She ran back in, dragging her whining, exhausted children. Another checker, seeing that Polly had been crying, patted her hand, and Polly started crying again, ran back to the old Civic, slammed it into reverse, and crunched the bumper against a concrete signpost.

Helen and Sam made no sound whatsoever. Polly hauled herself out of the car. The damage to the post was invisible, and any new dent on the Civic was indistinguishable from the last dozen years of abuse. Polly started to get back in.

“Hey, lady,” said a man. “I saw all that. Hold up.”

There was always some such fucker. He was snub-nosed, overly groomed with ironed jeans, her age, not a local. Polly could tell her appearance did not impress him, nor did her car.

“I haven’t damaged a thing that doesn’t belong to me,” she said.

“Someone should make sure.”

“Really?” asked Polly, warming up at the same time she started to shake. A sunburnt man trotted toward them with alarming speed.

“Can I help?” asked Drake, sweaty from working with Harry at the dig. He touched Polly on the shoulder—nice, not proprietary. “I came down for food and water.”

The man, uneasy, looked at Drake’s clothes, not his face. “She backed into that.”

“I saw!” said Drake. “Awful! Clearly she’s having a difficult time!”

Polly managed the trick of weeping while enraged. It probably saved the man, who finally focused on Drake’s face. People were sometimes overwhelmed by a weird sense of familiarity. Did they know him? Maybe when he was twenty and saving a battalion or a city or fucking the girl, rather than being dressed like a guy who might dig up bodies in a field.

Maude would enjoy this, thought Polly. Were she to know.

“No harm done, I think,” said Drake, wrapping an arm around Polly.

“No,” said the man, retreating.

Drake got into the Civic and drove them home. By the time they turned into the alley, Polly was shuddering.

“I’m not rescuing you, I’m saving that asshole,” Drake said. He parked, carried both Helen and Polly’s groceries, gave the kids ice cream sandwiches, once again sifted through the photos on the table. “You’re not getting anywhere with these.”

“I know,” said Polly. She wished she could go to bed.

“I’ll get them enlarged. Will you give me the Delgados’ address for a note?”

Polly fished through her purse. “They appreciated the fact that you were a gentleman,” she said. “That you wanted to help with tuition, that you were sweet to her.”

“Well,” he said, “I liked her. Very much.”