The second floor was our kitchen/dining room area. The eight-burner stove had two-foot-wide slabs of oak on three sides, creating a table of sorts. The whole structure stood in the center of the cooking area. There was also a huge utility oven and broiler embedded in the central wall.

I sat at the stove-table while Feather puttered with the kettle, loose tea, and cups.

“What you do today?” I asked her, recovered from my fear of an open door.

“Matteo drove me down to Dawn Westerly’s house. Her dad put in an Olympic-size pool so we did laps for an hour and a half.”

Matteo Longo was, among other things, chauffeur to the residents of Brighthope. Exceptionally tall, he was a pale-skinned man who had the scars and craters of adolescent acne spread across his face. He loved telling jokes and so had a better understanding of English than his father or any of his brothers.

Matteo had driven me to work that morning.

“How many laps?”

“We didn’t count.”

“How you gonna win the gold medal if you don’t count?”

“Daddy,” she said in faux exasperation.

She put a pot of the steeping tea and a white ceramic diner mug in front of me and said, “Let it sit for six minutes.”

“I’m supposed to count that, right?”

She rolled her eyes and took the stool next to mine.

“So what are you dressed for now?” I asked the thirteen-and-a-half-year-old brown-cream-colored girl.

“Don’t you remember? You said I could go over to Anita’s house tonight.”

“Which one was that?” I asked, trying my best to sound as if I didn’t recognize the name.

“You know. Anita Kolor. Her parents have that house on Malibu Beach.”

I knew Anita, her mother, Mary-Margaret, and her money-manager father, Keith Kolor. Saul Lynx did a background check on them when it became clear to me that Anita and Feather were becoming friends.

“Oh, right,” I said. “You know I’m a little nervous you hangin’ out with all these wealthy kids from that fancy school’a yours. I mean, I don’t want you thinkin’ that we’re rich just ’cause’a this house.”

“It’s an expensive school, Daddy. That’s where rich kids go. That’s why you sent me there.”

“They got those kids with scholarships and grants,” I offered as a possible alternative.

“Five,” Feather said, holding up the full complement of fingers on her left hand. “Six including me. Kenisha Richards, Bob Cho, Lana Sizeman, Bic Roan, and Pookie. I know them all. I hang out with two of them. So are you saying that they should be my only friends?”

“I thought you played tennis with Anita,” I said, rather than having the argument, which belonged in my head.