"Thank you," she said finally, "for not saying it was the ordinance." She put her arm around her daughter's shoulders. "Come on, Lu. Let's go home. You can sleep, I can sleep. I'll make the eggs."
Lucia picked up her backpack. She slung it over one shoulder and tucked the Odyssey under her arm. She took two steps toward Holloway Street with her mother, and then she stopped and turned around.
"Officer Vartanian."
"Yes."
"Can I ask you to do something?"
"Anything."
She thought about it, carefully, the way he imagined she thought about everything. "Next time you write one of those," she said, "tell them about the back. The family visitation part. Read it to them, if they don't have their glasses." She paused. "He didn't know it was there. Ms. Huang found it, after, when I showed her the paper. She read the whole thing in her office with her reading glasses and then she stopped and put her hand over her mouth." Lucia hitched the backpack higher. "So tell them. That's all."
"I will," Lloyd said.
She nodded. She turned and walked away with her mother, two figures going up the west path toward Holloway under the oaks, the tall tired one in the brown cardigan and the small one in the navy sweatshirt with the library card swinging from the carabiner on her backpack, and they did not look back, and he stood and watched them until they reached the corner and turned onto Holloway and were gone.
At twelve-thirty Spencer Stolte came into Tollis Square from the courthouse side with two people from the mayor's office and a young man carrying a tablet, and Sergeant Kwiatek met them at the fountain, and Lloyd walked over from the west path to join them with his knee aching and the radio still turned down to a whisper.
Stolte was in his early forties, trim, with the kind of haircut that cost money and a green quarter-zip fleece with the DID tree embroidered over the heart. He shook Lloyd's hand firmly and called him Officer Vartanian and said what a pleasure it was, and said that the district was so grateful for the work the Park Ambassadors were doing, and then said, in the same pleasant voice, that he understood Tollis had been a little light this week.
"Four," said the young man with the tablet.