“I’ll catch up with you in his lot.”

I let myself into the darkened house and paused for a moment in the front hall. The house was always at its best when it was asleep. There was an air of satisfaction to the house at the end of the day. Maybe the day hadn’t gone exactly right, but the day had been lived and the house had been there for its family.

I hung my jacket in the hall closet and tiptoed into the kitchen. Finding food in my kitchen was always hit or miss. Finding food in my mother’s kitchen was a sure thing. I heard the stairs creak and knew from the tread that it was my mother.

“How did it go at Stiva’s?” she asked.

“It went okay. I helped him lock up, and then I drove him home.”

“I guess it’s hard for him to drive with his wrist. I hear he got twenty-three stitches.”

I pulled out some ham and provolone cheese.

“Here, let me,” my mother said, taking the ham and cheese, reaching for the loaf of rye bread on the counter.

“I can do it,” I said.

My mother took her good carving knife from the knife drawer. “You don’t slice the ham thin enough.”

When she’d made each of us a sandwich, she poured two glasses of milk and set it all on the kitchen table. “You could have invited him in for a sandwich,” she said.

“Spiro?”

“Joe Morelli.”

My mother never ceased to amaze me. “There was a time when you would have chased him out of the house with that carving knife.”

“He’s changed.”

I tore into the sandwich. “So he tells me.”

“I hear he’s a good cop.”

“A good cop is different from a good person.”

* * *

I woke up disoriented, staring at a ceiling from a previous life. Grandma Mazur’s voice snapped me back to the present.

“If I don’t get into that bathroom there’s gonna be a big mess in the hall,” she yelled. “Last night’s supper’s going through me like goose grease.”

I heard the door open. Heard my father mumble something indiscernible. My eye started to twitch, and I squinched it closed. I focused my other eye on the bedside clock. Seven-thirty. Damn. I’d wanted to get to Spiro’s early. I jumped out of bed and rummaged through the laundry basket for clean jeans and a shirt. I ran a brush through my hair, grabbed my pocketbook, and rushed into the hall.

“Grandma,” I hollered through the door. “Are you going to be long?”

“Is the Pope Catholic?” she yelled back.

All right, I could postpone the bathroom for half an hour. After all, if I’d gotten up at nine I wouldn’t have used the bathroom for another hour and a half.

My mother caught me with my jacket in hand. “Where are you going?” she asked. “You haven’t had breakfast.”

“I told Spiro I’d pick him up.”

“Spiro can wait. The dead people won’t mind if he’s fifteen minutes late. Come eat your breakfast.”