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front of the law office.
    “You know how to get to your house?” she asked me. One of the perks of the job was that I was to be given the use of a house, free of charge, for the first year of my stay, with an option to buy at the end of the year.
    I recited the directions that Hardwick Chandler had given me over the phone.
    “That ought to get you there,” she said. She reached into the briefcase, which she was still carrying, and handed me a small envelope. “Here are the keys. The movers brought your boxes yesterday. They’re stacked in the house.”
    “Thanks, Molly,” I said. “Day one has been some day.”
    “A good day,” she replied.
    “Do you think it was the shoes?” I asked. “Maybe they’re lucky. I could always wear them when we go to trial.”
    She smiled. “There’s no such thing as luck. Just grace, and the work you do.”
    “Well,” I said, shifting the car into gear, “we’ll hit it for real tomorrow.”
    “Oh,” Molly said. She reached back into the briefcase, then handed me a thick manila file with the name
Rasmussen
scrawled across it. “Speaking of hitting it for real, do you think you could look this case over before tomorrow? Mr. Chandler wants to talk to you about it as soon as possible. You might keep your lucky flip-flops on while you read,” she added.
    “Are we in trouble on this one?” I asked.
    “I think so,” she said. “Just about anything to do with Bevo Rasmussen is trouble.”
    “Bevo?”
    “That’s his name.” I took the file from her, promising to read it that evening, and drove off to find my house.
    I failed. After ten minutes of crisscrossing the same set of streets half a dozen times, I pulled over to the curb in a neighborhood of giant oak trees and tiny houses built of planks and shingles, shifted out of gear, and put on the brake. I was lost, but it was okay. I had expected to get lost. It wouldn’t have mattered if I had tattooed Hardwick Chandler’s instructions to my inner eyelid, I would still not have been able to find the house. I was born without a sense of direction. The gene for finding places does not reside in my DNA chain.
    The wind had died away, and the early evening was still deadeningly hot. I got out of the car, unsnapped the Austin Healey’s convertible top, pulled it down, took off my suit coat, and climbed back in. I would sit here by the side of the road, whistling for a breeze, until the voice inside me railing at my navigational incompetence—the usual voice, my oldest companion—died down, as it would eventually do. And then I would drive off and try again. As long as I could remember, this had been my pattern. I began silently repeating to myself the mantra that I learned to say in such moments: Enough wrong turns will get you where you’re going. It was the way I had arrived in Jenks that morning. It was the way I had gotten to Houston, years ago. It was how I had found my way into and out of my marriage and my career as a tax lawyer. And I knew that it would be the way I would find my house.
    “Lost?” said a voice beside me. I turned, and my nose bumped against the damp muzzle of a big gray horse standing beside the car. I was startled—for an instant I had the notion that the horse itself had addressed me—and then I heard deep laughter, woman’s laughter, from the rider. “Sorry about Ed’s manners,” she said. “He likes to sneak up on people when he gets the chance.”
    “He does a fine job,” I replied, squinting up past the horse’s head. In the glare of the dying sun all I could see was a slender silhouette.
    “Ms. Dean?” I said.
    “Mr. Parker,” she replied. “It’s good to meet you. The boys have been expecting you.”
    “The boys?”
    “Wick and Gill. Chandler and Stroud. The pillars of our legal community. So tell me, are you looking for your new house, or are you casing the town?”
    “I’m just lost.”
    “What do you say, Ed,” she said to her mount, “shall we help get the