“White women,” Clayton would say, then repeat it with a sigh. “White women.”

When Luther took Mrs. Coughlin back to K Street and opened the front door for her, she would give him a soft, “Thank you, Luther,” and after he’d served her breakfast, he’d rarely see her for the rest of the day. In a month, their interactions consisted solely of her “thank you” and his “my pleasure, ma’am.” She never asked where he lived, if he had family, or where he hailed from, and Luther had gleaned enough about the employer-valet relationship to know it was not his place to initiate conversation with her.

“She’s hard to know,” Nora said to him one day when they went to Haymarket Square to purchase the weekly groceries. “I’ve been in that house five years, I have, and I’m not sure I could tell you much more about her than I could the night I arrived.”

“Long as she ain’t finding fault with my work, she can stay silent as a stone.”

Nora placed a dozen potatoes in the sack she carried to market. “Are you getting on well with everyone else?”

Luther nodded. “They seem a nice family.”

She nodded, though Luther couldn’t tell if it was a nod of agreement or if she’d just decided something about the apple she was considering. “Young Joe’s certainly grown a fondness for you.”

“Boy loves his baseball.”

She smiled. “‘Love’ may not be a strong enough word.”

Once Joe had discovered Luther had played some baseball in his time, the after-school hours became games of catch and pitching and fielding instruction in the Coughlins’ small backyard. Dusk coincided with the end of Luther’s shift, so the final three hours of his workday were spent mostly at play, a situation Captain Coughlin had immediately approved. “If it keeps the boy out of his mother’s hair, I’d let you field a team should you ask, Mr. Laurence.”

Joe wasn’t a natural athlete, but he had heart and he listened well for a child his age. Luther showed him how to drop his knee when he fielded grounders and how to follow through on both his throws and the swings of his bat. He taught him to spread and then plant his feet beneath a pop-up and to never catch it below his head. He tried to teach him how to pitch, but the boy didn’t have the arm for it, nor the patience. He just wanted to hit and hit big. So Luther found one more thing to blame Babe Ruth for—turning the game into a smash-ball affair, a circus spectacle, making every white kid in Boston think it was about ooohs and aaahs and the cheap soaring of an ill-timed dinger.

Except for the morning hour with Mrs. Coughlin and the late-day hours with Joe, Luther spent most of his workday with Nora O’Shea.

“And how do you like it so far?”

“Doesn’t seem much for me to do.”

“Would you like some of my work, then?”