When Leonard Seeley Sr., the drunkard who was their father, stormed through the house in his underwear, railing at the boys and their mother, waving a loaded revolver and firing live rounds into the ceiling, it was Seeley who hurried his brother behind the living-room sofa or under the bed and faced his father alone. By the time Seeley was fifteen, and almost as heavy-framed and strong as he was today at forty-seven, it was inevitable that the confrontations would one day turn more violent. He couldn't explain this to Leonard at the time-he barely understood it himself-and for his twelve-year-old brother, Seeley's leaving must have seemed nothing less than a callous abandonment.

Leonard said, “And this is the law practice you dreamed about? Nickel-and-dime cases. A receptionist in a housedress. No offense, Mike, but your office is a dump.”

Seeley said, “It's a work in progress.” He had left New York and the big-stakes corporate cases that fueled the life of his law firm at the bottom of a long alcoholic slide that undid not only his practice but his marriage. The rent in the Ellicott Square Building was reasonable and Mrs. Rosziak worked for little. But the paying clients were few and, with the recent county budget cuts, court appointments, even for felony cases, barely paid for the paperwork. The irony was that it had been easier for Seeley to attract $100 million intellectual property cases in New York City than it was to get a client to sign up for a no-money civil rights case in Buffalo. More than once it occurred to him that the rivers of alcohol which had brought him to the bottom had also flattened his acuity the way water smooths a stone.

A single snowflake, as thin as a wisp of smoke, landed on Leonard's collar and, in the same instant that Seeley felt the impulse to brush it off, dissolved.

“You're in cold storage, Mike.”

“It's a transition.”