The three of them sat down with the PlayStation and put on “Katamari Damacy.” The game was essentially a graphically advanced version of Pac-Man, just as vibrant and cheerily uncomplicated. The player controlled a tiny green elf who pushed around a supremely sticky ball—the katamari—that rolled up objects that would stick to it, starting with small things like ants and mahjong tiles, and as the katamari grew, larger and larger things (cats, bonsai plants, schoolgirls, sumo wrestlers, fishing boats, houses, giant squids). There was a sneaky pathos to the whole thing. As the katamari got bigger, the world around it got smaller and quieter. During the game’s final phases, everyday noises gave way to the gnashing of tidal waves, the bellow of foghorns, and the anonymous rumble of large construction equipment. Everything turned epic, including the isolation.

Raymond didn’t have the patience to master the fiddly console but he could watch the girls play for hours, drawn into the katamari’s single-minded hustle and the controlled chaos of its pixilated Japan. It relaxed him to see the world looking so clean, so logical, so giddily conquerable. Never in a million years would he have imagined finding satori in a video game.

Outside, it was anti-katamari. The Santa Anas were in full force again, howling as soon as the sun set. By morning, all kinds of detritus that had been stuck up in the deodars for months, even years, found themselves spilled on the street, sidewalks and lawns. Bird’s nests, pine cones, shuttlecocks, hair clips, candy wrappers, drinking straws, against a carpet of green and brown pine needles.

Kate spotted the letter quite by chance. She was backing her car out of the driveway, wheels crunching on all the tree crap, when something flat and pink in the center of the street caught her eye. It was a hassle getting out of the car and bending down in her condition—nine months, just about—but her curiosity won out.

It was an envelope, unlabeled but already carefully opened along its upper edge. Notebook paper was folded within. As soon as she freed the letter—handwritten in black ink, entirely in Korean script except for the sign-off, “Beverly”—she knew. It was Mrs. Park. One of the looters must have either dropped it or tossed it behind a bush when they discovered they couldn’t read it.

What was it? A secret confession? A suicide note? She stopped herself from instantly running it over to the girls at Raymond’s house. What if it was something really disturbing? Until she learned what it said, it was best to protect them. She put it in her purse and brought it with her to the student she saw that afternoon, Cora Ahn, a woman of Korean origin who was fluent in English but wanted to improve her writing skills.

“I have an assignment for you,” Kate told her. “Translate this.”