We spent the last days of the week in preparation. That is, Jarod prepared. I wasn’t exactly sure what he was preparing for, except that he was going to catch our murderer in some kind of sting operation. He hacked into more bank accounts and confirmed three $500 withdrawals at the same time that $500 deposits were made into Tim’s account, and then he did an even more incredible feat of electronic tracking and traced the trail of money from the Morrison College of Liberal Arts to a numbered account in the Cayman Islands. I felt exactly as if I had stepped into a John Grisham novel. His criminals were always hiding their money in Cayman. Don’t ask me why. I’d put mine in a Swiss account, if I had any to put there.

            On Friday evening I came to his house and found a chemistry laboratory on his kitchen table, two of them, really. In one he was distilling some kind of chemical he wouldn’t explain. In the other he was trying to make espresso. “The old-fashioned way,” he said. The coffee was some of the most excellent I’d ever had (beans from Zara’s, naturally), but it wasn’t espresso. He also taught his classes on Thursday and Friday, of course. On Friday his face was wistful as he dismissed the last class and we went up to my father’s office.

            “I would have liked to teach the whole semester,” he told me. “Especially the Dickens class. I like teaching. There’s really something about starting with a class of bored young people and bringing them to an enthusiasm about the subject.”

            “You already have done that, and you’ll continue to do it.”

            “Not here.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Your father will be home by Sunday and teaching on Monday, if he’s up to it.”

            I’m not very ashamed to say that amidst the joy that welled up in me there was also dismay. My father needed to be home where he belonged, but I knew that meant Jarod would be gone, off on another Pretend, as he called them. He read my emotions, as always.

            “I have to go,” he said gently. “I can’t stay in any one place for more than a few weeks.”

            “You’ve only been here a week.” I knew I sounded like a petulant child and hated it.

            “I can’t stay once I expose someone, because I invariable expose myself as well. I have to keep this man from killing again, as he will, and your father needs to come home. For that to happen, I have to go. That’s just the way it is.”

            “I know. What an awful way to live. I’m sorry—I know it’s your life—but how can you ever really get attached to someone when you always have to leave—for your safety or theirs?” I watched his agony fill his face and said miserably, “I’m sorry.”

            “At least you understand what it’s like. Most people just take me at face value. Some day, Little Dorrit, I’ll find my family, and the Centre will stop chasing me, and I’ll live somewhere and just be. Me. Whoever I am. Meanwhile—I get attached. I can’t help it. I’ve never been able to help it. As much as it hurts to leave, it would hurt more never being attached.”

            He was sitting at my father’s desk. I went over to him and gave him a fierce hug. He said quietly, “Thank you, Kate.”

            On Saturday Young John, Jarod, and I met at Zara’s to plan our attack. In reality, Jarod had everything planned out to a nicety. He was a man who prepared. I shudder to think of what would happen if he ever decided to work against the law instead of for it. It was rather exciting to watch him hack into computer records and pick locks, but I’m no iconoclast. Despite its recent failures on my father’s behalf, I’d rather live within the law than without it. Jarod might be a sort of vigilante, but he always left room for the law to do its work. For some reason he respected the law and authority, so long as they did their work properly and did not take advantage of their positions. I had to attribute that to Sydney in some way. From some of the other recordings he’d shown me, Sydney was the one who developed his moral sense and his desire to do good and help people. A strange thing, since Sydney was the one carrying on such immoral work. The Centre really did seem to mess people up.

            Young John—perhaps I had better call him by his real name, Dave, but he was so very Young John-like! Dave, then, was terribly excited about being involved in bringing a killer to justice. Well, so was I, but my excitement had considerably more apprehension to it. My father’s future was at stake, after all. Dave had nothing to risk except his life, and he was a teenager, with all of a teenager’s inability to see himself as anything but indestructible. Jarod warned him about the risk, but he wasn’t having any.

            “Dude,” he said, “get over it. I’m helping.”

            “Then you know what to do.”

            An excited grin on his face, Dave left us to our coffee, which he didn’t like, peculiar boy. I had a cappuccino again, and Jarod was indulging his horrendous sweet tooth with a latte that contained some odd assortment of flavors which he said tasted like ice cream.

            “Dude,” he said in an excellent imitation of Dave, “it occurs to me that that boy ought to be in school.”

            “Oh, he’s homeschooled. Plus he takes classes at the Marshalsea.”

            “Homeschooled?’

            “Schooled at home. If the parents are competent teachers, it’s supposed to be a really good education. Homeschooled kids tend to win all the national spelling bees and become chess champions and things.”

            “So why doesn’t everyone homeschool?”

            “Not every parent is a competent teacher. Many have to work. Others couldn’t deal with their kids at home all day every day. That’s just the way it is. A lot of the time you’d end up with kids who learn nothing and run wild, like Mrs. Jellyby’s kids.”

            He made that face that combined amusement and pain. “When I first read Bleak House, I didn’t want to believe that people like Mrs. Jellyby could really exist, devoting their attention to everything but the most precious thing in their lives, their kids. But Dickens never invented gratuitous characters. People really do neglect their children. It’s a terrible thing to realize. Parents should love their children.”

            “Most do. It’s only the unusual ones that you hear about on the news. Anyway, homeschooling is usually an indication that parents care so much about their children’s development that they don’t want to hand them over to strangers. That can be a good thing or a bad thing. Depends on the parents, and on the kids, too.”

            “If I ever have kids, I think I’d like to homeschool them,” Jarod mused.

            “I think you’d be a great father, and probably a great homeschooler, too.”

            His face went bright. “You think so?”

            “Yeah, I do.”

            Something flashed bright around us, and we both started.

            “Ms. Doran! Who’s your friend?”

            It was my nemesis, the press. I had managed to avoid them all week and congratulated myself that they had decided my father and I were old news. But here was another reporter and his photographer.

            “So, Ms. Doran, tell us how you’re consoling yourself over the continued absence of your father.”

            Jarod took one look at my face and rose from his chair. He was suddenly far taller than he’d been before, and bigger, too, menacing, his face dark. “Leave, now,” was all he said, but the tone was so low and dark and his eyes so ominous that they left without another word, almost running away. Then the sun came out from behind the storm clouds, and he sat down and drank his latte.

            I stared at him, wide-eyed. “Remind me never to cross you.”

            “You could never do that. I reserve my ire for people who deserve it.”

            “You don’t like the press?”

            “I don’t like people who take advantage of other people’s pain. I’ve been a reporter, Little Dorrit. The press offers a valuable service, helping people know what’s going on around them. It’s usually how I pick up my own cases. But far too often they go beyond offering a service and get into hounding injured people just to have a story and make a profit.”

            “I suppose any profession has its good and bad sides. It’s good to be able to see both. It’s too easy to see only what we want to see.”

            “That’s true. Sydney taught me to see all around a case, all sides, good and bad. It’s too bad he couldn’t do the same himself.”

            “Yeah,” I sighed. “So, Jarod, you decide what you’re going to do next by reading newspapers?”

            “Frequently. I keep an eye on the news, and usually something will alert me that a case isn’t quite straight-forward. I can tell a lot about a person by looking at his face in a grainy newspaper photo.”

            “Is that how you found out about my father?” I asked quietly.

            “No. It wasn’t your father. It was you.”

            “Me?”

            He reached to his back waistband and pulled out a red notebook, medium-sized, and opened it to the first page. My face looked back at me from the newspaper clipping taped to the page. “Killer Professor Innocent? Daughter of alleged murderer claims his innocence.” I turned the page. Another clipping. “Daddy Didn’t Do It! Amy Doran says her father’s hatred of murder victim Tim Morone had nothing to do with his death.” I winced and closed the notebook.

            “You were stalking me! You knew who I was when you came up to me that day!”

            “Guilty.”

            “Did you know Dad calls me Little Dorrit?” I asked accusingly.

            “No, I didn’t. I didn’t even know at that point that he was particularly interested in Dickens. After I read that first article—I was in Ohio at the time—I read all the others I could find. You convinced me your father was innocent.”

            I closed my eyes, letting my hand rest on the red notebook. “I suppose all those interviews I did before getting frustrated with the press weren’t a waste, then. They…performed their valuable service.” I pushed the notebook toward him.

            “Keep it. Give it to Miss Parker when she comes.”

            “When she comes? She’ll be coming here?”

            “Yes. When that photo of you and me hits the press—with some appropriate caption such as ‘Alleged murderer’s daughter finds consolation with his replacement.’ Broots will be on it, and they’ll be here hours later. Especially when they find out that I’ve been using the name Clennam.”

            He gave me a meaningful look, and it was my turn to gape at him. “You knew.”

            “That you called Sydney? Well, call it a hunch, a gut feeling. I checked my phone records late Wednesday night. I have a recording device in my phone, and I listened to your—short—conversation. Short but effective.”

            “I’m sorry, Jarod.”

            “Don’t be. Since when do I have a monopoly on underhanded methods of finding out about people? Anyway, perhaps you have performed a valuable service. I’ve been remiss in my mysterious messages to Sydney, Miss Parker, and Broots on this Pretend, and you covered for me nicely. ‘Are you Mrs. Clennam?’ Hopefully that’ll give Syd something to think about for a quite a while, if he ever figures out what it means. I couldn’t have done better myself.” He smiled darkly.

            How did he manage to combine jocularity with so much darkness? He was like Dickens.

            “Jarod, who’s Broots?”

            “I’m hoping that someday he’ll turn out to be a Newman Noggs or even a Mr. Pancks. You’ll meet him when they come. I give them until tomorrow, Monday morning at the latest.”

            “Jarod, you have to get out of here!”

            “Not until we’re done. I don’t leave until I catch my man. Don’t worry. I’m always a step ahead of the Centre.”