wondering. How did you get called ‘Ewen’? That’s more Chinese-Caledonian, I’d think.

Ewen ran a hand through his hair. My parents’ idea of a joke. My mother’s name was Yuen, so they combined the families with ‘Young Yuen.’ So, Ewen Young.

And you didn’t hate them for it?

He considered. No. Not since I was fifteen or so. But then every teenager is embarrassed by his parents some time. I got off easy.

The great painter snagged a cheese stick off a passing server’s tray. Well, Ewen, I admire your skill with materials. And your vision. Of course, I don’t see exactly what you see. It never works that way.

You’re right. I don’t even know myself what I see, he blurted out, abashed.

Enid Buhl didn’t laugh. She just shook her head and walked on. Ewen started to feel very good about the evening.

Glory, the gallery manager, was able to tell him there was strong interest in at least three of his paintings, and not the cheapest of them, either. The drawings were also popular, even though drawings generally didn’t get a lot of interest from these shows. Ewen left her to the business, feeling he had done his job by showing up. Now, having actually met Enid Buhl and been told she liked his stuff, he thought it was the perfect time to leave. Grabbing his leather jacket from the rack, he went out the back entrance into the night.

It was drizzling and dark: a great relief. Ewen drank in the air, a wet fog rising from the warm asphalt; it was almost like the smell of earth. Somewhere close by star jasmine was scenting the wet breeze. He walked down the street in Redmond toward the parking lot where he had parked his Prius. Droplets of rain weighted his hair, causing it to sway with his steps.

He knew, as surely as he knew the sound of his own feet in the puddles, that he was being followed.

There were two of them, quiet-shoed, keeping the rhythm of his own wet feet. He sensed them to be sheepdogs, and felt that he himself was the sheep. He looked ahead for the shepherd.

There, in the next small parking lot, standing between the rows of cars, that shepherd stood. An Asian man—by his slight build and roundish features more likely Chinese than Japanese or Korean, dressed in a rather grandiose rayon sweat suit. He was standing with legs locked apart, hands in his pockets. He was a lot taller than Ewen, and his hair was badly styled. You are Young, he said, as Ewen halted fifteen feet from him. The man spoke in English.

Ewen’s ears were tuned to the padding steps behind him, which came steadily on. Getting older every day, he said. A gust of wind blew rain into his face. Tell the men behind me to stop where they are.

The man in front began to smile. He was very confident. Why should I do that, Young Yuen? How can I give orders to these others, or why would I if I could? The man had switched to Cantonese. Ewen’s own Hong Kong dialect was rusty, but he understood. The two sheepdogs did slow down, perhaps twenty feet behind Ewen, triangulating with the man with the embarrassing lack of taste.

Because I don’t know why you have a problem with me. Are we enemies? If so, no one told me.

The man slouched forward. Yes, we are enemies, Young, as surely as you are your father’s brother’s nephew. And his student.

Ewen made a disgusted gesture with both arms, and hung his head. This is ridiculous. It’s the year 2012 and I’m a painter, not Bruce Lee. I’m no threat to anyone!

Of course you’re not a threat, little man. You’re a message. He gestured to the two behind him. There was nothing for Ewen to do but run—straight at the man in front. The taller man jumped into side horse stance and raised a hard punch, but Ewen’s diagonal move kept his own face just to the left; Ewen locked his hands around the fist he had just avoided. His momentum carried both him and the fist behind the attacker. With Ewen holding the arm behind the man in a neat half nelson, they both skidded across the pavement in a circular dance, until Ewen kicked one of the man’s feet out from under him. He was holding the man up now, an awkward package between himself and the two others.

It was Ewen’s intention to use him as a shield, but the man was heavy—one-legged and squirming—and the pavement was slippery. Ewen shouted, Do you want to see me break his neck? Does he matter to you?

One of the two shrugged broadly and tilted his head unconcernedly. The other looked from Ewen to his fellow, to the prisoner, who was cursing in two languages and struggling violently. Ewen jerked the trapped arm upward, turning the curses into a scream. The shriek nauseated him; at the same time he felt a tight, sharp thrill in the moment. He saw only the two thugs ahead of him. He felt only the arm being wrenched by his hands.

One of the two turned his back with exaggerated nonchalance and strolled across the shining asphalt to the street. The other—the one who had shrugged—continued to stare predatorily at Ewen, but kept his place. After an eternal few seconds, he too loped off.

Let me go, said Ewen’s prisoner, as though he held all the cards.

Not a good idea, since you’re supposed to be a messenger and I’m supposed to be a message.

The man tried to turn and look Ewen in the face. He stifled a scream and tried instead to stand higher, to relieve the pressure on his joints. Ewen kicked his leg out again and this time the scream was for real.

Tell me what you want with my uncle.

There was a pause before the answer. Ask him.

What exactly were you planning to do to me here?

The tall man snorted. Mess you up a little. Like I said. A message. Just mess you up.

Mess me up . . . permanently? Asking the question made Ewen feel as if he were in a bad gangster movie.

No. Of course not. Then how could you tell Jimmy Young? It’s him we want.

Why?

The man looked down at the pavement and sighed. Ask him. It’s all between the Head and him.

Head of what?

Ask Jimmy Young. You don’t get anything else from me.

The excitement of the incident was fading, and Ewen felt he was getting nowhere. Maybe the police can do better.

Your word against mine, you stupid Yank.

Maybe the police will like mine better, Mr. Hong Kong. Are you a responsible citizen? A citizen at all? Legal at all? I bet you aren’t.

You people should learn that sometimes betting isn’t worth it. How’re you going to get me to a cop? Use your cell phone? Ask me to stand here while you dial? Just let me go. My leg hurts. You know I can’t chase you.

Using one hand Ewen patted the man down; it was a rough and inexact process, but he did find a knife. No gun. He was sick of the whole situation, and he released the man, immediately sending him flying with a double punch to the back. Mr. Hong Kong landed on the pavement with a wet sound on his belly.

Then Ewen did run.

Chapter Two

Ewen’s house was what Realtors like to call a jewel box. It was small, with two stories and two bedrooms, and everything within was hand-done, including the old plaster. The artistic perfection was marred by the heavy-weight workout bag in the large entryway, the clutter of canvas tarps, and the smell of paint that dominated what had once been the dining room. He had lived in it alone for the past two years, since Karen and he had drifted apart. That was how he referred to it to himself . . . drifted apart.

As soon as he closed the front door behind him, Ewen took out his phone and called his Uncle Jimmy. James Young was still up. Ewen described the assault at the parking lot and asked for an explanation.

When Uncle Jimmy was finished cursing in two languages, he mildly criticized Ewen’s technique as haphazard and inconclusive, but admitted Ewen had survived these mistakes. He finally said he believed he knew what enemy school was responsible. He was no more forthcoming than that—typical for Uncle Jimmy. He said he would have a talk with someone, might get a restraining order, but even if he didn’t there would be no more trouble. No reason for Ewen to go to the police. So often the police can’t tell the difference between the bad guy and the good guy, and Ewen would then be under their eye. It wasn’t good to be under their eye.

Ewen was not happy about Uncle’s idea of having a talk. He also knew restraining orders were useless. Uncle Jimmy told him not to worry. Go to bed. Ewen needed his sleep. Uncle Jimmy needed his sleep.

Before hitting the sack Ewen paced awhile, then went into the other bedroom, where there was no bed but only a small table, a round pillow with a mat under it. On the table was a small plastic Buddha of no particular lineage, and a small painting Ewen had done of his mother when he was twelve. He bowed to both. I avoided a fight, Mom, he whispered. You’d have been proud of me.

He crossed his legs and lowered himself onto the pillow, put his hands together at head level and bowed once more. I take refuge in the Buddha, he murmured. I take refuge in the teaching. I take refuge in my family, and I take refuge in the great family.

He sat until the events of the night—good and bad—fell into perspective, and then he went to bed.

Mrs. Lowiscu didn’t understand why she had to get up early for her sittings, why there were so many of them and why a formal portrait couldn’t all be taken care of in a few long sessions of painting. Ewen had explained it had to do with lighting, that he couldn’t do it like a photographer with floods and reflectors, and that her children—who were paying the bill—had chosen the light by which they wanted their mother shown. Of course, by the time a family had become established enough, numerous enough, and wealthy enough to desire and afford a portrait of grandmother, grandmother herself was of an age to freely offer opinions. Mrs. Lowiscu thought Ewen should take a few damned photographs in his blessed light and paint from them. Ewen told her he did not work from dead flat images, but from life. Then, Mrs. Lowiscu said he’d best hurry it up because all this early rising and posing might be the death of her.

It didn’t bother Ewen. He got along with old people and got up very early anyway. Nothing bothered him unless his subject couldn’t sit still.

Mrs. Lowiscu sat as still as a sleeping snake. Ewen hoped that recurring image did not implant itself into his work. Her face itself was very rewarding to paint; the olives and roses of her original coloring had aged to purple and ash. Complicated. Challenging. She had chosen a mauve dress decades out of fashion, but one that had obviously meant something to her at some point in the past. Ewen shaded the color subtly into pink to make her cheeks livelier, but left her old dark eyes alone.

After Mrs. Lowiscu’s session, he drove to his sister’s workplace. It wasn’t quite ten as he parked in its tiny lot. The front garden was filled with flowers and ferns. Pacific Rim Help House had really been a house years before. Built in a pseudo-Wright style, it was still a lovely building, though all the glass made it hard to heat.

The young woman at the antique Chinese desk glanced up from her computer screen. Lynn, said Ewen. I’m here for Lynn.

The receptionist responded at though she had never seen Ewen, (who came in at least twice a week asking for his sister). Dr. Young is with a patient, she said. Would you like to leave a message?

No, Caroline. I’m Ewen, Lynn’s twin brother. I’m supposed to be here. Look at your schedule. He reached over the desk and pushed the little spiral binder toward Caroline. See? Please tell her I’m here.

The receptionist, evidently alarmed by the invasion of her desk and territory, retreated on squeaking chair wheels. She made placatory gestures with both hands and, as a last line of defense, asked Ewen to be seated. Instead, he strode through the tiny, empty waiting room and through a door on which was painted a galloping horse and Dr. Lynn Young. (She was Lynn Thurmond to the PTA, but still Young to the professional world. As Lynn’s twin brother, Ewen resented the Thurmond just a bit. Except as Teddy’s mom, of course.)

Lynn’s domain was filled with the smell and sound of running water. A section of the paneled wall had been replaced with rough sandstone. Water ran down it, collecting in a small pool with goldfish. Both the horse-door and the fountain wall were of Ewen’s making, and he noticed kids had thrown pennies into the water again.

Lynn looked like her mother. Most people noticed this—if they had seen a picture of Lily Young—but as Mrs. Young had died twenty years before, the resemblance was usually remembered only by Ewen.

Lynn wasn’t with a patient; she was at her desk with a tall cup of Starbuck’s tilted against her lips. As she heard her brother open the door, she guiltily lowered the cup.

Just what every psychiatrist needs, she said. A good caffeine jag.

If it works for you, he answered. Your message didn’t mention what you needed. Is it Jacob again?

Although twins, the two did not really look that much alike, except in feature and expression. Lynn Young-Thurmond looked as though a breeze could blow her over; it would take a Category 3 hurricane to bring Ewen Young down. Some clown in middle school had titled them The Smiling Anime Twins, and though they had changed, the nickname had stuck.

She nodded and dabbed off a latte mustache with a tissue, careful not to smear her lipstick. He’s biting himself again. He asked for you. Are you up for it? I mean—after last night?

Ewen had been swinging himself into one of Lynn’s armchairs, but stopped in place. What do you know about last night? Do you mean the gallery?

No. Uncle Jimmy called me this morning. Told me to be careful. Which was big of him, don’t you think? To tell me I ought to be careful because he’s got himself into something nasty? That man!

Once again Ewen was placed between Uncle Jimmy—his teacher—and the rest of his family. Oh, I don’t know, sis. It takes two to make a fight, but only one to make a massacre.

But you’re not hurt, right? I would have known if you were hurt. I’d have woken up.

I’m not hurt. He scraped a strip off the side of my new Nikes, that’s all. Nothing more. But I’m here for Jacob, so let’s see Jacob.

Lynn and her brother entered the special room that contained nothing with which a person could hurt himself, unless by paper cut. Jacob Fischbein sat with his feet up on a cushioned chair, his elbows resting on his knees, hiding in his own darkness. Defending himself with his own darkness. He looked up at them warily.

Jacob did not look like the sort of boy who would be biting himself. He looked very normal, healthy, even athletic. This last was true; Jacob was a wrestler at Redmond High, and it was on the mat where he’d stopped being able to hide his unhappiness from the public world.

Jason began speaking in his usual way. Hi, there Doc. Hi, Doc’s Brother. Spare me some change? Mind change? Change of venue?

Ewen said nothing, but looked around the room for a cushion. He found two, both in a floral pattern, and looking like fat Hawaiian shirts. He dropped them in the center of the room and sat down on one, legs crossed. The remaining pillow lay on the floor in front of him. Ewen did not smile at the boy. He was tired and he knew this was going to be work, but he gave him a comradely glance. He dropped his hands loosely into his lap and took one deep breath. Okay. Let’s get down, Jacob. He closed his eyes.

He heard the rasping of the boy’s Levi’s. There was a small noise as Jacob’s baseball cap sailed across the room and hit a chair. The trick with the cap was a sign of respect, respect in Jacob-language. Ewen did start to smile. He reached out, not with his hand, but his mind. For the first moment of the touch, Ewen was a bit afraid—afraid of Jacob’s fears and of Jacob himself. Afraid of the effort involved in opening. Then he just did it. He opened.

A small space of damp grass, surrounded by trees. Some of the trees were maple and some were evergreens. To the left was a low wall of stone, limestone, which he could slightly taste. Beyond that was the smell of water. This was a place Ewen had found a long time ago. He scarcely remembered when. He did not know what it meant or how it was that he could get there, but he was now the keeper of it. He felt the bounds, he marked them and fortified them, and now he allowed the mind of Jacob—a bad storm, a bruising wave, a maddened dog, a troubled child—to enter.

Ewen let him in and closed the gate behind him. He defended the borders of this small place that was no place at all. That was Ewen’s whole job here. Keeping the borders.

The Jacob-storm entered, hit, and howled against the immaterial walls, but even the branches of the trees weren’t bent by it. The wave of Jacob’s misery struck against nothing and it vanished. The biting dog—the biting, the always-at-the-edges, fear-filled biting—found nothing to bite. Ewen held within his mind this small, open place where only the boy sat, sat gripping the grass in his fingers, sitting tight as a drum. Ewen himself did not enter with Jacob. This was Jacob’s refuge. In a sense, Ewen was the place and, in another sense, he wasn’t part of this event at all. Ewen’s place-making was a huge, simple concentration, just at the limit of what he was able to do, but Ewen sat on the pillow, unmoving, and he kept the boundaries.

Lynn was shaking his shoulder, gently. He felt himself flinch.

How are you?

Ewen opened his eyes and squinted at the light. There was Jacob on the carpet in front of him, his head on the other Hawaiian pillow, sleeping like a baby. I’m tired, said Ewen. I am really tired today.

The tiredness went away after five minutes pounding on the heavy bag at home. Ewen was now angry, as he had not had time to be the night before. Angry at the Hong Kong idiot with the bad sense of drama and the bad taste in sweatsuits. Angry at the sheepdogs behind him. And, yes, really angry with Uncle Jimmy. No way around that. Now that there was no one in the family present to defend him against, Ewen was thinking Uncle Jimmy was every kind of horse’s ass.

He remembered the matches, one after another through his childhood, in which he had been given no choice but to compete. No choice but to win. The classes for which Sifu James Young had never showed up, and for which the responsibility had devolved upon Ewen—who had to show up because Sifu James Young might well not. Always working without pay, because he was family. Well, of course he never had had to pay for his training, either. He hadn’t had to keep going. Mom hadn’t been enthusiastic about the whole martial arts thing at all. His real talent, his art, had come from her. Dad would have backed him on dropping out, even though Jimmy was his brother. Especially because . . .

Lynn never felt obliged to follow kung fu. She had been more the ballet type, the pony club type.

Ewen had done it all to himself, to be honest about it. He was still doing it to himself. Who was he fooling? He did it because he was good and he knew it, and because . . . because it was grand.

He worked out for forty-five minutes and then once again he was tired, but not in the same sense. He took a shower and went out to putter around in the garden.

Ewen’s kung fu curse was Uncle Jimmy, but his garden curse was bamboo. He didn’t dislike bamboo in and of itself, but for what it had done during his four years living in the small suburban house. Ewen’s grandfather had liked bamboo very much, and had planted different types in both the back garden and front. It had flourished. God, how it had flourished, and so had a feud with Mr. and Mrs. Kelly on one side of the property, who had no love for bamboo at all.

For years, Mr. Kelly had run down errant shoots of bamboo with his lawn mower and Mrs. Kelly had dug up the monstrosities coming up in her annual border. They had blamed the infestation on old Mr. Young, who held the opinion that the Kellys were fortunate to have such graceful volunteers for their very ordinary back yard.

When resentment grew to fury and the county was called, Grandfather had a service come and dig out his lovely bamboo, and he felt he had done more than his duty toward neighborhood peace. The next year his bamboo came back from its severe pruning livelier and more invasive than ever, and the Kellys’ resentment grew as well.

When Ewen inherited the house, he had no idea of the battle he was entering. Even though he was not responsible for planting the damned bamboo, the Kellys despised him for it. Despised him and all his doings and let him know it. The Kellys’ German shepherd had him marked for destruction.

Ewen had read up on bamboo, gone out to the edge of his property, and dug a ditch three feet wide and five feet deep. In doing this, he used nothing more complicated than a shovel. The ditch took him almost the entire first year of his residency; it strained his relationship with his roommate Karen, and did not improve the looks of the property—which, until it was refilled, had probably not endeared him to the rest of the neighborhood. When the ditch was done he went to Home Depot and bought rolls of long aluminum plating, and lowered them into the ditch, riveting them together as he went, so there was a metal wall five feet deep separating the Young property from that of family Kelly. It should have been enough.

Bamboo, however, does not always send its runners in straight lines, and some had spread to the yard of Mrs. Blick, whose property was behind both the Young and Kelly yards. Mrs. Blick did not pay too much attention to her own back yard, so now the Kellys were also angry with Mrs. Blick and twice as furious with Ewen.

These days Ewen would wait for the Kellys to be out, on the rare occasions they took their dog with them, and he would vault the five-foot fence in between the back yards and yank out any sprouts of bamboo he saw, hoping to eliminate the problem before they noticed it.

This afternoon Ewen was in his front yard, weeding around his little water garden. The shubunkins followed him from side to side, poppling the surface of the water with their hungry little mouths and hoping. Ewen didn’t notice them. He wanted to call the police about the attack in the parking lot. The Chinese school vendetta seemed to him a custom more fitting for an alien planet than for the Puget Sound. Maybe those guys the night before had been space aliens. He also hoped Uncle Jimmy, like Grandfather, hadn’t degenerated to feuding. Uncle was, with all his faults, a good person, and had been Ewen’s teacher since Ewen was five years old. But Uncle Jimmy was also undoubtedly getting crotchety, and being at odds with the rest of the Young family did not improve his attitude.

Ewen believed the family trouble had started because Granddad hadn’t approved of his oldest son becoming a martial arts teacher. His father had told him as much. Not that his grandfather hadn’t approved of the discipline itself—he hadn’t faulted Ewen for taking lessons, and was even proud of the boy when he had won his little boyhood awards—it was just that it wasn’t the proper way to make a living. It had no future, unless one was intensely practical and with good business sense, which ruled out Uncle Jimmy. Better he should have been a lawyer or a dentist. Ewen, unlike Granddad, knew that being too impractical to run a profitable martial arts studio—his kwoon—meant Uncle Jimmy would have been hopeless as a lawyer. Or a dentist. In Ewen’s own semi-practical mind, he was grateful for Uncle’s outlaw status; in comparison, it made a grandson foolish enough to be an artist seem like a paragon.

And his outlaw uncle was going to handle the situation . . . How? A duel to the death on a Seattle rooftop? Hiring a hit man?

Oh God! Ewen sat back on his heels. He whispered, I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the dharma. I take—

Rinngg!

—a phone call. I take a phone call.

Ewen sprang to his feet, running for the door, because he knew it was his sister, Lynn, and he knew there was more trouble.

Lynn’s voice was brimming with maternal fear. Her son Teddy had been threatened by a strange man during recess. He called to Teddy over the schoolyard fence and he said . . . he said he should buy white clothes, because his family was going to go into mourning.

He said Teddy’s family was going into mourning?

Yes, Ewen. Teddy’s sure that’s what the man said! I called Uncle but there was no answer. I had to leave a message!

Ewen’s stomach turned over. He dialed Uncle Jimmy himself. No answer except the voicemail. He got into his Prius and drove to Lynn’s.

He reached his sister’s house, parked, and darted under the three-color, Tibetan-style gate lintel and to the house. He frequently referred to his sister’s family as his Sino-Tibetan relations, a reference to Theodore Thurmond’s strong Tibetan Buddhist beliefs, though Theo was a six-foot tall balding blond of German ancestry.

Theo was out on the porch, face strained, his long blond hair escaping its ponytail and hanging around his face. We can’t get hold of your uncle, he said. The police are on their way.

Ewen swept by him and banged open the screen door. Lynn sat on the living room couch hugging six-year-old Teddy, who was two-thirds the size of his mother. They both looked lost. I’m so sorry, said Ewen, kneeling down by the couch and trying to fit them both into one large hug.

As though it’s your fault, said Lynn reprovingly, with a little snort. She frequently acted as though she were much older and more experienced than her twin brother. Ewen had always felt this was a result of her medical training.

Ewen began to pace, from the television at one end of the room to the altar at the other. I should have called the police at once. Not just Uncle Jimmy. I should have known better.

Who would have thought?

Teddy lifted his head from his mother’s embrace. Is this like in the movies? Where one Chinese guy tries to kill another because of kung fu?

Lynn patted her son and said absently No, dear. They have things like the Pride Fighting Championships for that now.

Hearing that simple statement, Ewen stopped in his tracks. Perhaps Lynn really was older and wiser than he was. You’re right. The idea makes no sense. Uncle Jimmy doesn’t even have much of a school! That can’t be what it’s about.

It’s about his gambling, of course, said Lynn with a shrug. Uncle Jimmy must have been having another losing streak.

Oh. The idea hit Ewen like a brick and he simply stood still for a while. And that’s what the guy meant about me being a message? he finally said. About some people betting on the wrong things? He hit his head with the back of his hands. Yeah, I bet you’re right, Lynn. And it would have been no good to break the old man’s back—then he could never pay. But a nephew. Or a niece . . .

Or a grandnephew. Lynn silently mouthed the words over Teddy’s head.

Ewen shook his head vehemently, then said aloud, I don’t think the guy meant anyone was going to hurt Teddy. If he has wanted to harm him, then— Ewen broke off and lowered himself into the antique chair opposite the couch, the one Theo could not use because it put his knees to his chin. Hey, why aren’t the police here yet?

"They are coming. This isn’t