Needless to say, Sarah had made him a perfect map and directions, so he found her parents’ house with no difficulty. She met him at the door, and brought him in.

They were all there. Her parents, her brothers, her sister Rachel and her family. Even her Aunt Ruth from the Bronx, who hated Robert Moses, had come. He felt a little out of place as the only Gentile in the house, but the Adler family didn’t seem to mind at all. As Sarah had told him, he was the honored guest. “We shall explain the Seder to you as we go,” her sister Rachel assured him. The idea seemed to please the whole family.

Dr. Adler turned out to be everything Charlie expected. As the father of the family, this was a very important day for him, and his face was beaming with pleasure. It only took Charlie a few moments to engage him in conversation about the composers he most liked to play, and the pianists Charlie had seen at Carnegie Hall.

The family also wanted to hear about the exhibition of Theodore Keller’s photographs which Sarah was working so hard at. So he told them about his family’s relationship with the Kellers down the generations, and how close a friend he’d been to Edmund Keller, and how honored he’d felt when Edmund had laid this duty upon him.

“For me,” he explained, “looking after and showing the collection is an obligation to the Keller family. But it’s more than that. I have a duty of respect toward the work itself.” He turned to Dr. Adler. “Imagine how you’d feel if the family of a composer you admired gave you all his papers, and you found dozens of compositions, even whole symphonies, that had never been played or published.”

This was greeted with much respect.

“That’s a big obligation,” said Dr. Adler.

“Well,” said Charlie, seeing his chance, “I am just so grateful to your daughter for doing such a wonderful job at the gallery. This is very important to me.”

Dr. Adler beamed. The whole family looked delighted. If they were being friendly and welcoming before, there was a new warmth in their manner toward him now.

Only one false note interposed itself. Charlie was talking to Rachel when he overheard it. Sarah was speaking to her mother, a few feet away.

“So,” he heard Mrs. Adler say, “you still didn’t tell me. When are you seeing Adele’s grandson again?”

“I don’t know. Soon, I expect.”

“Adele says he took you out to dinner in the city.”

“Is nothing private?”

“She says he likes you very much.”

“She knows this?”

“Yes, he told her so. He’s a very good doctor.”

“I believe it.”

“Well, I won’t interfere.”

“That’s good to know.”

Charlie had been listening so carefully that he almost lost the thread of the conversation he was having with Rachel about her children. What doctor? When did Sarah have dinner with him?