She beat me, as usual, as Crabtree returned, threading through our legs and looking for praise for getting mud up to his belly. Wallis bent and stroked his neck affectionately, and he was off again.

“Really, I just want to hear about you,” I insisted as we continued walking. “You have this amazing job. You’re rubbing elbows with television stars and famous comedians at all the cool parties. You’re in love. Your skin has never looked better. How do you do it?”

“You’re deflecting,” she said, amused. “You know, I texted you the other day—how are you, what’s new, what are you up to? And when you responded hours later, you sent me a GIF of Elmo shrugging. What does that even mean?”

I had only a moment to process this question before Wallis cursed. “Crabtree!” she yelled, “you stupid dog. Get back here!” He had charged through a copse of cherry trees just on the verge of budding and then disappeared, and as we followed in his direction, we saw, a few rows away, what seemed to be a press conference around a modest headstone. A woman in a magenta pantsuit was being interviewed, a video camera on a tripod recording it. Circled around were various staff, presumably, and a few other members of the press corps, credentials on lanyards, thick-lens cameras. “Damn. Damn,” said Wallis. “Where did that dog go?”

A minute later we spotted him, scampering about, perilously close, in fact, to the media event. Birds glided above, occasionally diving toward him as he stood on his hind legs, reaching, jaws snapping.

“The dog is going to be on camera soon if he’s not careful,” I said as we jogged toward him.

We managed to wrangle him when he was distracted by a particularly pesky bird. While Wallis clipped his leash on, I knelt in the grass, holding his torso. From this closer position, I was now able to fully observe the scene.

“Wallis,” I stammered with the wisps of breath that were still left in my lungs. “That’s Atlas.” He was listening intently and taking notes, his stance that of someone engaged but not overly eager.

Wallis looked up, and the color was gone from her face in an instant. Because standing right there with him was Melinda Darley. “What do we do?” she whispered as we studied them from our crouched positions among the marble angels.

Melinda Darley was holding forth, her shoulder-length blond hair flipped out at the ends like a sixties housewife. She wore trendy sneakers and gold drop earrings. I thought of her recent words about Miles after he’d criticized her on the Senate floor—he and his office were unfit to run a moral democracy, she’d said. That word—moral—I’d felt sure was aimed directly at me. The unfairness of it, less than two weeks later, still smarted.