I packed my camera case, found my coat, and was getting ready to follow, but Natalie stood in the front doorway and blocked me. “Delta! You said you’d make a balloon elephant! That’s my favorite animal!”

“Sorry, Natalie.” If I were to stay later than we’d agreed, I’d be devaluing myself and my time. And I’d also risk being viewed as intrusive. In the past, I’d occasionally made the mistake of allowing myself to become friendly with a client, and it hadn’t always ended well. But something about this family and this house was difficult to resist. The edifice itself, the rooms, the people. Every aspect of it beckoned to me.

“Please!” Natalie’s wide eyes locked with mine.

I yielded and returned to the dining area to make an elephant and a few more balloon shapes for Natalie and her remaining friends. In my peripheral vision, I could see Amelia and Fritz continuing to socialize. Fritz shook hands with the man he had been speaking to earlier and clapped him on the shoulder affectionately. “See ya, Ian.”

One by one, Natalie’s guests left, except for a precocious-looking girl named Piper, who disappeared upstairs with Natalie following her. Though it was Natalie’s house, Piper looked to be calling the shots.

When Amelia and Fritz noticed me, they appeared pleased and asked me to stay for a glass of wine. The invitation was precisely what I’d been hoping for.

In the front library, Fritz placed his glass of pinot noir on the sharp-cornered glass coffee table. “You’ve got a natural facility with kids. It’s impressive.” His green eyes—distractingly green—flashed at me through square tortoiseshell glasses. “Do you ever get tired?”

“It’s peaceful, really, spending time with them.” I noticed my nails on my wineglass and regretted my failure to get a manicure earlier that week. I imagined that a manicurist showed up at the Straub home weekly, and Amelia made business calls while an underpaid Filipino girl filed her nails.

“Do you have any of your own?” Amelia was seated next to Fritz on one of two cream-colored midcentury sofas. She leaned her back against the sofa’s arm and hugged her knees to her chest. The casual pose—faintly at odds with her feline comportment—was evidently designed to cast herself as a down-to-earth mom chatting with a girlfriend.

Itzhak whimpered at the sound of the wind outside and placed his wet muzzle on the sofa next to Amelia. Occasionally I could hear Piper’s voice from upstairs, but couldn’t make out any words.

My fingers made slight indentations in the arms of a buttery leather chair. “One son.”

“How old?” she asked, as if the answer meant a great deal to her.

“Five,” I said. “Jasper’s in California with his father. In Malibu. We recently divorced.”