The curved windows reflected the candles on her dining-room table. I watched the multiple flames the glass created. Some of the tension of the day eased out of my shoulders.

We moved the conversation to lighter topics: our planned picnic to Ravinia to hear Denyce Graves sing, Lotty’s new perinatology fellow who had cried out that she loved Jane Austen. “She was the one who went to Africa to study the monkeys, right?” Around nine, Lotty sent me home since she had an early call. She doesn’t do much surgery anymore, but she still goes early to the hospital to monitor her fellows’ work.

I checked my messages on my way home. Karen Lennon had called to say she’d stopped at the VA and given Elton Grainger the name and address of an SRO, which had rooms for homeless vets. She was a conscientious young pastor, no doubt about it.

When I got home, Mr. Contreras erupted from his apartment. “There you are, doll. I couldn’t remember your cellphone number, and you never gave it to your cousin, so we been sitting here, hoping you’d get home before midnight.”

“Vic!” Petra bounced out behind him, Mitch wrapping himself around her legs. “I feel like such an idiot, but I lost my keys and didn’t know what to do. So I thought maybe you could put me up for the night, but Uncle Sal said you could probably get into the building, that you knew how to open anything that isn’t electronic. So here I am!”

Her cellphone rang in the middle of her hearty peal of laughter. She looked at the screen, then answered it with a breathless account of her life to date, or at least her lost keys, her visit to Uncle Sal and me, and where she planned to meet everybody once she got back into her own home.

“You ever hear of a locksmith, either of you?” I bent to stroke Peppy, who was whining for attention.

“Yes, but they wanted, like, hundreds of dollars to come after hours, and I don’t have hundreds of dollars. They hardly pay me anything at the campaign, you know.” Her phone rang again, and she repeated her story.

“I thought your dad had the odd dollar lying around,” I objected when she’d hung up. “Not that you aren’t welcome to sleep on my couch tonight.”

“If Daddy finds out I’ve been this stupid, he’ll never stop lecturing me on how I’m too immature to be alone in the big bad city.”

“Didn’t Peter get you the job on Brian Krumas’s campaign?”

“Oh, he did, he did. But he expected me to live, like, in a convent, or at least share an apartment. He pulled a Vesuvius when he found out I’d rented my own place.”