I put down my coffee and looked at Albert. He had turned red with discomfort, but he seemed less amorphous with Rosa out of the room.

“How bad is her trouble?”

He wiped his fingers on a napkin and folded it tidily. “Pretty bad,” he muttered. “Why’d you have to make her mad?”

“It makes her mad to see me here instead of at the bottom of Lake Michigan. Every time I’ve talked to her since Gabriella died she’s been hostile to me. If she needs help, all I want is the facts. She can save the rest for her psychiatrist. I don’t get paid enough to deal with it.” I picked up my shoulder bag and stood up. At the doorway I stopped and looked at him.

“I’m not coming back to Melrose Park for another round. Albert. If you want to tell me the story I’ll listen. But if I leave now, that’s it; I won’t respond to any more pleas for farm!, unity from Rosa. And by the way, if you do want to hire me. I’m not working out of love for your mother.”

He stared at the ceiling, listening perhaps for guidance from above. Not heaven-just the back bedroom. We couldn’t hear anything. Rosa was probably jabbing pins into a piece of clay with a lock of my hair stuck to it. I rubbed my arms involuntarily, searching for damage.

Albert shifted uneasily and stood up. “Uh, look, uh, maybe I’d better tell you.”

“Fine. Can we go to a more comfortable room?”

“Sure. Sure.” He gave a half smile, the first I’d seen that afternoon. I followed him back down the hail to a room on the left. It was tiny, but clearly his private spot. A giant set of stereo speakers loomed from one wall; below them were some built-in shelves holding an amplifier and a large collection of tapes and records. No books except a few accounting texts. His high-school trophies. A tiny cache of bottles.