Fifteen years ago, Klara’s memorial took place at the San Francisco Columbarium. Raj planned to have her body sent to the Gold family plot in Queens, but Gertie initially forbade it. When Daniel confronted his mother, she cited the Jewish law that prohibits those who commit suicide from being buried within six feet of other Jewish dead, as though only the strictest adherence could protect the Golds who remained. Daniel raged at Gertie until she cowered; he could have hit her. He had never felt capable of such a thing before.
Daniel and Mira had just moved to Kingston. Mira had secured an assistant professorship at SUNY New Paltz in art history and Jewish studies, Daniel an overnight position at the hospital. His job would begin in one month, his wedding would take place in six, and he had never felt more incapacitated. Simon’s death had been shattering enough; how was it possible to lose Klara, too? How could the family sustain it? After the memorial, Daniel stumbled into an Irish pub on Geary, lay his head on the bar, and wept. He was scarcely aware of how he looked, or what he was saying – Oh God, oh God; everyone’s dying – until someone responded.
‘Yes,’ said the man on the next barstool. ‘But that never makes it any easier.’
Daniel looked up. The man was roughly his age, with strawberry blond hair and thick sideburns. His eyes – a queer color, more gold than brown – were threaded with red. A scruff of stubble extended from his cheeks to the bottom of his neck.
He raised his Guinness. ‘Eddie O’Donoghue.’
‘Daniel Gold.’
Eddie nodded. ‘I saw you at the service. I investigated your sister’s passing.’ He reached into the pocket of his black pants and pulled out an FBI ID. Special Agent, it read, beside an unintelligible signature.
‘Oh,’ Daniel managed. ‘Thank you.’
Was that what one said, under the circumstances? Daniel was glad, very glad, that Klara’s death was being investigated – he had his own suspicions – but he was alarmed that the feds were involved.
‘If you don’t mind my asking,’ he said, ‘why did the FBI take the case? Why not the local police?’
Eddie put his ID away and looked at Daniel. Despite the bloodshot eyes and the scruff, he looked like a boy. ‘I was in love with her.’
Daniel nearly choked on his own saliva. ‘What?’
‘I was in love with her,’ repeated Eddie.
‘With – my sister? She was unfaithful to Raj?’
‘No, no. I doubt she knew him back then. Anyway, it wasn’t returned.’
The bartender appeared. ‘Get you boys anything?’
‘I’ll have another. And so will he. On me.’ Eddie nodded at Daniel’s glass of bourbon, a bourbon Daniel only just realized he’d been drinking.
‘Thank you,’ said Daniel. When the bartender left, he turned to Eddie. ‘How did you meet her?’
‘I was on duty in San Francisco. Your mother called us – she said your brother was a runaway, and she asked us to pick him up. This was, what, a dozen years ago? He couldn’t have been older than sixteen. I roughed him up; I shouldn’t have. I don’t think your sister ever forgave me. Even so, she woke me up. When I saw her outside the station, with her hair blowing back and those boots on, I thought she was the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen. Not just because she was beautiful, but because she was powerful. So I remembered her.’
Eddie finished his beer, wiped the froth off his mouth.
‘Couple years later I came across a flier with her face on it,’ he said, ‘and I started to go see her perform. The first time must have been early ’83; I’d had a god-awful day, bunch of junkies killed each other in the Tenderloin, and when I sat down to watch her I felt – transported. One night, I told her so. How she’d helped me. How her show had made me different. It took months to work up the courage. But she wanted nothing to do with me.’
The bartender returned with their drinks. Daniel gulped. He had no idea how to respond to Eddie’s revelations, which were intimate enough to make him uncomfortable. All the same, they numbed his despair: as long as Eddie talked, his sister was suspended in the room.
‘I’ll be honest with you,’ Eddie said. ‘I was not in good shape. My dad had just passed, and I was drinking too much. I knew I had to get out of San Francisco, so I applied for the bureau. Straight out of Quantico, they had me in Vegas working on mortgage fraud. When I passed the Mirage and saw Klara’s face on the sign, I just about thought I’d gone crazy. Next day, I see her in the parking lot at Vons. I’m driving an Oldsmobile, and she’s on the curb with a baby.’
‘Ruby.’
‘That her name? Cute kid, even when she was screaming. Your sister ran; I must’ve scared her. I didn’t mean to. Soon as I saw her, I wanted to talk to her. So I decided I’d go to her opening. I’d stay afterward, I figured, and make sure we were clear. No hard feelings. Nothing for her to be nervous about.’
They stared straight ahead. It was the gift of parallel bar seating, Daniel thought: that you could have a conversation without ever looking the other person in the eye.
‘Night before, I couldn’t sleep. I get to the Mirage early. I’m pacing outside the theater when I see the three of them come in, Klara and her man and the baby,’ said Eddie. ‘She’s arguing with the guy – I can see it from a mile away. When he goes into the theater, she takes the baby in the elevator. The elevators are glass, so I get in the one beside her: keep my head down, watch to see where she gets off. She dropped the baby at a day care on seventeen before she rode up to forty-five. She didn’t seem to know where she was going until a maid came out of the penthouse suite. When the maid left, Klara slipped in.’
Daniel was grateful for the dimness of the bar and the liquor, grateful that there were places one could go at one in the afternoon for darkness. The beard he’d just started to grow was salty with tears.
‘Friday night,’ Eddie said, ‘and everyone was out. I’d never heard Vegas so quiet. And here’s what you learn, being a cop: peaceful is nice, so’s quiet, but if it goes on too long it’s not peace and quiet. I ran down the hall and I knocked on the door. “Ma’am,” I shout. “Miss Gold.” But there’s no answer. So I got a key from the front desk and I went back up.’ He drank until his beer was finished. ‘I shouldn’t say any more.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Daniel. He had already lost her. What he heard now would make little difference.
‘At first, I didn’t know what I was seeing. I thought she was practicing. She was strung up on the rope, like in her show; she was spinning, just barely; but the bit hung off beside her jaw. I laid my hands on her. I wanted to heal her. I tried to breathe into her mouth.’
Daniel was wrong. What he heard did make a difference. ‘That’s enough.’
‘I’m sorry.’ In the dark, Eddie’s pupils were oversized, gleaming. ‘She didn’t deserve it.’
Elvis’s ‘Love Me Tender’ came on the jukebox. Daniel gripped his glass.
‘So how did you get the case?’ he asked.
‘I was the one who found her. That counted for something. And then I argued. Major murder cases, crimes that cross state boundaries, kidnappings – those are all under the jurisdiction of the FBI, not the police. Sure, it looked like a suicide, but my radar was up and something was off. I knew they’d crossed state lines. I knew she’d been stealing. And I knew I had a funny feeling about Chapal.’
‘Raj,’ said Daniel, startled. ‘You suspect him?’
‘I’m an agent. I suspect everyone. Do you?’
Daniel paused. ‘I barely knew him. I do think he was controlling. He didn’t like for her to stay in touch with us.’ He squeezed his eyes shut. It was horrible, this use of the past tense.
‘I’ll look into it,’ Eddie said. ‘You have any other suspicions?’
Daniel wished he had other suspicions. He wanted a reason, but all he had was a coincidence. When Simon died, Daniel had not thought of the woman on Hester Street. His death was so shocking as to erase all other thoughts from Daniel’s mind, and after all, Simon had never shared his prophecy. But Daniel remembered Klara’s: the woman had said she’d die at thirty-one. And that was exactly the age she had been.
‘There’s only one thing I can think of,’ he said. ‘It’s horseshit. But it’s strange.’
Eddie lifted his hands. ‘No judgment.’
Pain ricocheted in Daniel’s skull. He wasn’t sure whether it was the alcohol or the impending disclosure, which he had not even made to Mira. When he finished telling Eddie about the woman on Hester Street – her reputation and their visit, the timing of Klara’s death – Eddie frowned. He’d look into it, he said, but Daniel didn’t have much hope. He sensed he’d disappointed the agent – that Eddie wanted secrets or conflict, not the childhood memory of a traveling psychic.
Six months later, when Klara’s death was ruled a suicide, Daniel was not surprised. It was the simplest hypothesis, and the simplest hypothesis, he’d learned, was usually right. His advisor in medical school had been a student of Dr. Theodore Woodward and liked to quote what Woodward told his medical interns: ‘When you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras.’
Fourteen years later and ten states east, Daniel enters the Hoffman House to meet Eddie again. The Hoffman was a fortification and lookout during the Revolutionary War; now it serves burgers and beer. Aside from its architecture – Dutch rubble construction, white shutters, low ceilings, and wide-planked wood floors – the only reminder of the Hoffman’s history is the annual arrival of war enthusiasts, who come to reenact the British Burning of Kingston.
At first, Daniel was intrigued by the reenactors. He was certainly impressed by their attention to detail. They make their costumes by hand, based on original documents and paintings, and carry their weapons in white linen haversacks. But they grate on him now: the women bustling around in petticoats and white bonnets, the men scrambling with fake muskets like actors run amok from a community theater. The cannons still make him jump. What’s more, the premise annoys him. Why rehearse the drama of a war long past when there’s one in the present? The reenactors’ determination to live in a different time unnerves him. It reminds him of Klara.
Today, at the Hoffman, there is only Eddie O’Donoghue. He sits in a wooden booth beside the fireplace, nursing a beer. Across from him is a glass of untouched bourbon.
‘Woodford Reserve,’ Eddie says. ‘Hope that’s all right.’
Daniel clasps Eddie’s hand. ‘Good memory.’
‘That’s what they pay me for. It’s good to see you.’
They look at each other: Daniel and Eddie, Eddie and Daniel. Like Eddie, Daniel is at least twenty pounds heavier than he was in 1991. Like Daniel, Eddie must be nearly fifty, if he isn’t fifty already. Daniel’s eyebrows sprawl like intrepid explorers, so fast growing that Mira bought him an industrial trimmer for Hanukkah; Eddie’s face has softened and swelled, like a hangdog, around the jaw. But his eyes, like Daniel’s, are bright with recognition. Daniel is nervous – he can only imagine that something new has emerged in Klara’s case – but he’s glad to see Eddie, who feels like a friend.
‘Appreciate you taking off work to meet with me,’ Eddie says, and Daniel does not correct him. ‘I won’t keep you waiting.’
Daniel is conscious of his worn jeans and sweater, the latter a decade-old gift from Mira. Eddie wears a dress shirt and slacks, a sport coat thrown over the back of the booth. He lifts a black briefcase from the bench, sets it on the table, and unlatches it. Out comes a notebook and folder, also black. Eddie removes a sheet of paper and turns it toward Daniel.
‘Any of these people look familiar to you?’
On the page are at least twelve photocopied photos. Daniel reaches into his jacket pocket for his glasses. Most are mug shots, small squares within which a variety of dark-haired, dark-eyed people scowl or glare, though a couple of teenagers grin, and one young man flashes the peace sign. Below the mug shots are three photos of a heavyset, white-haired woman. They look like security shots taken in the vestibule of a building.
‘I don’t think so. Who are they?’
‘The Costellos,’ says Eddie. ‘This woman here?’ He points to the first mug shot, which shows a woman perhaps in her seventies. Her hair is waved like that of a 1940s movie star, her eyes heavy lidded and cool. ‘That’s Rosa. She’s the matriarch. This is her husband, Donnie; these two are her sisters. This row is her children – she’s got five – and below are their children: that’s nine more. Eighteen people in all. Eighteen people running the most sophisticated fortune-telling fraud in U.S. history.’
‘Fortune-telling fraud?’
‘That’s right.’ Eddie folds his hands and leans back for effect. ‘Now, fortune-telling is notoriously difficult to prosecute. It’s banned in some parts of the country, but those bans are rarely enforced. After all, we’ve got people who predict what the stock market is going to do. We’ve got people who predict the weather and get paid for it. Hell, there are horoscopes in every newspaper. What’s more, it’s a cultural issue. These people, they’re what’s called the Rom, the Romani; you might know them as Gypsies. They ran from the Mongols and the Europeans and the Nazis. Historically, they’re poor, they’re underserved. They don’t go to school – they’re bred for fortune-telling since birth. So when you nab someone on fraud charges, what’s the first thing the defense is gonna do? They’re gonna frame it as a free speech issue. They’re gonna frame it as discrimination. So how’d we do it? How’d we convict the Costellos of fourteen federal crimes?’
Something sour rises to the base of Daniel’s throat. Eddie doesn’t have information about Klara, he realizes. Eddie has information about the woman on Hester Street.
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘How?’
‘I’ll tell you a story about a man we’ll call Jim.’ Eddie lowers his voice. ‘This man Jim had lost a child to cancer. His wife divorced him. His anxiety was through the roof, and he was in constant muscular pain. So you have a really sick guy, a guy who no one in the mainstream medical establishment will deal with because he’s so off-putting, such a pain in the ass, that his relationships with conventional doctors deteriorate – you get a guy like that, it’s no wonder he winds up on the doorstep of someone different, someone who says, “I can help you; I can do you good.” Someone like Rosa Costello.’
Rosa Costello. Daniel looks at her picture. He knows she isn’t the woman he met in 1969. Her lips are too plump; her face is heart shaped. In a word, she’s prettier. And yet, in his mind, she morphs. Her face assumes the woman’s bullish chin and flat, unaccommodating eyes.
‘So this is how it starts,’ Eddie says. ‘This reader, this Rosa Costello, she goes, “I’m gonna sell you a candle for fifty dollars, and I’m gonna burn it for you and say this prayer, and you’re gonna notice a difference in your nerves.” And when Jim doesn’t notice a difference, she goes, “Okay, so we gotta do more. Let me sell you these leaves, spiritual leaves, and we’re gonna burn these and say a different prayer.” Fast-forward two years and this man has undergone several healing rituals and two very dramatic sacrifices the sum total of which is somewhere in the vicinity of forty thousand dollars. Finally, Rosa says, “It’s your money that’s the problem, it’s cursed and it’s trouble, so you have to bring me ten thousand more, and we’ll get the hex removed.” The sum was termed a donation; this family was termed a church. The Church of the Free Spirit, they called themselves.’
Daniel hadn’t thought he was hungry, but when a waiter appears beside them, he’s ravenous. Eddie orders the tavern wings. Daniel picks the calamari.
‘What you have to understand about these cases,’ Eddie continues, once they’re alone, ‘is that they make prosecutors run like hell. But the Costellos were different. The Costellos were thumbing their noses. When we seized their assets, we found cars, motorcycles, boats, gold jewelry. We found homes on the Intracoastal Waterway. We found fifty million dollars.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘Hang on,’ says Eddie, raising a hand. ‘Before the pleas are entered, their defense attorney files a twenty-four-page request for dismissal on the grounds of freedom of religion. They’re their own church, remember? The Church of the goddamn Free Spirit! What’s more, he claims, this is nothing but the most recent example in a long line of Romani persecution. Now, am I saying that all Gypsies are swindlers and crooks? Absolutely not. But we got nine of these ones on grand larceny, false income returns, mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering. We subpoenaed birth records – we wanted to get everyone involved in this thing. There was just one person we couldn’t find.’
Eddie points to the security shots of the woman in the vestibule. She wears a long brown coat and gray shoes that close with Velcro. Her hands rest on the railing of a revolving door, and her white hair hangs in two long, slender braids.
‘Oh my God,’ Daniel says.
‘That your woman?’
Daniel nods. He sees it now. The broad forehead. The pinched, unfriendly mouth. He remembers watching her mouth as she spelled out his future. He remembers the part of her lips, the wet pink tongue.
‘I want you to look carefully,’ Eddie says. ‘I want you to be sure.’
‘I’m sure.’ Daniel exhales. ‘Who is she?’
‘She’s Rosa’s sister. It could be she’s involved; it could be she isn’t. What we do know is that she seems to be estranged from the rest of the family. You find the Rom living in groups, which is why it’s unusual that your woman works alone. Here’s how she’s typical, though: she’s always traveling. And she’s savvy. She works under a number of aliases. She’s not licensed, which is illegal in most parts of the country, but it also keeps her out of the system.’
‘This family,’ says Daniel. ‘Do they not accept payment in the beginning? Because that’s how it was with us. She didn’t ask, or my brother didn’t give it to her. And I’ve always found that strange.’
Eddie laughs. ‘Do they accept payment? They accepted all the payment they could get. Maybe this woman went easy on you ’cause you were kids.’
‘But if that were true, then why would she have said such hideous things? Klara was nine. I was eleven, and she still scared me shitless. The only thing I’ve been able to come up with is that she used fear to hook her customers – like the worse she scares them, the more likely they are to come back. To become dependent.’
When he was a medical resident in Chicago, Daniel shadowed a doctor who used similar techniques: insisting that someone’s depression could not be managed without regular visits, or telling an obese patient he’d die without surgery.
‘Or it doesn’t matter what she says, because she’s already cornered the market. Romani fortune-telling is usually very formulaic: they talk about your love life, your money, your job. Giving you a date of death? That’s ballsy. It’s shrewd. The Rom do a couple other things – the men lay pavement, sell used cars, they do body and fender work – but even if the world stops producing pavement, even if we stop using cars, what’s the one thing that’ll be around as long as human beings? Our desire to know. And we’ll pay anything for it. The Rom have been telling fortunes for hundreds of years with an equal amount of economic success. But your woman goes a step further. If she’s telling you when you’ll die, she’s offering a service that even the other Rom don’t. She has no competition.’
The fireplace is making Daniel sweat. He pulls off his sweater, tugging down the polo shirt beneath. It occurs to him that he hasn’t told Mira where he is, and that he’s supposed to meet her at temple at six. But he can’t leave, not now, not even to write her one of the text messages he’s finally figured out how to send.
‘What else do you know about them?’ he asks as the waiter arrives with their food.
Eddie drags a wing through a glop of electric-orange sauce, then dunks it in thick ranch dressing. ‘About the Costellos? They came to Florida from Italy in the thirties. Probably they were running from Hitler. Like all of the Rom, they’re very private. When they’re not with customers, they speak their own language; they don’t even try to assimilate. They need the gazhe for money – that’s the non-Rom, like us – but they also think we’re polluted.’ He wipes his mouth. ‘It’s the women who tell fortunes. They see it as a gift from God. But because the women interact with the gazhe, the Rom think the women are polluted, too. They’re very obsessive about cleanliness, purity. You go into a Romani house, it’s gonna be spotless.’
‘But the woman I saw – her place was cluttered. I’d almost call it filthy.’ Daniel frowns. ‘Did you ask the family about her?’
‘Of course we did. But they wouldn’t talk. Which is why I’m talking to you.’
‘What do you want to know?’
Eddie pauses. ‘What I’m about to ask you – I’m aware it’s sensitive. I’m aware you might not want to discuss it. But I’m asking you to try. Like I said: we haven’t found much. Sure, this woman isn’t registered, but we’re not gonna charge her for that. What we’re interested in is the fact that we’ve linked her to a number of deaths. Suicides.’
It’s so simple, so instantaneous, the body’s response: Daniel’s hunger is gone. He could vomit.
‘Now, we’ve found no direct, causal relationship,’ says Eddie. ‘These are people who’ve gone to see her two, ten, sometimes twenty years earlier. But there are several of them – five, including your sister. Which is enough to make you wonder.’ He folds his hands and leans toward Daniel. ‘So here’s what I want to know. I want to know if she said anything – did anything – to push you in that direction. Or if she did it to Klara.’
‘Not to me. I told her what I wanted from her, and she gave it to me. It was transactional. I didn’t get the sense she cared what I did with the information once I left.’ There’s a crawling feeling on his neck, many-legged and swift, like a centipede, though when Daniel uses his index finger to probe beneath his shirt collar, he feels nothing. It occurs to him that Eddie has not mentioned whether this is a conversation or an interview. ‘As for Klara, I’m not sure. She never told me she felt pressured. But she was different to begin with.’
‘Different how?’
‘She was vulnerable. A little unstable. Susceptible, I guess. Which may have been something she was born with – or maybe it developed over time.’ Daniel pushes his food away. He doesn’t want to look at the squid’s mantle, sliced in perfect rings, or the arms curling inward. ‘I know what I told you after the memorial: I thought it was a very strange coincidence, the fact that this fortune teller predicted Klara’s death. But I was distraught. I wasn’t thinking clearly. Yes, the fortune teller was right, but only because Klara chose to believe her. There’s no mystery in that.’
Daniel pauses. He feels deeply uneasy, though it takes him a moment to identify why.
‘On the other hand,’ Daniel adds, ‘if you do think this woman had something to do with it – if we entertain the thought of that very slim chance – then frankly, I blame myself. I was the one who heard about her. I was the one who dragged my siblings to that apartment.’
‘Daniel. You can’t blame yourself.’ Eddie’s hand is poised above the notebook, but his brow softens with compassion. ‘You doing that is like blaming our man Jim for going to see Rosa. You doing that, it’s blaming the victim. It can’t have been easy on you, either, going to this woman at such a young age. Hearing when she says you’re gonna die.’
Daniel has not forgotten his date – the twenty-fourth of November, this year – but neither has he given it credence. Most of the people he knows who died young were the unlucky recipients of hellish diagnoses: AIDS, like Simon, or an untreatable cancer. Just two weeks ago, Daniel had his annual physical. On the way there, he felt rattled, but afterward he was embarrassed for having let the superstition of it get to him. Apart from a bit of weight gain and borderline elevated cholesterol, he was in excellent health.
‘Sure,’ he says. ‘I was a kid; it was an unpleasant experience. But I shook it off a long time ago.’
‘And what if Klara couldn’t?’ asks Eddie, jabbing his index finger in emphasis. ‘This is what scammers do: they go after whoever’s most vulnerable. Look – this susceptibility you’re talking about? Think of it like a gene. The fortune teller may have been the environmental factor that triggered it. Or maybe she noticed it in Klara. Maybe she preyed on it.’
‘Maybe,’ echoes Daniel, but he bristles. He realizes that Eddie likely invoked a medical metaphor to appeal to Daniel’s expertise, but the idea sounds pseudoscientific and the effort feels condescending. What does Eddie know about gene expression, much less Klara’s phenotype? Eddie is better off sticking to what he does best. Daniel would not tell him how to run an interrogation.
‘And what about your brother?’ Eddie glances down at his notes. ‘He died in ’82, didn’t he? Did the fortune teller predict that?’
Something about Eddie’s gesture – the brief peek at the open folder, enough to suggest he had to look to find the date but too short to actually do it – irritates Daniel more. He has no doubt that Eddie knows the year of Simon’s death, as well as a host of other things about Simon – things Daniel surely doesn’t.
‘I don’t have any idea. He never told us what she said to him. But my brother was always going to do exactly what he wanted. He was a gay man who lived in San Francisco in the eighties and contracted AIDS. To me, that seems pretty damn clear.’
‘All right.’ Eddie keeps his wrists on the table but lifts his fingers and palms. A gesture of appeasement: the edge in Daniel’s voice was not lost on him. ‘I appreciate what you’ve given me. And if anything else comes to mind’ – he passes a business card across the table – ‘you have my number.’
Eddie stands and closes his folder, tapping it once on the table to level the papers inside. He tucks the folder into his briefcase and slings his jacket over one shoulder.
‘Hey, I looked you up,’ he says. ‘Saw you’re still working with our troops.’
‘That’s right,’ says Daniel, but then his throat becomes plugged, and he finds himself unable to go on.
‘Good stuff,’ says Eddie on his way out, clapping Daniel on the back with the genial encouragement of a Little League coach. ‘Keep it up.’
Daniel walks briskly to his car and departs with a lurch. He feels both wired and drained; he didn’t realize how disturbing it would be to revisit the story of the woman in such detail, or to hear the scope of her family’s transgressions. It’s so painful to contemplate the deaths of his siblings that Daniel has done it only in isolation: lying awake while Mira sleeps or driving home from work in winter, the road lit by headlights, the radio rattling in the background.
What he told Eddie is true: he doesn’t buy the fortune teller’s claims. He believes in bad choices; he believes in bad luck. And yet the memory of the woman on Hester Street is like a minuscule needle in his stomach, something he swallowed long ago and which floats, undetectable, except for moments when he moves a certain way and feels a prick.
He’s never told Mira. She grew up in Berkeley, the studious child of musicians – her father Christian, her mother Jewish – who produced interfaith songs for children. Mira loves her parents, but she can’t bear to listen to ‘Oy to the World’ or ‘Little Drummer Mensch,’ and she has little patience for New Age institutions. It’s no wonder she gravitated toward Judaism: she likes its intellectualism and morality, its lawfulness.
Before they married, Daniel thought she would find the story of the fortune teller childish. He didn’t want to drive her away. After Klara’s death, he longed to share it, but again, he did not. This time, he feared Mira’s brow would furrow with concern – a tiny, delicate v, like a goose sure of its direction. He feared she would see in him an alignment with Klara: her eccentricity, her lack of reason. Even her illness. And he was not aligned with Klara – this much Daniel knew. There was no reason to make Mira think so.