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the door and Bailey leapt for him. On cue,
the flashbulbs flared, shutters clicked, and the video cams pressed
forward.

    David kicked the door shut behind him. His color was high, and
his eyes flashed when he grinned at Dana and brushed back the
thick hank of black and silver hair that had fallen across his forehead.
    He loved being in the middle of things.
    He lifted Bailey into his arms and held her. “What a scene,
huh?”
    “You squeeze,” Bailey cried, shoving her hands against his chest.
    Sweat beaded his forehead.
    Dana said, “Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t call them.”
    “Roses? Big old red cabbage roses? Jesus Christ, Dana, can you
think how that sheet’s going to look on TV?”
    “It’s the only one big enough to cover that window.”
    “I had to park a block away. Felt like a tight end making it
through the crowd to the door.”
    “DaddyDaddyDaddy.” Bailey put her hands on David’s cheeks
and turned his head so he looked at her. “The s’cream man banged
Moby and a rock crashed-“
    David looked at Dana. “Ice cream?”
    “Moby got broke.”
    “How’s he do-?”
    “Mr. Cabot?” The speaker was a moon-faced young police officer in a beige uniform stretched tight across his muscular chest and
shoulders. “Patrolman Ellis.” The men shook hands, and as they
began to talk Dana headed for the kitchen.
    She had already explained to the police about the white van and
Moby and how she had left the dog for the night at the emergency
clinic and come home just before five, driving fast all the way be cause while sitting in the clinic she had remembered the sound of
shattering glass. Something thrown from the white van had broken
the large, triple-arched window at the front of the house. No, she
told the police, she did not get the license number of the van. No,
she could not say how many passengers were in it or what they
looked like. There was a bumper sticker on the back fender, driver’s
side; no, she did not remember what it said.

    While Patrolman Ellis had asked Dana questions, Bailey tugged
and hung on his arm. “The s’cream truck hurt Moby.”
    Ellis-no wedding ring, a bachelor unused to a nagging, dragging child-looked at Dana with eyes that cried, Get this kid off me.
    Bailey patted Ellis’s hand as he tried to write down Dana’s answers. “Policeman, policeman, policeman,” she chanted excitedly.
“Policeman, policeman, policeman.”
    Dana sat on the couch in the living room and watched him suffer.
    He managed to ask about the rock. “And you picked it up.”
    “Moby Doby got hurt.”
    “Of course I picked it up.” She had not thought about fingerprints. “I saw the rock and the paper around it-“
    “What did you do after you read the note?”
    “I called 911 and my husband.”
    The boy cop made her feel guilty for doing what any person
would, and she disliked him for ignoring Bailey. Television, she realized, had given her unrealistic expectations of police officers.
    Dana hoisted Bailey onto the counter beside the sink. Bailey immediately began banging her heels against the cupboard, chanting,
“Brown s’cream, white s’cream, pink s’cream,” and so on through
all the colors she knew, which were blessedly few.

    Above the sink and along the speckled granite counter, a line of
square windows the size of playpens overlooked a wide redwood
deck and back garden separated from an alley by a six-foot wall
overgrown with Carolina jasmine. To the right there was another
wall and a gate between the garden and the driveway. A UnionTribune truck was parked in front of the garage, and a man with a
camera snapped pictures of the back of the house. The pots on the
deck needed watering, Dana noticed. News at Eleven: Dana Cabot
neglects her garden. She yanked the blinds down, plunging the
kitchen into gloom.
    “How you holding up, Number One?” David asked as he entered the kitchen. He kissed the top of her head.
    Gratefully she turned