Which makes her slightly late for class. She has fifteen undergrads. She sees that what’s trending this semester in terms of hair is two chroma colors in addition to regular hair color. These kids are colorful, but silent as little monks. She breaks the ice with an old-fashioned parlor game. Each of them has to write on a three-by-five card three facts about her/himself—two true, one false. And the class asks questions to try to trip them up on their false fact, which, since it is false, they don’t know enough about. By the time they’ve gone around the table with this, the atmosphere has warmed enough to begin class.

Their first project is to design a set for Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes. She has found this to be a successful assignment. First, they’ve never read the play, and so this forces them to do that. Second, it requires period furniture, so they have to go rummaging around in the past. One class she goes with them on the el up to Belmont junk shops to measure and photograph pieces they might use. Every once in a while, one of them sets a play on another planet, or after whatever apocalypse, which is nice, a little off-roading, but it’s still good for them to have a basic grounding in the way things looked historically.

Only one of the students recognizes her from local newspaper stories. It was a bit of luck that Cate’s newsworthy fifteen minutes took place during winter break and most students were home, out of range of Chicago news. This student, though—a girl wearing a cocktail dress and Doc Martens—comes up after class to say, “So. Are you okay?”

This seems way too intimate but for the fact that when your personal life makes the news, it’s no longer off-limits for strangers to mention.

“I am,” Cate says, reflexively, then wonders what okay would be now.

After class, she drives up to see Neale, who’s recuperating after surgery on her busted cheek. She finds Rose and Arthur in the living room. With a little conversation she also finds they are not just here in a post-op way, but in an open-ended residence. Well, of course, they would be staying here. Activists take action. They’re wired for it.

“Cate, sweetheart,” Rose says, briefly holding her phone away from her, “we’re adding home security to the cable package here.”

Arthur reads aloud from the Comcast site on his laptop. “ ‘Check your home even while you’re away. Use your mobile app to monitor your property inside and out.’ ”

“Sounds a little Orwellian,” Cate says.