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hour down the Peninsula, in Atherton, and, aside from her father’s furtive visits to have lunch with his little girl, they only came up to use their season tickets to the symphony. About four times a year they would all get together around the family dinner table for a couple of hours so Ellen and her mother could misunderstand each other, but tonight wasn’t one of those occasions.
    So why, might one ask, hadn’t she taken Ken up on his offer of hot food and maybe a few laughs? He wasn’t bad looking, not precisely Johnny Depp but not bad. He even displayed symptoms of being a nice guy. Just dinner and a few laughs and, maybe, if they struck a few sparks … After all, this wasn’t high school. He didn’t have to be the love of her life. How long had it been since she’d done anything like that?
    Too long. She couldn’t remember exactly, which in itself was a bad sign.
    There were times when she felt the job was swallowing her whole. Sam had warned her. Even Daddy had warned her. “The work becomes a substitute for life, even an escape from life. Life is full of complicated choices. By comparison, the work is simple. And it doesn’t matter what the work is—psychiatry, catching murderers, writing advertising copy. It becomes a place to hide that we call “dedication.”
    *   *   *
    Ellen’s apartment was over a hardware store near the Embarcadero. She had lived there ever since joining the force. It was convenient and it was cheap. However, the one time her parents had come to visit her they had left their Mercedes parked out on the street and had come out to find it stolen.
    â€œJust explain to me why you have to live in a neighborhood like this,” her mother had asked her as they sat downtown in the waiting room at Grand Theft Auto, watching her father fill out the report forms.
    â€œIt’s what I can afford.”
    â€œBut it’s so dangerous ! You could be raped. You could be killed!”
    â€œMother, I’m a trained police officer. I carry a gun and I know how to use it. Believe me, I can look after myself.”
    â€œYour father is so worried about you. He’d be so happy if you’d just let him buy you one of those lovely apartments near Telegraph Hill…”
    Silence.
    And of course he would have been. Her parents were far from poor and they loved her. Just a nod and she could have found herself sitting in a two-bedroom palace with a view of Alcatraz.
    But she had paid her own tab ever since graduating from college, and she meant to keep it that way.
    As much as anything, it was a question of personal integrity, almost a gift she had given herself. Other, quite ordinary people managed to get through life without being umbilically connected to rich relatives in Atherton. Sam, for instance, hadn’t inherited anything from his parents except a taste for olives in his lasagna. Being able to get by on one’s own practically defined being a grown-up.
    By contrast, Ellen’s mother had never stopped being her father’s little girl. Even in ordinary conversation with her own daughter, she still referred to him as “Daddy”—not “your grandfather,” but “Daddy,” since the day she was born her guardian and protector, her shelter against the storms of life. She remained his little girl, even now, eleven years after his death. After all, that was what wills and trust funds were for.
    Thank you, no. Ellen loved her parents, but she didn’t want to depend on them.
    So she lived over a hardware store near the Embarcadero.
    Actually, she liked her apartment. It was convenient and roomy and the landlord, who was the owner of the hardware store and the handy type, would come on an hour’s notice to fix her garbage disposal. She liked the Chinese family who lived next door, whose children, to the intense embarrassment of their grandmother, were always after her to tell