in a childish scrawl that surely belongs to Wesley.

“Well, that’s easy,” I say. I stand up and mime spreading peanut butter on a piece of bread.

“Bread and butter!” screams Doris.

I fold my imaginary bread into a sandwich.

“Book?” says Leo.

I roll my eyes and take an imaginary bite from this mother-loving imaginary peanut butter sandwich, and as I chew my imaginary lunch, I wonder what sin I’ve committed that can possibly be so mortal as to condemn me to this purgatory.

“Fried chicken?” says Doris, apparently forgetting about the spreading of the butter, and I may kill myself.

“I know! I know!” Wesley jiggles up and down like he has to pee.

“You’re not on our team, dummy!”

“Doris, your brother is not a dummy,” Lindquist says.

I look helplessly at Leo, begging for relief, and although I can just about read the words peanut butter sandwich on his face, he only shakes his head and smiles, the bastard.

I set down my imaginary sandwich and unscrew an imaginary lid from an imaginary jar of peanut butter, and some fraught time later Doris screams out PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICH! at goddamn last and I crumple to the ground.

“I knew it! That was my charade!” Wesley says.

Doris is sulky. “I don’t even like peanut butter sandwiches, that’s why.”

Wesley jumps up and runs for the charades bowl. “My turn!”

And so on and so on for another hour or two, until Wesley’s curled up asleep on my lap and my cocoa’s finished, and Leo bends down to lift the limp carcass and carry it upstairs. Careful, I mutter.

Doris trips along after them, chattering about something. The bourbon’s gone to my head and I’m feeling a little reckless. When Lindquist stands to follow the ankle-biters upstairs, I say, “Not so fast.”

“Oh? Haven’t you got enough out of me already?”

“Just one question, really. I was mulling it all the way home.”

She crosses her arms and frowns. “What, then?”

“This thing you’ve told me about Mrs. Mallory. How she tried to kill herself. That wasn’t in the papers. I mean, this is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“George was always an expert about managing the press.”

“But that didn’t matter, did it? Wouldn’t have changed what happened, if the newspapers knew all about it and made Mallory out to be some philandering daredevil who drove his wife to suicide. Because his goose was already cooked.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You had already eclipsed him. You were the star now. Morrow made sure of that, didn’t he?”

She looks to the stairs and back again. “Yes. He wanted to make me a star, and he did.”