What I actually did all day was parking complaints, lost property, people coming in to get a form notarized, and a steady low volume of the specific human traffic that walks into a police lobby on a weekday afternoon — the mentally unwell, the elderly and confused, the recently robbed, and about once a month somebody who has come in because they have nowhere else at all to go.

Two things about me are relevant.

The first is that I have two daughters.

Hannah and Megan, then thirty-one and twenty-eight, both out of the house, both of whom call on Sundays and always have.

People always want that to be the explanation. He had daughters, so he understood. I have never liked it, because it implies that a man without daughters would have handed those girls over, and I do not accept that.

The second thing is more useful and almost nobody asks about it.