Later that afternoon, Paula said, “Kate speaks Spanish.” Kate demurred from where she was shelving, but Paula overrode her. “She does. Did you know that, Dad?”

“Mm-hmm.” He was going through a mildewed carton a student had just brought in. They were good books, without writing or highlighting on any page, but the bottom edge of nearly every one had a pen-and-ink drawing of a hairy testicle.

“That’s my icon, in my frat,” the student said. “It’s a—”

“I know what it is.” Mitchell was sharp, even for Mitchell.

Paula glowered. She was trying to train him to be more forgiving of his patrons. That was her campaign, ever since she’d grown tall, learned words like reticent, and found him flawed.

After the frat boy had gone, Paula said, “I was thinking. Kate could help with my Spanish conversation.”

Kate approached the counter as if she were a customer. “I’m not a teacher. I just lived in Peru for a couple of years.”

“Are you fluent?”

He could see from her face that it was a rigid question. “By the time I left I could say pretty much anything I wanted. But it’s been six years now.”

She would have been living in Peru when his wife left. He hoped, with an uncomfortable swell of feeling, that Kate had been happy there, that if his and Paula’s life had been redirected, like the course of a river, she had been the recipient of those higher waters. Full of this fervent thought, he headed, for a reason he’d forgotten, to anthropology.

Paula found him there, staring blankly at the spines on the shelf. “She said she could come on Tuesday evenings. Can she?”

“If you think it will help.”

“I’ve told you Mr. Gamero never lets us speak.”

He did not say that she’d never mentioned this before.

To the store, Kate wore faded, untucked shirts and jeans slashed at the knee. He was often tempted to tease her, tell her that just because she sold used books she didn’t have to wear used clothes, but he thought she might snap back with a crack about the pittance he paid her, so he refrained. To the first Spanish lesson, however, Kate walked up the path to his door in wool pants the color of cranberries. Tuesday was her day off. Perhaps she’d had a late lunch date downtown with Lincoln. Worse, she might have had a job interview. It was an easy thing to find out. She was the type who could not take a compliment. If he told her she looked nice, she’d give the reason instead of saying thank you. But he was the type who could not give a compliment, so he just said hello and let her in.