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Peter beamed. His hair was missing a few patches at the sides where Mia had cut the duct tape free. “Wanna see my room?”
    “Maybe after dinner,” Mia said.
    “It’s that one, there.”
    From the Batman stickers, Kobe Bryant poster, and pirate-themed KEEP OUT! sign, Evan had gleaned as much.
    “My bedroom is on the same corner,” Evan said. “I’m straight up nine floors.”
    “I thought you were in 21 A , not 21 B .”
    Evan hesitated.
    Mia produced a quick smile. “He’s got a bigger place, honey.”
    “Oh,” Peter said. “You’re richer than us.” Mia took in a gulp of air. Before she or Evan could respond, Peter tilted his arm up, examined a fresh scrape on his elbow. “I need one of the new Band-Aids for this.”
    “ Another cut?” Mia said. “How’d that happen?”
    “Dodgeball.”
    “I thought dodgeballs were soft.”
    “Yeah, but the ground isn’t.” Peter shot a look over at Evan. “I’m adopted,” he said. “Which sucks, ’cuz I’ll never really know where I came from. My mom couldn’t have babies, because she has poor-quality eggs. My dad died.” His head swiveled back to Mia, who was wearing a frozen simulation of a smile. “Can we get a Christmas tree?”
    Evan was still acclimating to the collection of non sequiturs that constituted the conversational patter of an eight-year-old.
    Mia tilted her forehead into her hand, clenched her bangs in a fist. “We talked about this, Peter. It’s too early.”
    “It’s December fourth!”
    “It’ll be dead by the time Christmas gets here.”
    “Then we can get another.”
    “We’re not rotating trees, Peter.”
    And so it continued, Evan taking it in silently. He reached back into his memory to find a reference point for this domestic scene but found nothing.
    They finished the meal, and Mia asked Peter to put his laundry away.
    As Peter disappeared into his room, Evan rose to help Mia clear. She neither asked for the help nor thanked him for it.
    They washed and dried, side by side.
    “You’re probably wondering how I afford living here on a DA’s salary,” she said. “My husband’s life-insurance money.”
    “Oh,” Evan said.
    “It’s nice and safe here.” Mia handed Evan a plate with a few suds still on the back, so he handed it back, and she passed it again through the water. “As a DA I sometimes get threats.”
    “Direct threats?”
    “Usually it’s shit we pick up online. The idiots these days, they brag about everything on Facebook. What they’ve done, what they’re gonna do. Their accomplishments. ”
    “That doesn’t seem so clever.”
    “If they were smart, they wouldn’t be thugs.” She shrugged. “We live in a celebrity culture now. Or a wannabe-celebrity culture. The name of the game is visibility. If you aren’t tweeted, liked, YouTubed, or Instagrammed, you don’t exist.” She scrubbed hard at a stubborn bit of dried sauce, her hands pinking up beneath the steaming tap. “Fine with me, though. Makes it easier to keep tabs on guys I’ve put away.”
    “That ever get scary?”
    “Sometimes.”
    “Let me know if you ever need me to keep an eye out.”
    She smiled, gave him a little bump with her elbow. “You’re sweet. But these guys are killers. Not importers.”
    “Good point.”
    “How about you?” she asked.
    “I’m not a killer.”
    “Very funny. You know what I mean.” She circled her hand in the air. “Where are you from? You have family in the area? All that.”
    “I don’t have family anymore.”
    “Oh. I’m sorry.”
    She handed Evan the last plate, and he dried it and set it in the cabinet. A photo magnet of Peter with a soccer ball pinned a sheet of paper to the refrigerator. It was a handwritten note: “Act so that you can tell the truth about how you act .— Jordan Peterson.”
    “What’s that from?” Evan asked.
    “A book I read,” Mia said. “I try to post rules from it around the house, change them out every coupla days.”
    “That’s a lot to