What began as a handshake grew into mutual appreciation. He didn’t want the girls to leave. With the young refugees in his care, his home took on an improvisational candor—shoes everywhere, socks everywhere, ponytail scrunchies abandoned in surprising crevices. Now that the bullet graze on Mira’s arm had almost completely healed—leaving behind a scenic scar that she proudly showed off—there were used Band-Aids everywhere, triumphal souvenirs of her recovery.

Two kind-faced women from Child Services showed up, telling the girls that their father’s cousin in Koreatown was the state’s “preferred resource” for their “placement” now that they were orphaned, but also that this cousin had not been responsive to discussions, and his home could not be “properly assessed for suitability.” Raymond told them that the girls had assured him that their relatives had no interest in taking them, and that he would harbor them until they chose otherwise, and yes, that he understood this arrangement was dependent on paperwork he was only too happy to fill out with the help of his lawyer.

When the girls ambled in for their interview with the social workers, they looked utterly at home. They called Raymond “Uncle Ray” and snacked messily on home-baked muffins, dropping numerous crumbs into the gaps between sofa cushions. They’d lived their entire lives on Santa Claus Lane and couldn’t imagine a future elsewhere. They were star students at their magnet school. They did not want any further disruption.

Through his flame-eaten privet, after the interrogators left, Raymond gazed over at what remained of the Park house. With its top gone and interior eviscerated, what remained resembled medieval fortress ruins. What could have possessed a fifteen-year-old boy to cover the place with gasoline and then torch it, if in fact he did do it? The suspect, Arik Kistorian, a schoolmate of Rosemary’s, was evidently the same bruised boy who’d attacked him that night. He’d seen the boy at the police station when he took the girls in for questioning and was struck, even under harsh fluorescent lighting, by his sullen beauty. He reminded Raymond of many boys he’d known and held. But he also sensed something damaged in this one, an aggrieved incomprehension at the workings of the world—as if this crime had been done to him and not the other way around. The arson investigation proved challenging. Arik’s fingerprints could not be found on the site of the blast; further, his mother—a professional laundress—had cleaned his clothes and his room before detectives arrived at their home. But the cops remained interested in him. Each time Raymond brought up Arik, even obliquely, he felt Rosemary grow more distant, more secretive. Finally, he let it drop.