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be the patrimony of the boy. And who will teach him how to read?
    There too was his chair, with its thick rounded arms and its ratty green brocaded covering. The place into which he would sink at the end of a fatiguing day. There he would read novels to know more about human beings, who were, after all, his basic subject, and still were. The medical books didn’t tell such stories. Only novels did. Sometimes Molly would play a concert for him alone. When she wanted to annoy him, or irritate him for some infraction of decent manners, she would play Schoenberg, knowing that Schoenberg would always break his trance. When she wanted to move him into sleep, she played Brahms. She knew that men broken by war need lullabies.
O my Molly-O.
    He opened a closet filled with dusty luggage and Molly’s old summer dresses, and lifted a small valise down from a high shelf. He turned a small key in the lock and clicked it open and then placed his daughter’s letter into a folder with her other notes from distant places. The folder was on top of those from Molly. Letters Molly wrote to him in France. Earlier letters full of plans and hope. The 1918 letter sent to his hospital bed in Paris, as his ruined arm slowly healed. The letter telling him about his mother and father and how they had died in the influenza epidemic. Along with thirty thousand others in New York alone and millions all over the planet. Some of the older letters were full of longing for him, pulsing with love and desire. From the time before the slow darkness fell. Letters that made him bubble with happiness. Letters that made him weep. Only later, as time dragged and healing slowed and his stay in the French hospital was prolonged, only then did Molly’s tone alter into icy anger. Have you forgotten you have a daughter? she wrote. Have you forgotten you have a wife? And why did you go to that stupid war anyway? You didn’t have to go. You were never going to be drafted. You volunteered! Why? Over and over. Why? Those letters were there too. He clicked the valise shut, locked it, and placed it back on the shelf.
    Then he lighted the candle again and shut down the oil lamp, locked the door behind him, and went down one flight to bed. His pajamas felt cold. He placed more coal on the fire and looked at the sleeping boy in his corner of the huge bed. There were no sounds from the street, as the silent neighborhood huddled under the smothering blankets of snow.
    He slipped into bed in the dark.
    O Molly. Come home, Molly. I need you now. Come and play for me. Come and play for this boy. Come home, my Molly-O.

THREE

    T HE WOMAN ARRIVED JUST BEFORE SEVEN O’CLOCK THE NEXT morning. At the first ring of the bell, Delaney was in the cellar, shoveling coal into the small boiler that heated the water. A flashlight was perched on a milk box. The sound of the bell first made him think it was Bootsie again. Some demand in the ringing. A feeling of alarm. And Monique was not yet at her desk. He closed the furnace door, laid down the shovel, grabbed the flashlight, and went up the darkened stairs, afraid the sound would wake the boy. But Carlito was already awake, sitting on the stairs near the bottom, his pajamas blotchy with urine. He must have tried, Delaney thought. He must have stood on the bowl and tried. The boy hugged Delaney’s leg as if consumed with shame, and the doctor hefted him and carried him to the door under the stoop. This should take only a minute, boy, he whispered. Hug me to stay warm.
    The woman stood beyond the gate, snow on her wool hat and shoulders. She was in her middle thirties, with olive skin, a longish nose, a strong jaw, a faint mustache. Her body looked heavy under her dark blue coat, and she was wearing men’s boots. Her black eyes glistened. She was carrying a woolen bag and a cheese box.
    “I’m Rose,” she said in a gruff voice. “Angela sent me.”
    “Come in, Rose. Come in.”
    She stepped in as Delaney backed up, her feet crunching on