Karen sat on the couch and tucked her skirt under and stared at the man she had married when she was seventeen years old and lived with for fourteen months. Then she took a sharp, quick breath and told him about her involvement with the mafia. No preamble.

Outside, the deepening twilight was purple and chill and punctuated by the bounce of the ball and an occasional laugh or word. I could see Dani and Toby and most of the drive, but not the hoop. Someone would shoot the ball and the ball would arc up, but then it would be gone, passing from my line of sight. It didn’t matter. You could tell if they made it or not by their faces and the sounds they made and by how the ball rebounded. If someone ran to one side or the other, the ball had caromed off the side of the hoop. If someone ran fast straight ahead, they had lofted an air ball and it was rolling into the garage. If the ball gently came back to them or they trotted forward to the hoop, they had made a basket. You didn’t see the event, you saw the results of the event. I had read a book on modern astronomy which had said that both Neptune and Pluto were predicted long before they had ever been seen because of peculiarities in the orbits of the other outer planets. It made me think that planets weren’t so very different from people. Seeing what happened around them was enough to tell you where they were and what they were.

When Karen Lloyd was finished, Peter looked at me and said, “Is this for real?”

“Yep.”

He stood up and gave impatient. “No. I mean, is this really real? This guy who was here, Charlie, he’s a criminal, he’s in the mafia?”

I said, “It’s really real, Peter.” Something only someone in show business would have to hear. “The DeLucas are one of the largest mafia families in New York. I’ve talked to Charlie about letting Karen out of the setup, but he’s said no.”

Peter made a big deal out of looking around the room before he looked back at Karen. He was grinning, like this wasn’t really real after all, like maybe we were clowning around. “You’re in the mafia.”

“No. I’m not in the mafia. I’m involved with the mafia.” Her voice was edged. The edge hadn’t been there a few minutes ago.

“Does the boy know?”

The jaw knotted again. “Stop calling him ‘the boy.’ He has a name.”

“Jesus Christ, all right. Toby. Does Toby know?” Now Peter was giving us irritated.

“No. This is illegal, Peter. What I’m doing is against the law. You don’t tell a child something like that.”