Benton doesn’t respond, and if he’s listened to the recording he’s not going to tell me. Had he been made aware of it, he might have requested a copy from the Cambridge Police Department, citing that the FBI wants to make sure a government official wasn’t misbehaving or being threatened.

My husband could come up with anything he wants to gain access to the 911 recording, and he’s quite friendly with the commissioner, the mayor, pretty much everybody who’s powerful around here. He didn’t need Marino’s help.

“As you may or may not know, someone complained about me supposedly disturbing the peace.” It sounds even more bizarre as I hear myself describe such a thing to someone whose typical day involves terrorists and serial killers.

I glance at him as we near the proud brick building in the gathering dusk, and his face doesn’t register whatever reaction he might be having.

“I assume Bryce told you about it after Marino confronted him, wanting to know exactly what happened in Harvard Square when he dropped me off,” I add.

“Marino’s feeling insecure about you,” Benton says, and I can’t tell if he’s making a statement or asking a question.

“He’s always insecure,” I reply. “But he’s also acting oddly. He was pushy about wanting to drive to the airport. He was overly interested in helping pick up Dorothy.”

“I wonder how he knows she’s coming here. Did you tell him? Because I didn’t.”

“Since we had almost no warning, I really haven’t had a chance to tell hardly anyone,” I reply. “Maybe Lucy mentioned it to him.”

“Or Desi might have. He and Marino have gotten to be real pals,” Benton says, and he can mask his emotions better than anyone I know but he can’t fool me.

I can tell when something hurts him, and the blossoming relationship between Marino and Desi obviously does. I’ve worried it would as Marino spends increasing amounts of time with a mercurial and insatiably inquisitive boy whose genetics are largely unknown to us. We don’t know what to expect. We can’t predict who he might take after.

It should be Janet’s late sister Natalie since it was her egg she’d had frozen when she was only in her twenties. Long before she did anything about it she was researching surrogate mothers and sperm donors. I remember her talking about being a single parent, and in retrospect it seems she had a premonition that her days on earth would be few. And they were. Seven years after Desi was born she would die of pancreatic cancer. It’s such a shame she’s not here to watch him change rapidly like a butterfly breaking out of its cocoon.