Her hands balled.

“Any other family?” I said.

“No, just Nolan and me. He never married and I'm divorced. No kids. My ex is a doctor.” She smiled. “Big surprise. Gary 's a pulmonologist, basically a nice guy. But he decided he wanted to be a farmer so he moved to North Carolina.”

“You didn't want to be a farmer?”

“Not really. But even if I did he didn't ask me along.” Her eyes shot to the floor.

“So you're bearing all this alone,” I said.

“Yup. Where was I- oh, the satanic nonsense. No big deal, it didn't last long and then Nolan got back to normal teenage stuff. School, sports, girls, his car.”

“Did he maintain his taste for the dark side?”

“Probably not- I don't know why I brought that up. What do you think about the way Nolan did it?”

“Using his service gun?”

She winced. “I meant so publically, in front of all those people. Like saying screw you to the world.”

“Maybe that was his message.”

“I thought it was theatrical,” she said, as if she hadn't heard.

“Was he a theatrical person?”

“Hard to say. He was very good-looking, big, made an impression- the kind of guy you noticed when he entered a room. Did he milk that? Maybe a bit when he was a kid. As an adult? The truth is, Dr. Delaware, Nolan and I lost touch. We were never close. And now-”

More tears. “As a little kid he always enjoyed being the center of attention. But other times he didn't want anything to do with anybody, just crawled into his own little space.”

“Moody?”

“A family trait.” She rubbed her knees and looked past me. “My dad underwent shock therapy for depression when Nolan and I were in grade school. We were never told what was going on, just that he was going into the hospital for a couple of days. But after he died, Mom told us.”