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gathering up all the photos. “I’ll put them together so you can look at them a little later.” The stack was about four inches high.
    “It looks like you had a wonderful time,” Carlene said. “Jonathan was telling me all about it.”
    Gee, what a surprise! I thought. He’s usually so shy about talking.
    “And he’s right about Happy Day, Dick. It’s really a nice place and they are wonderful with the children.”
    “How many kids do they have there?”
    “Only eight!” Jonathan said, rising quickly from the couch and moving past me to go to the kitchen. “Be right back.”
    “I wonder how they can run a business with only eight kids. They must charge a fortune.” Though I realized even as I said it that I doubted that Carlene had a fortune.
    “Not really,” Carlene said. “They come from a wealthy family, so they don’t really need the money. It’s really more a labor of love for them. They only accept children with working gay parents.”
    Jonathan returned with my Manhattan and handed it to me.
    “Can I have a cookie?” Kelly asked.
    “Not right now, honey,” Carlene said. “We’ll be having dinner in just a little bit.”
    “That’s okay,” Kelly responded. “I can still eat a cookie.”
    “You can have a cookie for dessert,” she said, smiling at him, then turned her attention to Jonathan and me. “I think we’d better go. Thanks for showing me the pictures, Jonathan. You’re a good photographer.”
    She got up, then bent over to pick up Kelly’s cars, one of which he refused to part with, and they went toward the door. Suddenly she stopped and turned around.
    “I wasn’t going to mention this,” she said, “and I probably shouldn’t bother you with my paranoia, but…”
    “What is it?”
    “Well, today when I came to pick up Kelly at Happy Day, there was a car parked across the street, and the man in it was taking pictures out the car window. He was still there when I brought Kelly out, and I think he was still taking pictures, but when he saw me looking at him, he drove off.”
    “That’s odd, but given the nature of kids’ family situations, I wouldn’t be surprised if a non-gay parent checked up on things every now and again.”
    “I suppose that’s true, but…I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him before.”
    “Oh? Where?”
    “Here.”

CHAPTER 3
    “Here?”
    “In front of the building…a day or two ago. I’m sure it was the same man, but I may be wrong. He was just standing on the sidewalk looking at the building. He didn’t have a camera and I just remember thinking, ‘I wonder what he’s looking at.’ I didn’t pay any more attention to him and I think he just walked away, but when I saw the man in the car I could swear it was the same man.”
    Maybe she was being paranoid. Maybe she wasn’t. And it was the “maybe she wasn’t” that bothered me.
    “Why don’t you give me a call after you get Kelly to sleep? I’d like to talk to you a little more about all this.”
    Kelly was holding her outstretched hand and leaning at about a fifty-five degree angle away from her—I wasn’t sure if he was trying to pull her to the door, or was just being a four-year-old boy curious as to how far he could lean without falling over.
    “I will.” She took a few steps toward the door, which apparently caught Kelly by surprise and made him scramble to regain his balance.
    When they’d gone, Jonathan returned to his seat next to me.
    “How long before dinner?” I asked.
    “How long will it take you to cook it?” he asked, then quickly hunched his shoulders and raised his hands in front of his face as if warding off an expected assault and added, “Just kidding! Just kidding! It’s already in the oven.”
    “You’re a real card, Quinlan.”
    He smiled broadly. “I’m glad you think so.”
    “So have we got time to look at the photos first?”
    “Sure!” he said happily, reaching for the stack.
    *
    At eight thirty, Carlene called, speaking softly. I