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had an interest in biology, I pointed out the sparkles on the sidewalk that looked like pieces of glitter until they moved. I had discovered they were spiders, and the LED lights reflected off their eyes. Gemma-Kate counted them out loud as we walked.
    I realized this was the first time we had been alone. With just the two of us, and the calm dark, it was a good time to feel her out a bit, get to know this almost stranger.
    But Quinns are not known for their subtlety. “So how are you feeling?” I asked.
    “How long have you known Mallory?” she asked, almost at the same time.
    “About six months.”
    “Did you give her a key to your house?”
    “No, I told her what the code was for the automatic garage door and I left the door to the garage open.”
    “Are you going to change the passcode?”
    “No. Gemma-Kate, Mallory is a friend.”
    “I wouldn’t let someone I didn’t know that well into my house when I wasn’t there.”
    I tore a plastic bag off the roll attached to my Pug’s leash and stooped to pick up some poop. “You didn’t seem to dislike Mallory,” I said.
    “Do you like her?”
    “She’s the first friend I’ve ever had, after your Aunt Ariel and your mom.”
    “I’m just, like, security conscious.”
    “Spoken like a true cop’s daughter,” I said, wiping the Pug’s bottom so it wouldn’t make a spot on my new beige carpet.
    We walked down to the end of the block, rounded the cul-de-sac, and started back, stopping once to pick up a little more poop next to a cactus that reminded me of the sweet dotted swiss dresses Mom made for me and my sister. Childhood wasn’t all bad. It seldom is.
    “How are you feeling?” I tried again, trying to strike a sensitive auntly tone.
    There was a long pause. “You have to adapt,” she finally said, and stopped to examine another sparkle.
    There was her father’s voice again, coaching her on how to get along with her Aunt Brigid. I wanted to get past her father, to her.
    “It’s okay to mourn. Your mom was a wonderful woman, almost a saintliness about her,” I said, with some tears I hadn’t yet cried. “I loved her very much.”
    There was another pause then, long enough for Gemma-Kate to have summoned and dismissed a half-dozen responses. When I thought finally she would not respond at all, she said, “She talked about you all the time, all your adventures. Sometimes I pretended you were my mother.”
    That didn’t make me feel good at all. “I wasn’t always the woman I am now. I was always good at working undercover, and investigations, but not much else. I would have been more of a drinking mother than a playing mother.”
    “Mom didn’t play much either. Mom was just sick.” The way Gemma-Kate said the word sounded resentful.
    “That wasn’t her fault. Sick or well, you couldn’t have had better.”
    It was dark, but I knew Gemma-Kate turned her head toward me because the light on her forehead flashed in my face. The flash of light hid her eyes. She said, “My dog is pooping. Do I have to pick it up?”
    “No. Let me.” I took out another bag, drew it over my hand, and picked up the poop.
    When I had stood up again and knotted the plastic bag, Gemma-Kate said, gesturing with the handle of the leash in her hand, “Look at that one. Is that a tarantula?”
    I saw what she was pointing at, a whole round clump of sparkles about as big as a quarter moving slowly across the fine gravel a little ahead of us.
    “No, I’ve seen that kind before. It’s a wolf spider. It carries its babies on its back.”
    “I thought spiders laid eggs.”
    “Not this one. Or maybe it does, but when they hatch they climb on the mother. What you’re seeing is all the eyes of the babies.”
    “Why does it carry them?”
    “Instinct, I guess, continuation of the species, something.” Now, I had become accustomed to seeing the sparkles of spiders at night, and kind of liked the warning they sent out even if I hated spiders. But when Gemma-Kate