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remote. “That does it, Sheba. No more junk TV.”
    It had been a month since she'd first met Xander DeWitt, and one dinner and two lunches later her respect for the man had not diminished. At their last lunch at the Harvard Faculty Club he had almost convinced her to create a sculpture studio in her basement with all the heavy tools and equipment that would entail.
    Iris looked at her watch—a black-faced Movado with no numbers that had been her father's. Eight-forty-five. Her brain was too tired to work on the townhouse design. She should get some exercise.
    “Walkies, Sheebz.”
    The dog regarded her mistress with puzzlement. This was not the usual drill.
    “I'm serious. COME.”
    Sheba trudged after her to the kitchen and allowed her leash to be snapped on, her Ringo Starr eyes telegraphing serious disapproval.
    As Iris opened her kitchen door a cool October breeze hit her. She turned back to grab a suede jacket from the front hall closet, and they headed up Washington Avenue, passing Victorian houses, lit up to expose doll-house-like vignettes of the life within. Iris felt virtuous, strolling purposefully in the chilly air. Her neighborhood was still fairly safe to walk around at night, especially for someone with a brown belt in karate.
    As they approached Mass Ave, the long, meandering spine of Cambridge, Iris looked to her left, toward the Paradise café where Luc was busy cooking tonight. Sheba started to head in that direction, but Iris tugged her to the right instead. They passed Judy Jetson's Hair Salon where only a month before Judy herself had given Ellie her new hairdo. They passed one-off storefronts, here today, gone after Christmas, that gave the neighborhood a faint bohemian charm. Further along, music and raucous voices spilled out from a recessed doorway, along with several wobbly customers from the Temple Bar's sleek facade.
    At a red light in front of Starbucks, Iris told Sheba, “ This is our new nightly routine.”
    They continued past some Harvard Law School dorms, rounded a corner, and reached the construction site for yet another new Harvard Bioscience building. She'd been wanting to check the progress of this new addition to the campus, but the lack of any street lights left the building's skeleton looking like an undefined lump under its tarps billowing in the darkness.
    Oh, honestly. Harvard's endowment is the largest in the world and they can't afford to light up their buildings at night?
    The silence seemed unnatural in this deserted block. Looking off to the sides, Iris picked up her pace, wrapping her jacket more tightly around her, until she found herself and Sheba traversing the two short blocks toward Howland Street.
    Xander's street.
    Had this been her real destination? Had thinking about the man earlier, about his compelling example of a life well lived, drawn her half-consciously to his house? Was it curiosity that had led her here as if pulled by a force field? Now that she was here, the ridiculousness of her trajectory sank in. She couldn't just ring his doorbell at nine o'clock at night. What did she even want from this man?
    Beyond the porch she could see a sliver of light escaping from between the curtains of the bay window, so he was probably home. Maybe he had company.
    She had been meaning to ask him the name of a self-cleaning glass product that he'd mentioned at their last lunch. Oh, who was she kidding? She could ask him that in an e-mail.
    The night of the break-in was the only time she'd been to his house before. Maybe the fact that she had turned down his invitation to the New Hampshire excursion had dampened his interest in her.
    At this point, as Iris stood in his front yard mesmerized by the light from his living room, her curiosity about what Xander was doing was gaining strength. She found herself drifting up the porch stairs and over to the brightly lit window, tugging Sheba behind her.
    At first she thought she saw an empty room. Then she noticed Xander sitting