She was right, of course. Maybe it had to do with the chameleon nature she’d commented on, or maybe I was afraid that if I talked to more than two people at a sitting, they’d compare notes and find out all my secrets. The tea party in the parlor had been, before this, the largest intimate gathering I’d ever been in.

“What’s the old woman’s name?” I asked.

“Loretta.”

“And the dog’s?”

“What?”

“The dog’s name. If I’m doing this, I may as well do it all the way.”

Sher grinned. “Eustace.”

“You’re not serious.”

“The hell I’m not. It was six months before I could call him with a straight face.”

The food was laid out on the buffet, which meant I’d be spared having to ask anyone to pass the whatever. The whatever consisted of the crown jewels of southern cooking: ham and red-eye gravy, corn bread, hoppin’ john, string beans, and sweet potato pie. If Frances didn’t get on with her murder soon, she wouldn’t fit into Ego’s elevator.

Following Sherrea got me either exactly what I didn’t want, or what I did, depending on which interpretation of my wants I used. I found myself at a corner of the long table, with Sher on my right and Theo, at the end, on my left. He smiled when I sat down and pointed to the sling on his arm. “Temporary lefties get to sit in state, man,” he said. “Makes me want to ask the meeting to come to order.”

I stared at the sling, stupefied. He hadn’t told me anything about himself. I hadn’t told him anything about me. But he’d stood on that landing in the rain and taken a bullet from one of my would-be kidnappers. He — and I — made less sense than ever, but something heavy lay on the scales between us. I had ignored that, yesterday. How could I?

“Does it hurt?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah. I keep forgetting and reaching for things.” He pulled a hand-rolled smoke out of his shirt pocket. “But hey, we have the technology.” It was a red-and-orange paisley shirt. I wondered it it was his. Probably.

I would have offered to cut something up for him, but the ham was fork-tender.

As it turned out, I wasn’t the quietest person at the table. Mr. Lyle mentioned that I’d recommended wind power, and engaged me in a pleasant argument about the efficiency of aging PV cells and the availability of good bearings. The woman from the gate, Loretta, was sitting across from me; she scowled and shook her head.

“Everybody ’long the river ought to be runnin’ off communal-owned hydro,” she said sharply. “Doesn’t make efficient sense or economic sense, all this sneakin’ around for power that rightly belongs to everybody or nobody. No point arguin’ over it, either, with that horse’s ass Albrecht sayin’ it’s all his.”

I glanced at Theo, but he seemed to be concentrating on his plate. For all I knew, he thought his father was a horse’s ass. How should I know? I had no idea what family feeling was like.