“Yeah, it has,” I agreed unenthusiastically.

Louisa would not let Caroline go to her grandparents’ alone. If she or Gabriella couldn’t take her, they gave me two quarters for the bus and careful instructions to stay with Caroline until it was time to return home again. I never understood why Mrs. Djiak couldn’t come and fetch Caroline herself. Maybe Louisa was afraid her mother would try to keep the baby so she wouldn’t grow up with an unwed single parent.

“Since you’re down here, maybe you’d like a cup of coffee.”

It wasn’t effusive, but she’d never been demonstrative. I accepted with as much good cheer as I could muster and she opened the storm door for me. She was careful not to touch the glass panel with her hands. I slid through as unobtrusively as I could, remembering to take my shoes off in the tiny entryway before following her to the kitchen.

As I’d hoped, she was alone. The ironing board stood open in front of the stove, a shirt draped across it. She folded the shirt, laid it on the clothes basket, and collapsed the ironing board with quick silent motions. When everything was stowed in the tiny pantry behind the refrigerator, she put on water to boil.

“I talked to Louisa this morning. She said you’d been down there yesterday.”

“Yes,” I acknowledged. “It’s tough to see someone that lively laid up the way she is.”

Mrs. Djiak spooned coffee into the pot. “Lots of people suffer more with less cause.”

“And lots of people carry on like Attila the Hun and never get a pimple. It just goes to show, doesn’t it?”

She took two cups from a shelf and stood them primly on the table. “I hear you’re a detective now. Doesn’t really seem like a woman’s job, does it? Kind of like Caroline, working on community development, or whatever she calls it. I don’t know why you two girls couldn’t get married, settle down, raise a family.”

“I guess we’re waiting for men as good as Mr. Djiak to come along,” I said.

She looked at me seriously. “That’s the trouble with you girls. You think life is romantic, like they show in the movies. A good steady man who brings his pay home every Friday is worth a lot more than fancy dinners and flowers.”

“Was that Louisa’s problem too?” I asked gently.

She set her lips in a thin line and turned back to the coffee. “Louisa had other problems,” she said shortly.

“Like what?”

She carefully took a covered sugar bowl down from the cupboard over the stove and placed it with a little pitcher of cream in the middle of the table. She didn’t say anything until she’d finished pouring the coffee.

“Louisa’s problems are old now. And they never were any of your business.”

“And what about Caroline? Are they any concern of hers?” I sipped the rich coffee, which Louisa still infused in the old European style.