The entire morning had been like a bad dream, returning to the museum to warn somebody who meant nothing to me. And what was I warning her about? Alondra hadn’t gotten back to me. I’d probably hallucinated any resemblance between Lena and that mysterious profile of a stranger’s face. The door was locked, we were in an anonymous sublet apartment, and Lena could be miles and miles away.

“Smile for me,” Mom said, holding up her phone to snap a picture.

I let the warm glow of this safe space spread through me, enveloping me and Grace. When my mom checked the screen and nodded in satisfaction, I said, “Send it to Michael.” We’d all be together soon.

After we’d eaten and the leftovers had been cleared away, Dad settled in next to Mom to watch the game.

My phone buzzed with an incoming text. Elizabeth: Did you warn your friend?

Former friend. I could feel my body getting hot, and I felt too petty to write the words. Instead I typed: She didn’t believe me. And she’d called security and had me thrown out. But that wasn’t something I wanted Elizabeth to know.

I’d been a fool, extending myself out of some childish desire to be vindicated as a hero. Not that it had worked. Suddenly, I wanted to hear Elizabeth’s voice instead of hunching furtively over my phone.

When I stood, my mom looked up. “Everything okay?”

I nodded. “Need to make a quick call.” On the quilt in the middle of the floor, Grace arched her back, craning to see me. Dad was sitting on the edge of the coffee table so he would be lower, closer to Grace, without actually getting down on the floor.

With a pang I remembered how he used to crawl on his hands and knees, chasing us through the house and roaring like a lion. Now my sisters and I were grown, with kids, jobs, busy lives of our own, but we were all still weighing my parents down. I wished I hadn’t put this burden on them.

Mom stood up too. “I should probably check in with your sisters. The Giants have pretty much won this anyway.”

She smoothed Dad’s hair down, but he batted her away, saying, “Don’t jinx it. Grace will be heartbroken.”

While my mom took a seat at the tiny table in the kitchenette, I stepped out the front door. The street was lined with older homes. In one yard bounded by a chain-link fence, a black-and-white shepherd mix worried at a toy; in another, an older man wearing a barn jacket raked leaves.

I sat on the concrete stoop, hoping that Molly was right and her upstairs landlord was out of town this weekend too. Even though the air was warmer than the Octobers of my youth, cold seeped into my jeans.

Elizabeth answered right away. “Are you okay?”