“Got it. Thanks, Art. Men sure are devious and manipulative.” She sat down behind the desk. “Now, is there anything I can do to take some of the weight of the work off while I’m here?”

“Not much. We’re breaking up domestic squabbles and confiscating illegal fireworks. The few regular reports that go to the state or the court are sitting in your in-box waiting for your signature. That’s about it.”

She glanced at the stack of folders in the basket at the corner of her desk. “I can take care of those this morning. If you have time, can you collect everything about July 19 that has come in from the FBI or the state police since I left?”

“Sure,” he said. “It’s all together. I’ll bring it in a few minutes.”

“Thanks, Art,” she said. She lifted the stack of forms and reports and set them in the center of the desk, selected a pen from the center drawer, and went to work.

She read reports and signed them, read the forms and initialed them, and gradually worked her way down to the empty blotter. When she looked up, it was already one-thirty. She collected the papers that had to be filed and put them in their proper places; prepared the reports for mailing to government offices and put them in envelopes, stamped them with the city’s postage meter, and set them on the counter for the mailman’s three o’clock pickup.

When she finished, it was two, and Art returned from lunch. When he did, he found Leah’s note: “Good work, Art.” Leah was out walking toward Bremmer’s restaurant.

The summer was more than half over, and the trees were thick with big green leaves. She had spent so many of her seasons here that she was already thinking about how broad and colorful they would be in October. But summer was at its best, and it reminded her of the summers when she was a girl, the hot afternoons stretching on so there was time to play nine innings of baseball and then go swimming and then play chase, her neighborhood’s version of hide-and-seek, until after dark.