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making?”
    “Guacamole. Nice kitchen, huh?”
    If she intended a dig at their own, minuscule kitchen, he chose to ignore it. “Amazing.” Bravo could film
Top Chef
here with room for a studio audience. “Make sure and mash those lumps out, huh?”
    “No, Celina says it’s not supposed to look like you used a blender.”
    Celina quickly came over, placing her hands on Abby’s shoulders from behind. “In Mexico we make our guacamole always with little chunks in, just like she’s doing.” Danny could smell her perfume, something spicy and exotic. “That’s perfect,
mi hija
. Ooh, I want to
keep
this girl! Can we have her?”
    The second time it wasn’t quite so funny, Danny thought.
    Furtively, Danny ran a hand along the edge of the island. This wasn’t granite. Its surface had the delicate crazing pattern of Pyrolave, glazed lava stone, ridiculously expensive. The software magnate in Wellfleet had ordered Pyrolave. Galvin’s stone fabricator had done an awfully slick job, because you couldn’t see a seam anywhere. Then he realized there was no seam because it was one huge slab. Holy crap, what that must have cost.
    And that crazy little idea that had been tickling the back of his mind, drifting like tumbleweed way back there, suddenly lodged itself front and center.
    He thought:
The guy probably spends sixteen thousand bucks a month on ties.
    I already owe him five thousand. What’s sixteen thousand more, really?
    Seriously. Why not?
    What was there to lose?
    He looked up and caught Galvin watching him. Their eyes locked. Galvin smiled. Danny smiled uncomfortably back.
    “Hey, were you feeling up my countertop?”
    Embarrassed, Danny said, “I didn’t know lava stone came that thick.”
    “You just do a renovation or something?”
    “My dad was a contractor. I used to work for him.”
    “Yeah? My dad was a plumber.”
    “In Southie?”
    “How’d you know?”
    “I used to see those trucks around. Galvin Brothers Plumbing, right? The green shamrock?”
    “See, I knew I liked this guy,” Galvin said.

10
    T he two Galvin sons appeared from wherever they’d been hiding to join the family at dinner. Both of them were tall and rangy and good-looking: dark-haired and light-eyed, heavy brows and strong jaws. Brendan, the younger one, wore a Boston College sweatshirt, Old Navy sweatpants, and flip-flops. Ryan wore scruffy jeans and a Ron Jon Surf Shop T-shirt and was barefoot. He looked almost like Brendan’s fraternal twin, only he was somehow more finished, more refined, his jawline sharper and his face more angular. Apart from the eyes, they both looked a lot more like their mother than their father.
    “Brendan comes home once in a while to get a decent meal,” Galvin said. He’d removed his jacket and wore gold suspenders over his white shirt. He’d loosened his tie. “Ryan, what’s your excuse? Laundry piling up?”
    “Very funny,” Ryan said.
    “I told him he can bring home all the dirty clothes he wants,” said Celina, “but Manuela’s not going to do it for him. He can do his own laundry. We’re not a hotel.” She clapped her hands together briskly in front of her a few times to emphasize her point.
    Brendan was a sophomore at BC, and Ryan had graduated the year before and was doing some sort of scut work at a TV station. It sounded to Danny like he was supporting himself. His father, the gazillionaire, wasn’t paying the rent. That was interesting.
    Abby seemed to fit right in, as if she were the Galvins’ second daughter. She and Jenna whispered about something, and Abby giggled. Their plates were piled high with chicken and rice and beans, the most delicious
arroz con pollo
Danny had ever tasted.
    “So you’re a writer, huh?” Galvin said.
    “Yup.”
    “Very cool.” Galvin sat at one end of the long oak farm table in the kitchen, his wife at the other. The sons sat across from the two girls. They shifted in their chairs and feigned interest. The dogs slept under the