She steals from her parents’ house. Twelve porcelain plates with cobalt trim, a dozen wine glasses wrapped in her polar fleece jacket, and two gold lamps with painted roses on their bases. Her hands sweat holding these things, as she rushes from the house worrying that the front door will slam shut before she comes back for the second load.

Kaly came to Palo Alto when she was four years old with her mother and father from New York City. She remembers the house, painted in pure white, where she lived, and how it stood in the middle of a wide emerald lawn bordered by apple orchards, grape vines and roses. Such a change from the brick and brownstone of New York and the Hudson River.

My daughter Mattie calls me from downtown and says she needs my signature so that she can get a tattoo. She is sixteen, and she needs to be eighteen to get one. I am unhappy about this, but I get in the car anyway and drive to where she has asked me — the Tattoo Emporium.