“No, this wasn’t like that, Leora. This was something else, and I figured out what it was. While I was walking here, I remembered that my mother once told me a story about someone in her family who died just like that, in a fire—but a really long time ago, I mean, at the turn of the century. Her grandmother had some uncle who died in a fire in New York. My mother caught me burning something in the bathroom sink once when I was a kid, and then she yelled at me to stop it, and then she started telling me this old family story about how her great-great-uncle died—about how he was trapped on the top floor of an apartment building and no one could get him out in time, and how it might have even happened because some kid like me was being careless. Then she started going on about how I had better stop playing with matches because someone in our building could get hurt, even if it wasn’t me, and I should think really hard about how I could ruin somebody else’s life—like if there was a fire and one person died, then really it was like thousands of people died because of all the children and grandchildren they could have had, and even if they already had children, it would totally change their children’s lives, and on and on. I found out later that that was the day her doctor told her that she was dying.”

Jake suddenly stopped talking. He looked up at Leora and slapped himself on the head. “God, I’m so stupid. Why am I telling you this? I came over here to help you fall asleep,” he said.

Leora watched him as he sat up straight, bending toward her, avoiding her eyes again. “There’s got to be something better to talk about,” he muttered. “I can’t think of anything right now. You think of something.”

“Okay,” Leora said. Jake leaned back on the bed, and before his back had even hit the pillow again, Leora heard herself say, “What was your mother like?”

He looked at her, bewildered. “What do you mean, what was she like?”

Leora swallowed, embarrassed but trapped. “I don’t know—what did she do?” she mumbled, letting her voice fade.

Jake sat up a little on the bed. “She was a high school teacher. She taught foreign languages. French, mostly.” He paused, and then turned to Leora. “But if you’re asking me what she did, I mean what she really did, then she kept notebooks.”

Leora felt her embarrassment dissolve. “What do you mean, notebooks?”