Laura turned away from the photograph. “And your dad? Polly said something about your dad . . . ?” Laura couldn’t remember what it was.

Nina laughed. “That he’s dead?” She looked at Laura’s stricken expression. “Don’t worry, I never met him. I didn’t know he existed until he didn’t.” She sat down in her enormous armchair and examined Laura with curiosity. “What’s your family like?”

Laura shrugged and looked around for another chair. “Not very exciting. My parents are professors, my brothers are professors, I was supposed to be a professor.” No other chair; she sat on the floor and tucked her legs under her, crisscross applesauce, folding over to stretch her back. “I spent most of my life on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, with daily voyages downtown for school. New York is a big city, obviously, but the Upper West Side is a small world, especially the way my family does it.”

Nina look interested. “Ooh, academics. What do they teach?”

“Birds, largely. My dad is a professor in the biology department, studying the mechanics of flight, and my mom is a professor in the psychology department, studying the social lives of birds.” Laura smiled. “We had birds all over the place, literally and figuratively. The one part of my childhood that was like yours was that both of them went away every summer to do fieldwork, so we stayed with our grandmother, or rather, she stayed with us.”

Nina stared at her and said, “So . . . you know a lot about birds as well then?”

Laura grinned at her. “You’re extremely single-minded about the trivia, aren’t you?”

Nina nodded. “Yes, sorry. My boyfriend says it’s irritating, and refuses to join my team. He was on an opposing team when we met, but he says I take the trivial out of trivia, which ruins it.” She narrowed her eyes. “I really do like him a lot, but he’s not very competitive.”

Laura laughed. “Where is he tonight?”

Nina smiled. “Tom? He went bowling with his brother.” She paused. “He’ll come by later.” She looked down and picked at the rug, slightly sheepishly. “We don’t live together, but we see each other a lot.”

“You met him through trivia?”

Nina started to nod, but then shook her head. “Yes . . . no . . . kind of. We met because of trivia, certainly, but we . . . I don’t know. I wasn’t interested in him at first because I didn’t think he was a reader, which is kind of a deal breaker, but . . .” She paused, and blushed slightly. “I got over myself.” She brightened. “Did you know that if you bowl four strikes in a row, it’s called a hambone?”

“No,” said Laura levelly, “I did not know that.” She smiled. “Are you trying to change the subject? I didn’t mean to be nosy.”

“It’s OK. It’s a new relationship, we’re still working things out.”