SHEILA BROOKS SAID, FINALLY.Until then they’d just been standing, mute, in the middle of the drafty ballroom, as if waiting for a spectral orchestra to strike up an angular, tonelessly modern waltz.“Yes,” was all Komodo could say, as stiff as Greenland. Face-to-face with her in that grandiose, cavernous room, he felt cornered, trapped.“Are they all yours?”“Mine?”“The kids. Are they all yours?”“No, not exactly.”“They’re adopted?”“Well . . . not formally.”Sheila Brooks tugged at the more accessible portions of her unruly coif. “Then . . . they’re foster children?”Komodo seized on the term. “Foster children! Yes, you could call them that.” Then, feeling the ball in his court, he asked, “Do you have children, Ms. Brooks, you and Mr. Zeber?”Sheila pressed her hands together, forcing the chewed skin around her nails whiter. “No. I can’t . . . have children.”“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”“It’s not biological. I’m not barren or anything.
