The driveway loomed up much faster than she had expected it to, and she overshot. She backed up slowly, making certain there weren’t any kids playing in the street before doing so, and pulled the truck in as neatly as she could.

The unmistakable scent of pizza greeted her nose as soon as she opened the door.

“Don’t try to hide it; I already smelled it!” she shouted, closing the door behind her and walking into the living room. As she had expected, Grandfather sat in front of the television watching CNN, a Domino’s box in front of him, and a half-eaten slice of pepperoni still in his hand. He looked up at her with his beady black eyes, and grinned without a trace of guilt.

“You know very well that my cholesterol count was fine, the last time we had it checked,” he said. “And besides, I was hungry, and you weren’t here to fix me anything.”

“As if you aren’t a better cook than I am,” she retorted, then threw up her hands in defeat. “All right. I give up. I just hope you saved me some of that.”

He smiled again, affectionately. “I knew you’d be hungry too; the past two days you haven’t had a single proper meal. You work too much and eat too little.” He picked up the first box to reveal a second, and opened it up, tilting it to show her another intact pizza. “Mushrooms and black olives, your favorite. All for you. And I made apple cobbler, for later. You’re never going to find a husband if you look like a stick.”

She helped herself to napkins and a fat slice; he was right, she was starving, and right now she would have eaten the cardboard if there’d been cheese on it. “What are you, Jewish now?” she jibed, and mimicked a thick New York accent. “Eat, eat, eat, you’re too thin, how you gonna get a husband, you so thin—”

“So? Maybe they’ve got the right idea about some things.” He chuckled, and put another couple of slices on a paper plate for her. “There’s French Vanilla ice cream to go with that cobbler.”

Jennifer suppressed a groan; she was never going to be able to resist that combination. She had been even hungrier than she had thought; she inhaled the first slice and looked longingly at the rest before licking her fingers clean and opening the mail.

It was a Good Mail Day; two checks. One from a divorce case, and one from a client whose steakhouse was being pilfered. That would take care of a couple of bills, while she worked this thing.…

This thing.

She picked up her second piece of pizza and cleared her throat, and Grandfather looked up quickly.

“The insurance case,” she began.