We’ve received numerous reports of lights showing in the library in the middle of the night. This town approved a bond issue to expand the library, but taxpayers did not give the board carte blanche to run up the electric bill.

What a lucky town, to care enough about their library to expand it when all over America, communities were closing facilities and cutting acquisitions—including in Chicago.

I drank the cortado in one swallow. Simone offered me a second, but I needed actual food now. At an upscale diner across the street, I ordered eggs, grits, and fruit. While I waited, I unloaded my computer from the cage and started checking mail.

A message from Jake led the pack.

I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch, but I’ve been angry that you would go to Kansas in response to pleas from Bernie Fouchard yet not fly to Switzerland in response to pleas from me. Perhaps you are similarly angry that I chose Switzerland over you. I can’t put you ahead of my music. I try to understand that you can’t put me ahead of your investigative work, but there will always be another crime to investigate; there won’t always be another chance to study and perform in the heart of the early-music movement. This was a one-time opportunity. This is a conversation that would be better face-to-face, but I don’t know when we will next be face-to-face. Are you still coming at Christmas? Or will crime win out? J.

The message left me feeling as though I’d been kicked in the diaphragm. My food arrived, but I’d lost my appetite. I wrote back and sent the message without editing it.

I read your message in a diner in Kansas. If I’d been in Basel, I’d have been sitting alone in a café while you rehearsed. I’m not Penelope. I have my own mission on the planet. It isn’t as beautiful or ennobling as music, but I also heal people’s lives. I’ll think about Switzerland and Christmas when I’m back in Chicago, feeling less fragile than I do here on my own. V.I.

I tried reading reports from the Streeter brothers, queries from clients, but angry, hurt tears were blurring the screen. You want to sit in your room feeling sorry for yourself? my mother used to say. That’s all right, then, because no one else is feeling sorry for you.

Buck up, Warshawski, get your head back in the game. I returned grimly to my mail, sorted out what I could handle myself remotely, what I needed to offload, all the time in the back of my mind wondering if Baggetto and Pinsen were shadowing my keystrokes. Wondering if Jake was playing Lieberson’s setting of Neruda to a stranger.