“Yeah, but I sure hated doing it.” I played with a loose thread on the easy chair. Another thing I could do if I’d gone to a high-end law firm: buy new living room furniture. “I helped nurse my mother when I was fifteen and she was dying of cancer. And my dad, who died of emphysema ten years later. I’d do it again if I had to, but I couldn’t give that kind of care to someone who wasn’t important to me.”

“That’s why you’re a detective, Vic, not a nurse.” She held up a hand as I started to speak. “I’m not sacrificing myself, believe me. I’m burned out at the clinic. I need a change. That’s what Lotty can’t understand: she puts so much of herself, so much energy, into those patients that she can’t see why someone else wouldn’t want to. But being at home, wrestling with one medical problem, it will give me time to think, to decide what I should do next.”

“And you want me to sell that to Lotty?”

I didn’t blame Carol for wanting to leave the clinic. I’d burned out at the Public Defender’s office after five years, and Carol’s work was much more intense than mine had ever been. But of course, Lotty felt betrayed. She had no family to speak of—a brother in Montreal and her father’s brother, Stefan, were her only relatives to survive the Second World War—so she couldn’t understand the calls family make on you. Or maybe she had some hidden resentment of those lucky enough to have families making demands on them?

My doorbell rang before I could chase that unpromising thought further. I looked through the peephole at Mr. Contreras’s face. Opening the door, I felt my blood begin to boil.

“Sorry, doll, I know you don’t like to be bothered when you have company, but—”

“You’re right. I don’t. And I can’t even remember the last time you didn’t come huffing up ten minutes after my guests arrived to see who’s here. Look. Carol Alvarado. Not a man after all. So go back downstairs and give it a rest, okay?”

He put his hands on his hips and looked a little ugly. “You have been way out of line lately, Vic. I mean way out, how you been talking to me. If I left you alone like you’re always claiming to want it, you’d be dead now. Maybe that’s what you want, for me to leave you alone and let you get drowned in a marsh or let someone put a bullet through you.”