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slide for a few weeks. They must have gotten marching orders from the administration to be compassionate, since Abby’s mother had died over the summer.
    But Lyman’s compassion apparently had its limits.
    He had no pull at the school. The guy whose foundation Sarah had worked for, who’d been chairman of the Lyman board, had died of a stroke a couple of years ago.
    So he decided to go straight to the top.
    “I’m having sort of a silly little problem I thought you might be able to help me with,” he told Lally Thornton when he finally got her on the phone. “Seems I’m a bit late with this semester’s tuition—it’s mostly a matter of liquidity. Moving money around and such. But I should have it cleared up in a week or so.”
    He paused, waited for her to say something reassuring. But there was only silence. Then she said, “And?”
    Finally, he went on: “I thought you might be able to reassure the bursar’s office for me.”
    “I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”
    “You know, we got a form letter about Abby having to leave Lyman if the bursar doesn’t receive a check by Friday or whatever. They’re being pretty hard-line about it.”
    “Well, I’m not sure I understand why you called
me
, Mr. Goodman. This is a matter for the bursar’s office. Not for the head of the Upper School.”
    “I’ve already spoken with them—”
    “So I understand.” Her tone had become downright icy. “You’re not asking that an exception be made for you, I trust.”
    “Not an exception per se, but—well, a little leeway is all. A little compassion, really.”
    “I’m sorry, Mr. Goodman. I wish I could help. Please ask Abby to send me a note once she’s settled at her new school, tell me how she’s doing. I really am so fond of her.”
     • • • 
    Even if he could bring himself to ask Lucy to lend him money, he knew she didn’t have it to lend. She was barely getting by herself. So that was out.
    His parents, Helen and Bud, lived modestly and always had, in the same small house in a development in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, where Danny had grown up. His dad was a contractor and a finish carpenter and a decent man, but he was irascible. He was a man who didn’t take guff. He was always pissing people off. At the same time, he was a good person; he always paid his construction crew better than anyone else. Whenever any of them ran into trouble, he’d bail them out, lend them money and not keep track of what he was owed.
    When he retired, he had hardly any savings. He and Danny’s mother lived off Social Security.
    Danny had no one to borrow the money from. At least, no family or friends.
    He tried to remember why he was so uncomfortable about accepting a loan from Thomas Galvin for the Italy trip. Pride? That didn’t seem like such a compelling reason anymore. He imagined a balance scale with his pride on one side—looking like some raw, shapeless, pulsing, purplish internal organ—and Abby’s happiness on the other; he imagined Abby as a chubby, laughing baby wearing only a diaper. The chubby baby easily outweighed the pulsing blob. What had he been thinking? If he had jewelry to pawn, or anything of value to sell, he’d do it in a split second. If he knew a Vinny Icepick, he’d borrow sixteen large.
    He had to find some money somewhere, somehow . . . and soon.

8
    T he town of Weston, ten miles west of Boston, was where a lot of the really rich Bostonians lived. Some of the houses out there were true McMansions, but the biggest ones were hidden from view by great swaths of forest, marked by nothing more than a street sign or a mailbox.
    Danny drove past the entrance to Galvin’s property three times without seeing it. There were no lights or stone columns or pillars or plaque. Just a simple aluminum mailbox with a number painted on it, not particularly large.
    He turned down an unmarked road and followed its winding path through the woods until a set of tall wrought-iron gates,