I found a family shot at the beach when I was three: my mother, in a rare moment of relaxation, looking more like Claudia Cardinale than Anna Magnani; me, grinning over my sand bucket; my dad, in swimming trunks, bending over her and me. His two pepperpots, he called us.

I flipped the pages. Softball in Grant Park. My dad played on one of the teams the department fielded. I used to know most of the men he played with. I frowned over the team picture now, reading the names printed underneath in my father’s curious boxy script. Bobby Mallory, in his rookie year on the force, playing shortstop. Two men who’d died in the last few years had been in the outfield.

My eyes widened in surprise as I looked at the man next to Bobby: George Dornick. He’d been part of Brian Krumas’s entourage last night. After the drumrolls and trumpets gave Krumas a royal fanfare, those of us lurking around his father’s table met the candidate and entourage. Dornick was running a big private security firm these days. He was advising the candidate on terrorism and Homeland Security issues.

It’s not strange to find ex-cops running private security firms. It was strange meeting him last night and now seeing him forty years younger, with his hair still brown and thick, grinning with my dad and Bobby and the other men I’d known. If Tony hadn’t died, maybe he’d have gotten rich doing private security, too.

I finally put the album away and went back to bed, but I couldn’t relax into sleep again. I found a bottle of blueberry juice in the cupboard and took a glass out to the back porch. Peppy, who’d wandered down into the yard, gave a short bark. I leaned over to see the back gate starting to open. Peppy stood stiff-legged, growling. I called to her, but she stayed at attention, growling more loudly as a luminous white shape appeared.

I started down the stairs in my bare feet but stopped on the second-floor landing when I realized it was my new neighbor returning home with his bass in its large white case. Peppy changed at once from warrior to cheerleader, circling around him as he came up the stairs.

“That’s a good feeling, someone to greet you at the end of a hard day. I was feeling sorry for myself just now, coming home to an empty apartment.” He was in black tie tonight, but he’d put the tie in a pocket and undone his shirt. “What are you doing up so late?”

“Indigestion. I ate too many politicians for dinner last night. What about you? Isn’t it three or something?”

“We finished at Ravinia, and one thing led to another,” he said vaguely, making me suppose he’d been with a lover. He leaned the bass against his kitchen door. “What politicians were you eating?”