While we ate smoked salmon on her tiny balcony, I caught Lotty up on the little I knew of Nicola Aguinaldo’s story. When I told her about Morrell, Lotty went into her study and brought out a copy of Vanishing into Silence, his book on the Disappeared in Chile and Argentina. I looked at the photograph on the jacket flap. Of course I’d only seen Morrell by candlelight, and he was seven or eight years younger in the picture, but it was obviously the same man. He had a thin face and was smiling slightly, as if mocking himself for posing for a photograph.

I borrowed the book from her—I wanted to get an idea of how Morrell thought, or at least what he thought. After that, Lotty and I talked idly about other matters. Lotty’s is an intense, sometimes stormy presence, but in her home, with its polished floors and vivid colors, I always find a reassuring haven.

Lotty’s workday starts at six. I left early, my mood benign enough to take on dull household tasks: I put my laundry away, cleaned the mold out of the bathtub, washed down the kitchen cabinets and floor. The bedroom could use a vacuuming, but my domesticity spreads only so far. I planted myself in front of the piano and began picking out a fughetta with slow, loud fingers.

It’s possible, as the detective at the Trianon had said yesterday, that my dad would have loved to see me follow in his footsteps, but I knew my mother would not. She wanted me to live a life of erudition if not artistry, to inhabit the milieu the second World War had destroyed for her—concerts, books, voice lessons, friends who lived for music and art. She had made me learn both piano and voice, hoping I would have the vocal career the war had taken from her. She certainly would have resented anyone who called me a blue–collar girl.

I moved from the fughetta to warming up my voice, which I hadn’t done for several weeks. I was finding my middle range when the phone rang. It was Morrell.

“Ms. Warshawski. I’m in the neighborhood. Can I come up for a minute?”

“I’m not ready for company. Can’t we do this on the phone?”

“I’d rather not. And I won’t be company—I’ll be gone so fast you almost won’t know I was there.”

I’d changed into cutoffs for my housework, and my arms and legs were streaked with dirt. So be it. If he wanted to drop in on me unawares, he had to take me as I was. I went back to my middle voice and let Mr. Contreras and the dogs answer the bell when Morrell rang.