Our lives are often connected in ways we never would have imagined…

Two babies; two very different upbringings.

First there is Sarah: raised by her loving grandmother, but neglected by her own father who views her as the instrument of her mother’s death. She will lead a hard life, searching to belong and to be loved.

Then there is Olivia, surrounded by love, nurtured and adored by her parents, a golden child with a golden future.

When Sarah’s life is cut tragically short and she is assigned to record the moments of Olivia’s life as her moment keeper, their lives become intertwined.

Sarah is able to overcome the heartbreak of her own lost years and Olivia is able to deal with a future that isn’t nearly as golden as what she had planned – or is it?

The Moment Keeper
Buffy Andrews

Copyright

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2013

Copyright © Buffy Andrews 2013

Buffy Andrews asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © November 2013 ISBN: 9781472054777

Version date: 2018-09-19

BUFFY ANDREWS is an author, blogger, journalist and social media maven.

She leads an award-winning staff at the York Daily Record/Sunday News, where she is Assistant Managing Editor of Features and Niche Publications and social media coordinator.

You will find her on a plethora of social networking sites, from Twitter and Facebook to RebelMouse and NewHive. She loves social media and loves to connect with her readers via the various platforms.

In addition to her writing blog, Buffy’s Write Zone, she maintains a social media blog, Buffy’s World.

She is also a newspaper and magazine columnist and writes middle-grade, young adult and women’s fiction.

She lives in southcentral Pennsylvania with her husband, Tom; two sons, Zach and Micah; and wheaten cairn terrier Kakita.

I’m not even sure where to begin. There are so many people who believed in me and my work. Just thinking about all their support and encouragement brings tears to my eyes. But there are a few people who I need to especially acknowledge.

God, who gave me this gift and listened to my prayers and showed me the way. I am grateful for his love and his many blessings.

Beth Vrabel, my awesome friend and fellow author, who reads everything I write before anyone else does. We started this journey together, and I could not have made it without you.

Robin Bohanan and Kris Ort, my forever best friends. Thank you for listening to me talk about my characters as if they were sitting next to you at our Saturday breakfasts. I love you girlfriends!

Sharon Kirchoff, my biggest cheerleader, who carried my dream in her heart and inspires me to be a better person every day. Definitely soul sisters!

My editors, Helen Williams at HQ Digital, and Alison Tulett, who fell in love with the book and helped make it the best it could be. Thank you for this incredible journey.

My sisters Dawn Beakler, Cindy Andrews and Tania Nade, who know me better than anyone and, despite this, love me anyway.

And, lastly, my husband, Tom, and my sons, Zach and Micah, who have given me the absolute best moments of my life. I love you guys more than you can ever imagine.

In memory of Wendy, who always believed.

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Epilogue

Endpages

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

“But you promised. You promised you’d be there for me,” says Olivia, tears exploding from her swollen eyes.

Cole runs his fingers through his dark, curly hair. “I know what I said. But. It’s just that I’m supposed to go to college and…”

“So college is more important than me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“Look, Lib. I love you. You know that. I’m just not ready for this.”

“And I am?”

“I didn’t mean it like that. We’re both not ready.”

“Well, it’s a little too late for that realization. You should have thought about that two months ago when you convinced me to have sex with you.”

Cole punches the bed and stands up. “Damn it, Lib. That’s a cheap shot. You’re not going to pin this all on me. You wanted to do it, too. It’s not like I forced you.”

“Just leave. Leave.”

“I don’t want to leave you like this. I want to talk about our options.”

“Options? There are no options. I’m pregnant. With your child. You don’t want it. You’ve made that clear. Look, this is my problem. Not yours. So just go. Now.”

Cole grabs his varsity jacket and takes two steps toward Olivia before she backs away. “Look, Lib. I can’t talk to you when you get like this. Can we talk later? When you calm down.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. We did it once. Once. And I got pregnant and you want out. Well, I’m giving you your out. There’s the door.”

“Lib, if I could go back in time and change that one moment I would.” Cole walks out the bedroom door and Olivia throws one of Daisy’s squeaky toys at him. The rubber bone hits Cole in the back but he doesn’t turn around.

Olivia flops on her bed and pulls her boney knees up to her heaving chest. Tears soak her blue satin pillow. Her cries feel like a knife twisting in my heart. I want to comfort her. To hold her in my arms and tell her that things are never as bad as they seem. That I understand her pain and that she needs to be strong.

But I can’t.

All I can do, all I have ever been able to do, is watch and record the moments of her life as they unfold. I’m her moment keeper. It’s my job to record her life story, to capture and hold every moment she ever lived so that when she dies I’m able to play them back for her, one after another.

Olivia spots her purple fuzzy bathrobe draped over the footboard of her cherry bed. She pulls the belt out and sits up, wrapping it around her right hand. I know what she’s thinking. I always know. It’s part of being her moment keeper. I always know what she thinks and feel what she feels. Her joys and sorrows and fears become mine.

Of all of the moments I’ve recorded in Olivia’s life, this is the most difficult yet. She’s thinking about killing herself, about using her bathrobe belt, wondering if it’s strong enough or if she should use one of the leather belts in her closet.

It takes me back to the day my life ended – the day I killed myself.

The moment I pulled the trigger, I knew it was a mistake. But it was too late. I was dead and there was no turning back.

I had thought about the moment forever. Pictured it in my mind again and again. Like it was some damn movie that never ended. Just played over and over and over.

I thudded to the floor, sinking in a pool of blood. Someone reached for my hand and told me to come. She wasn’t talking talking but thinking what she wanted me to hear. Her name was Wendy and she knew that my name was Sarah.

She was iridescent and flowing and not well defined. Sort of shaped like a person but not quite. More like a ghost. Don’t ask me how, but I knew she was friendly. I knew that she wanted to help me.

She was pulling me, pulling me. But it wasn’t me, me. That me was bathed in blood on the cold bathroom floor where I shot myself just seconds before.

We flowed away from the blood-splattered bathroom toward a vertical thin line of light. Wendy told me I had a job to do. Job to do? I almost laughed. Can a dead person laugh? Maybe not quite.

I heard voices and looked back. The Ace of Hearts Grandma gave me floated in the expanding pool of blood.

I felt Wendy tug and I turned to see the vertical thin line of light widen and suck us in like a strong vacuum before sealing completely.

I was surrounded by hundreds of iridescent beings and then I realized that I was one, too. We stood, er, floated in the middle, surrounded by all of these beings or spirits or whatever they were. Wendy put her hands on my head and held them there.

A tingling coursed through me as I heard Wendy in my mind. She explained that I, like her, was a moment keeper. She told me that she would show me the moments of my life, moments she had collected since my birth.

What I saw brought me great pain and joy. There were days upon days spent in Grandma’s arms or by her side. And days upon days of my dad coming home smelling like he’d bathed in whiskey. I begged Wendy to stop when a moment was too painful, but she just kept going. I began to see how one moment was tied to another and another and how they intertwined to form the tapestry of my life, a life that ended much too soon at my own hands.

Wendy said it was my turn to be a moment keeper, my turn to record the moments in someone’s life just as she had recorded those in mine. She was moving on to a place where time didn’t exist, a place where only happy moments were allowed and the bad ones were left behind.

I pleaded with Wendy to stay, to help me. How was I to know how to do this moment-keeper thing? What if I screwed it up? Missed recording a memory? But she just wrapped me in her warmth and somehow I knew I would be all right. She had given me one last gift – the confidence and understanding I needed to do what I had to do. And when she released me from her embrace, she was gone and I was on earth beside Olivia.

Chapter 2

“Oh, Tom, isn’t she the most beautiful baby you’ve ever seen? Perfect in every way.”

Tears pull in Elizabeth’s chocolate eyes as she kisses the head of the sleeping infant in her arms.

Tom sits down beside her on the burgundy leather couch. “So what do you want to name her? How about Hope because she’s everything that we had hoped for?”

Elizabeth looks up at Tom. “Can we give her my grandmother’s name? And Hope for her middle name?”

“So Olivia Hope?”

Elizabeth nods.

“That’s perfect,” Tom says. “Olivia Hope Kennedy.”

Watching this tender moment made me feel warm. That’s what happens when a moment keeper records a good moment, a happy one. Our spirit bodies feel warm. We can’t cry or turn red or show any of the outward physical signs a living human would, but warmth courses through our spirit bodies when a moment is joyful and a razor-sharp chill when it’s not.

I felt jealous while I was recording this moment for Olivia. The day I was named was painful to watch when Wendy had shown it to me.

“Christ, Mom. I don’t know how to care for a baby.”

“Matt, I’ll help you. But I’m begging you to get help. I know that you’re angry.”

“Damn right I’m angry. Sue should be here. Not her.”

“Going through with the pregnancy was Sue’s decision. It’s what she wanted.”

“Yeah, and it killed her.”

“You need to give her a name, Matt.”

“You name her. I gotta get out of here, Mom.”

“Matt, stay away from that bar. You’re drinking too much.”

“No, I’m not drinking enough!”

I watched as Matt left, slamming the door behind him. Grandma cradled me in her thick arms and sang me a sweet lullaby. She kissed my forehead and named me Sarah, after her favorite woman of the Bible. “It means princess,” she said, “and that’s what you are. Grandma’s little princess.”

I always thought Matt resented me, but I never knew why. I knew my mom had died in childbirth, but I never knew from what. Grandma, who raised me, never wanted to talk about it. And Matt, well, let’s just say he wasn’t in the running for Father of the Year Award. He spent most of his time on a bar stool at the local watering hole around the corner from our house. His drinking got so bad that Grandma eventually kicked him out and she became my legal guardian. The day I became Grandma’s was the happiest day of my life. Ever. I finally belonged to someone who loved me, really loved me.

“Oh, Tom!” Elizabeth says. “Not another one. You’re going to spoil her. We’ve only had her for three days and you’ve already brought home four stuffed animals.”

Tom picks up Olivia. “How’s Daddy’s little girl today?” and kisses her chubby pink cheek. “Tell Mommy that daddies are supposed to spoil their little girls.”

Elizabeth walks over, bags under her eyes and hair thrown back in a lopsided ponytail. She puts her arms around Tom and Olivia.

“How was your day, Liz?” Tom asks.

“Despite not getting enough sleep and hanging in my pajamas most of the day because I didn’t have the energy to shower, I’d say things are going pretty well.”

“It’ll get better,” Tom says. “Every new parent feels the way you do.”

“I know,” Elizabeth says. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that we have the family we’ve always wanted. Just happened so fast and I wasn’t as prepared as I thought I’d be.”

“You’re doing just fine, Liz. Don’t beat yourself up.”

“But I want to do everything right for her. I want to be the best mommy I can.”

“And you are,” Tom says. “You love her. That’s what’s most important.”

Tom kisses Elizabeth on her forehead and she leaves to order pizza — the night before it was Chinese — because she’s too tired to cook. Tom rocks Olivia and tells her about his day in the ER.

“And then Daddy had to stitch a woman’s hand because she cut it while slicing a bagel. And next, a mommy brought in a little boy who had swallowed a tiny Lego piece he had found while crawling on the floor. And that was Daddy’s day, Libby Love.”

And he kisses her forehead and places his index finger onto her tiny palm. Olivia’s fingers curl around his, hugging it so tightly her knuckles turn white.

So Olivia’s dad’s a doctor. I had learned while recording an earlier moment that her mom was a nurse. Reminded me of what a deadbeat dad I had. I tried to forget the day Matt lost his job, but Wendy’s montage of my life included this moment.

“Just look at you,” Grandma said. “You smell like the bottle and you look like an unmade bed. No wonder you lost your job, Matt. You’ve got to pull yourself together. No one’s going to hire you looking like that.”

Matt punched the brown frayed chair he stood next to. “Just take care of her. Don’t worry about me.”

I hadn’t realized until I saw my life moments one after another how seldom, if ever, Matt referred to me by my name. I was always “she” or “her” or “the baby” or “that girl” or “that kid”. There were very few times when he said “Sarah”. I wondered if he avoided saying my name because it made me seem more human, more difficult to blame and hate. As he would any enemy, I think he preferred to keep me at a distance.

Elizabeth walks into the room. “You hold her so much you’re going to spoil her,” she tells Tom, who is still rocking Olivia.

Elizabeth walks over to Tom and lightly brushes Olivia’s tiny head. She doesn’t have much hair and what she does have is so light that she looks bald.

“I love watching her sleep,” Tom says. “She looks so peaceful.”

Elizabeth smiles. “Makes you wonder how something so beautiful can come out of so much ugliness.”

Ugliness, I thought. You haven’t seen ugly until you’ve seen Matt come home drunk and wreck our home.

“Matt, stop,” Grandma yelled. “Stop or I’ll call the police.”

Matt just laughed and held a lamp in his hand. “You won’t call the police. You never call the police,” he said, his words slurring together so you couldn’t tell where one stopped and the next one began.

Grandma carried me, then three, into her room and locked the door. I heard glass breaking and Matt cursing. I heard what sounded like furniture flipping over. Then I heard a knock on the door. It was the police.

I buried my head in Grandma’s chest. I loved being so close to her heart. Its beating always soothed me. We watched as the police led Matt away. The house was a disaster. That was the beginning of the end. That was ugliness.

Chapter 3

“Wait until I tell Daddy that you got your first tooth,” Elizabeth says as she changes Olivia’s diaper. “And guess what today is? Your six-month birthday! That’s half of a year.”

Elizabeth pulls pink pants over Olivia’s diaper then slips a pink top with brown polka dots over her tiny head. She picks up a basket filled with hair wear and slips a pink stretchy headband over Olivia’s head, positioning the flower on the right side, toward the front. “You’re getting so big. Yes, you are.”

Elizabeth picks up Olivia and twirls her around, and Olivia giggles. Elizabeth stops and pulls Olivia into her chest and kisses her cheek.

“I love you so much, Princess Libby. You’ll always be my princess, my little girl.”

A tear slides down Elizabeth’s cheek and her smile swallows her creamy face.

“Look, Matt,” Grandma said as he walked into the kitchen.

I sat in the metal high chair giggling as Grandma pretended the spoon was an airplane and made airplane noises as she flew the spoon toward my mouth.

“Coming in for a landing,” Grandma said. “Open wide.”

I opened my mouth and Grandma slid the spoon in, scooping up the cereal that slid from my rubbery lips onto my chin.

Matt walked over. “What did you want to show me?”

“Sarah’s got her first tooth. See it there? On the bottom? That little piece of white poking through her gum.”

“Yeah, so what? She’s got a damn tooth. I have a mouthful.”

“Matt, it’s your baby’s first tooth.”

“She’s more your baby than mine,” said Matt, pouring a cup of coffee and walking away.

He paused when he got to the door and turned around. “The tooth is nice.”

“Where did you find that?” Elizabeth asks Tom as he walks in carrying a stuffed tooth about the size of a grapefruit.

“Where I buy all of her stuffed animals,” he said.

“The store at the mall?”

Tom nodded. “They have everything there.”

Elizabeth smiles. “Yeah, and pretty soon we’ll have it all here.”

“Gotta celebrate the milestone, Liz.”

Tom shakes the fuzzy white tooth and it rattles. “Lookie what Daddy has, Libby Love.”

He walks over to the playpen and picks up Olivia. He shakes the tooth and Olivia laughs. Slobber slides down her chin and onto her pink bib embroidered with “Daddy’s little girl”. Tom gives Olivia the rattle and she shakes it and giggles. As always, Elizabeth snaps photo after photo. Her camera and video recorder are never far from her.

“Where are you going?” Grandma asked Matt.

“Out.”

“Out where?”

“Just Out.”

“Matt, this has got to stop. Drinking every night. Your grandfather died a drunk and I swore I would never bring up a child in the same house as a drunk.”

“I’m not a drunk. I just need to get away at night.”

“Then go to the gym instead of that bar. It’d be better for you.”

“My friends are at that bar.”

“Friends? You call them friends?”

“Yeah. Friends.”

“They’re losers, Matt. A bunch of deadbeat dads and worthless husbands. If Sue were alive she’d…”

Matt whipped around. Fire-engine red flooded his scrappy unshaven face. He hammered the air with his arm, using the movement to emphasize his words. “Don’t. You. Ever. And I mean never. Bring Sue up. She’s gone. Died and left me with her.”

He pointed to me in the playpen.

“Don’t blame Sarah for Sue’s death, Matt. That little girl is the best of both of you.”

“Well, then take her. Celebrate her first tooth and leave me the hell out of it.”

Matt walked out the door and Grandma picked me up and held me and cried me to sleep.

“Are you sure you want to go out tonight?” Elizabeth asks Tom.

“We haven’t been out alone since we got Libby. As much as I love her, I want to take you on a special date. Don’t worry. Your mom knows what to do.”

Elizabeth hugs Olivia before putting her in the playpen so she can finish getting ready.

“Do you think I’m getting fat?” she asks Tom, turning around in the black silk dress she bought at the new boutique by the bank.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact I was just thinking how much you’re starting to resemble a pregnant hippo.” Tom laughs.

Elizabeth picks up the hairbrush on her vanity and throws it at him. “I’m serious. Do you think my butt’s getting fat?”

“No, Liz. Your butt’s beautiful.”

“What about my thighs?”

“They’re perfect, too.”

“My boobs?”

“Not that I wouldn’t mind it if they were fatter, er, bigger, but they’re the same size they’ve always been. And they’re perfect.”

“There has to be some part of me that’s not beautiful or perfect,” Elizabeth says.

“Well, now that you mention it, you do have a little wiry hair that grows out of that mole beside your lip that looks a little witchy. Sometimes, I just want to pluck it but I’m too scared to touch it. I think it might attack me.”

Elizabeth chases Tom around the room and wrestles him to the ground and Libby starts to cry.

“You’re making her cry,” Tom says.

The bell rings.

“Lucky for you, Mom’s here,” Elizabeth says.

Tom opens the door and Cindy walks in carrying her bag of knitting supplies.

“There’s my little princess,” she says, putting her bag on the antique cherry table.

She takes Olivia from Tom. “It’s just me and you tonight, my little Libby Love.”

Elizabeth walks into the room wearing her new dress that showcases her hourglass figure and endless toothpick legs.

Tom whistles.

Cindy smiles. “You look like a million bucks, Liz.”

“Thanks, Mom. Are you sure you know what to do?”

“Liz. I had five daughters. I think I know what to do. Quit worrying. Go out with your husband and have some fun. Just because you’re parents doesn’t mean you stop being a couple.”

“I know, but…”

“But nothing. Libby and I will be fine. Now go.”

Elizabeth sees the knitting bag on the table. “What are you making now?”

“Oh, just another sweater for Libby.”

“But you already made her two.”

“Well, I decided she needed another one. This one’s a pretty green. Oh, and I’m also knitting her some hats. Found a pattern with this cute flower in the front that I think she’ll look adorable in.”

Elizabeth smiles and kisses Libby then her mom. “Thanks, Mom. You’re the best.”

She takes a couple of steps then turns around. “Mom, is there a hair coming out of this mole beside my mouth?”

Elizabeth sticks out her head and tilts her chin so her mom can examine the mole.

“I don’t see any hair. Who said you had a hair? Did you see a hair?”

Tom laughs and Cindy looks at him. “Don’t tell my daughter she has a hair coming out of her mole because we will never hear the end of it. Now go and have some fun.”

“Which one do you like better?” Grandma asked me. “The pink or the purple?”

A baby me sat in the seat of the blue plastic shopping cart, looking at the two bolts of fabric in Grandma’s hands.

“Ma. Ma. Ma.”

“That’s right. Grandma’s right here. Would you like Grandma to make you a pink dress or a purple dress?”

“May I help you?” a saleswoman asked Grandma.

“Yes, please. I’ll take this pink and purple, oh, and why not, that yellow.”

Grandma pointed to the pale yellow fabric behind her. “I can’t decide so I’ll make her all three.”

The saleswoman smiled at me. “She’s an absolute doll. Is her hair naturally curly?”

“Yes, just like her mother’s.”

“You’re a lucky little girl,” the saleswoman said to me. “I wish I had someone to make me dresses.”

The saleswoman got the fabric for Grandma and we headed for checkout.

“Next on our list, Sarah, is to get you a coat.”

“Ma. Ma. Ma.”

Grandma picked me up and put me in her dented Chevy sedan and we pulled out of the discount department store parking lot and headed for the Goodwill store.

Chapter 4

“That’s it, Libby. Pull yourself up. Good girl. Now come to Daddy.”

I watch as Tom coaxes Olivia, who’s holding onto the edge of the cherry coffee table, to let go and walk toward him. Olivia smiles and giggles and lifts her pudgy, dimpled hands. She takes one step toward Tom before falling backward on her diaper-clad bottom.

She pulls herself up again and falls backward again. After a few more tries, Olivia takes two steps toward Tom before he catches her and keeps her from falling.

Tom continues to work with Olivia, moving farther and farther from her. She takes high marching steps, lifting her knees, then jabbing the floor with her tiny feet. Eventually, she toddles to Tom and falls into his open arms. She seems surprised that she was able to walk that far without falling. She giggles some more.

“Good girl, Libby. Good girl.” He hugs her and kisses her freshly bathed head. “Wait until Mommy sees what we’ve been working on. She’s going to be so proud of you.”

Just yesterday, Olivia had pulled herself up and walked around the coffee table while holding onto it for the first time. Today, she finally gets the nerve to let go.

Tom scoops her up and sits on the couch and reads her a book before tucking her into bed.

I don’t think Matt ever did anything with me. If he had loved me an eighth of what Tom loves Olivia, maybe things would have been different. But you can’t make someone love you. Believe me, I tried. I tried to be good all of the time. Do everything I was told. But Matt was always so angry. Even when I learned to walk and Grandma was so proud of me the only thing on Matt’s mind was how my newfound freedom made me even more of a pain in the ass.

“Can’t you keep her in one room?” Matt asked Grandma one day.

“Matt, she’s not an animal that you can cage. It’s natural for her to want to explore.”

“Well, I don’t need her exploring and getting into my stuff.”

“Then close your bedroom door. Besides, maybe she just wants to be near you.”

“Well, I don’t want to be near her. Keep her out of my room, out of my stuff.”

“Why don’t you just move out if you’re that miserable?” Grandma said.

“Don’t worry, when I can afford to I will.”

Elizabeth holds up princess-themed party invitations. “How about this, Libby?”

Olivia sits in the grocery cart gnawing on a red plastic teething ring. Her yellow bib is soaked from her drool.

“Princess invitations for a princess,” Elizabeth says as she puts them in the cart. “After all, you only turn one once.”

Elizabeth finds the coordinating tableware and tosses plates, cups, napkins, tablecloths, a centerpiece, utensils, pink and white streamers and other party decorations into the cart. She then orders a balloon bouquet for the big day, selecting a huge princess balloon along with several Mylar balloons and a few latex ones.

“She’s cute,” the clerk tells Elizabeth.

“Thank you.”

“Love her curly hair. Guess she gets that from her father.”

Elizabeth, whose hair is straight as straw, smiles. “Actually, we’re not sure where she gets it from.”

“That’s like me,” the clerk says. “I was born without two adult teeth. My dentist said it’s a congenital thing, usually hereditary. But Mom doesn’t know anyone in the family who’s missing two teeth.”

“So what did you do?” Elizabeth asks.

“About what?”

“The teeth.”

“Oh. Got implants, and they were way expensive. Mom said she’s spent a mint on my mouth.”

“Well, they look nice,” Elizabeth says. “You have a great smile. I would never have known your teeth weren’t real.”

“Thanks.”

Olivia’s teething ring falls on the floor. Elizabeth picks it up and puts it in her purse and pulls out another one from the diaper bag to give her.

“I hope she’s not missing any teeth,” the clerk says.

Elizabeth smiles. “Me, too. I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see. There’s some things I guess you just don’t know.”

“Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Sarah. Happy birthday to you.”

Grandma placed the cake she had baked in front of me. It had vanilla icing and she decorated it with sprinkles and a big candle in the shape of the numeral one. It was just me and Grandma. There were no aunts or uncles or cousins. Grandma had no family. And there was no Matt.

Grandma snapped photos as I dug my baby fingers into the cake.

“Taste the icing, Sarah,” she said. “Mmm, good.”

I started to tear up. Icing dripped from my hands. I didn’t like being messy. Grandma took a swipe of the icing with her index finger and put it up to my mouth. I tasted the sweet icing and realized the stuff on my fingers was good. Real good. I licked the icing off my fingers and dug them back into the cake and licked them clean again and again.

Grandma laughed. “That’s my girl. Get messy. Enjoy it. You’re one.”

I had cake and icing in my hair and all over my face. Grandma waited until I was good and messy and the cake was wrecked before removing it from the tray on my high chair.

“Do you ever think about her mother?” Elizabeth asks Tom.

“I try not to,” Tom says. “I mean, I’m grateful we have Libby, but I don’t understand how her mother could do what she did.”

“Do you worry that we don’t know anything about her mother?”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Like if she was born without two adult teeth.”

Tom tilts his head and scrunches his eyes so his eyebrows almost meet in the middle. “What are you talking about?”

Elizabeth shifts in her seat. “The clerk at the party store told me she was born without two adult teeth. Said it was congenital.”

“So?”

“Well, it just got me thinking. We don’t know the birth mother’s health history. What if Libby’s missing two of her adult teeth or…?”

“Look, Liz. We can’t worry about what we don’t know. If Libby is missing two adult teeth, then we’ll get her two. Simple as that. Whatever Libby faces, we’ll be there to help her. No matter what that might be.”

“I love you,” Elizabeth tells Tom. “Thanks for putting up with my worrying self.”

Tom kisses her. “You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t worry. But worry about the things you can control, not the things you can’t. Whatever happens, we’re in this together.”

“You missed your daughter’s first birthday,” Grandma told Matt as he stumbled into the kitchen. He popped a handful of aspirin into his mouth and chased them with a swig of black coffee.

“Sorry. I forgot.”

“That collection department called again,” Grandma said. “You better call them back.”

Matt didn’t answer.

“Have any interviews lined up?”

Matt shook his head.

“You need to find something, Matt. You’ve got bills to pay.”

“Christ, Mom. Can’t I just eat breakfast in peace for once?”

He looked at me in my high chair eating Cheerios.

“Da. Da.” I pinched a Cheerio and offered it to him.

Matt’s eyes became glassy. He held out his palm and I placed the Cheerio in it. His lips mashed into a limp smile, and he slid the Cheerio into his jeans pocket.

He didn’t realize that Grandma was watching. She placed her hand over her heart and a tear slipped from the corner of her wrinkled eye.

Matt grunted goodbye and left, slamming the door behind him. He was gone. Again.

Grandma walked over to me and patted the top of my head. “There’s a man who’s spent so much time being angry that he doesn’t know how to be anything but. Don’t let anger consume you, Sarah. Anger destroys everything that’s good.”

Chapter 5

Elizabeth gathers silky strands of hair into a cluster on top of Olivia’s head and clips it with a pink lacey bow. “Such a pretty girl.”

“Da. Da. Da.”

“Yes, Daddy is getting his picture taken, too.”

Tom walks into the nursery, with a beautiful hand-painted mural depicting various nursery rhymes, and Olivia claps her pudgy hands. “Da. Da. Da.”

He picks up Olivia and kisses her and then Elizabeth. “My girls look beautiful.”

“Do you like our matching dresses?” Elizabeth asks.

Tom smiles. “Gorgeous, as always.”

The dresses are a pink floral print. Elizabeth’s is sleeveless and Olivia’s has capped sleeves and a big bow around the waist that ties in the back.

“Found them online at a really neat boutique. Bought two others.”

“Don’t tell me anymore,” Tom says. “I don’t want to know how much this new online boutique is costing me.”

Elizabeth tilts her head and fakes a pout. “You always say your girls deserve the best.”

“Yep,” Tom said. “Nothing but the best.”

I remember the day I was cleaning out Grandma’s closet. It was right after she died and I was making good on my promise to donate all of her clothes to Goodwill. I found a big box of pictures stuffed in a dark corner underneath a stack of old wool blankets. I spent the entire afternoon looking through them. There were photos of Matt when he was little. It was hard to believe that the freckled-faced boy with the toothless grin in the red and blue Spider-Man pajamas had become one of the biggest drunks on this side of the Mason-Dixon Line.

I found pictures of Matt’s dad, my grandfather, who died from a heart attack when Matt was in ninth grade. That’s when Matt met my mom. They sat beside one another in science class. Grandma told me the story. She said my mom grew up in foster homes and that my parents got married right out of high school. “Way too young,” she said. “But you couldn’t tell them any different.”

I opened a small manila folder and found my parents’ wedding pictures. It didn’t look as if there were a lot of people at the wedding. Just Grandma and a couple of my parents’ friends. Maybe a half-dozen people. It looked as if it was held in the white gazebo at the park by the high school. I recognized the gazebo’s copper cupola with a finial on top and the brick walkway that circled the structure.

My parents looked so young in the pictures, Mom in her white cotton dress and Matt in a pair of black dress pants, white shirt and tie. The flowers Mom held looked like one of those cheap bouquets you can buy at the grocery store.

There were lots of pictures of me, a few of me and Grandma and none, not one, of me and Matt.

“I love this one,” Elizabeth says when the photographer displays the photos she has just taken on the computer screen.

“Me, too,” Tom says.

Olivia is sitting on a white rocker, holding a doll that’s wearing a pink floral dress just like hers.

“You didn’t tell me you got the doll a matching dress,” Tom says.

Elizabeth smiles. “I couldn’t resist. It was just too adorable.”

They look at all of the pictures and purchase several poses of Olivia and several poses of all three of them.

“Remember our wedding pictures?” Elizabeth says.

“How could I forget? We had a best man, a maid of honor, six bridesmaids, six ushers, a flower girl and ring bearer and the photo session took forever.”

“But we got great photos,” Elizabeth said.

“Yeah, but I’m not sure our five hundred guests were happy that they had to wait so long.”

“It wasn’t five hundred, it was four hundred. And besides, the strolling musician and hors d’oeuvres held them over.”

I had a doll with a matching dress once. I named her Sue, after my mom. It was Twins’ Day in preschool and no one wanted to dress like me. Grandma made all of my clothes and, even though I thought they were beautiful, they didn’t quite compare with the store-bought ones. Grandma thought the newer styles were too grown-up for a little girl just learning to print her name. So she used older patterns that she felt were more appropriate.

The teacher didn’t know I didn’t have a partner. She thought Marybeth was my partner. But Marybeth decided that she wanted to dress like Melissa and Kristin, who always wore the latest fashions. So instead of twins they were triplets. When I told Grandma that I didn’t have a partner and that I didn’t want to go to school that day, she said she would make a dress for my doll and that I could take her. So, that’s what I did.

I loved that red dress with the white trim and big red bow and I loved that doll. Most of all, I loved Grandma.

“What’s it now?” Tom asks.

“103. The pediatrician said there’s a bug going around and that high fevers are a part of it.”

“So she doesn’t want to see her?”

“If Libby’s not feeling better by tomorrow and she still has a high fever, the doctor said to bring her in.”

“Do you want me to sleep in her room tonight?” Tom asks.

“No,” Elizabeth says. “You have to get up for work tomorrow. Can you pump up the air mattress, though?”

Tom gets the air mattress from the basement and pumps it up while Elizabeth rocks Olivia and sings her a lullaby.

When I was sick, Grandma took care of me. She’d rock me and hold me and soothe me.

“It’s OK, Sarah. It’s OK,” Grandma said as she tucked two-year-old me in her bed. “The medicine should work soon. Shh, baby girl. Shh.”

Grandma crawled in bed beside me and wrapped her arm around me and pulled me closer. “These darn ear infections. Hopefully the surgery will help.”

Tom peeks in the nursery. Olivia is asleep beside Elizabeth on the air mattress. “Liz,” he whispers, trying not to wake up Olivia.

Elizabeth stirs.

“How’s the fever? Do you need me to take off work?”

“No,” Elizabeth says. “Fever finally broke.”

“Well, if you need me, call me.”

Elizabeth nods.

“I love you. Tell Libby I love her, too.’

“What do you mean she has to have surgery?” Matt asked Grandma.

“Just what I said. The poor child has had one ear infection after another. The doctor says she needs to have tubes put in her ears.”

“And how am I supposed to pay for it?” Matt asks. “That lousy insurance I have won’t begin to cover this.”

“I worked out a payment plan with the doctor. I’ll pick up a couple more houses to clean and any extra alteration work at the bridal shop. Can you get any more hours at the factory?”

“They’re cutting back, not adding hours.”

“Well, if you give me the money you spend on beer each week that would help.”

“Don’t start, Mom. It’s only a couple of beers a week.”

“It’s more than a couple, Matt. Have you gone to any of those meetings yet?”

Matt pushed out his chair and threw down his paper napkin. “No, and I don’t plan to either.”

He left the house and it was just Grandma and me – again.

Chapter 6

Olivia points to the three stick figures on her drawing. “That’s Daddy and Mommy and me.”

Elizabeth picks up Olivia and hugs her. “I love your drawing. And I love that we’re all smiling.”

Olivia nods.

Elizabeth puts Olivia down. “Where should we put it?”

They search the stainless-steel refrigerator for some open space, but Olivia’s artwork covers every inch of the appliance.

“How about in the office?” Elizabeth says.

Olivia follows Elizabeth into the office crowded with heavy oak furniture. The bulletin board behind the desk is covered with Olivia’s artwork but Elizabeth makes room by overlapping some pieces and puts the new picture right in the middle.

“The perfect place for the perfect picture of the perfect family,” Elizabeth says.

“Per-vect,” Olivia says.

“I’d like you to draw a picture of your family,” Miss Becky told the kindergarten class. “Afterward, you can share what you drew.”

Miss Becky gave each of us a big sheet of white paper and a pack of new crayons. I ran my finger over the pointy crayon tips. My crayons at home had been worn down to stubs. I sat beside Reid and Rachel.

I drew a big circle for Grandma’s head and a smaller one for mine. I glanced over at Reid’s paper. He was drawing a lot of circles. Each one was connected to a stick body. The figures were different heights. I looked at Rachel’s paper. She had drawn three stick figures and a flat circle with four stick legs coming out of the bottom.

I pointed to the flat circle. “What’s that?”

Rachel looked up at me, her black licorice eyes swallowing her cornrow-framed face. “My dog.”

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“Peanut Butter.”

Reid laughed.

Rachel covered her drawing with her arms.

“I like that name,” I said.

Rachel pulled her paper toward me and shifted in her seat so her back was blocking Reid from seeing her picture.

“OK, children,” Miss Becky said. “Time to share. Anyone want to volunteer to go first?”

Reid’s hand shot up. He was always first to volunteer for anything.

“OK, Reid. Come to the front of the classroom so everyone can see your picture.”

Reid pushed out his chair and walked to the front and stood next to Miss Becky.

“This is my dad and this is my mom,” he said, pointing to the different stick figures on the big sheet of white paper. “And these are my sisters. Rebecca. Rachelle. Renee. And Randi. And that’s me.”

“So you have four sisters?” Miss Becky asked.

Reid shook his head so fast I thought his thick black glasses would fly off.

“And a cat but I forgot to drawn him. His name is Rudy.”

“Very good,” Miss Becky said.

“And guess what?” Reid asked. He didn’t wait for Miss Becky to reply. “Our names all start with R.”

“That’s right,” Miss Becky said. “They do.”

Reid walked back to his seat, strutting like one of those Mummers Grandma always likes to watch on TV on Thanksgiving Day.

“Who would like to go next?”

I sat and listened as student after student talked about their families. I didn’t want to share my drawing. But eventually I was the only one left who hadn’t gone.

“Sarah,” Miss Becky said. “Your turn.”

I picked up my drawing and went to the front of the class. “This is me and my grandma.”

Reid raised his hand.

“Yes, Reid,” Miss Becky said.

“Where’s your mom and dad?”

My body stiffened, like the time Grandma caught me sneaking chocolate-chip cookies after she said I couldn’t have any more because we were soon going to eat dinner.

I swallowed hard. “I don’t have any.”

Reid tilted his head and even with his thick glasses on I could tell he was scrunching his beady little eyes. “Why not?”

“You know, Reid,” Miss Becky interrupted. “Just like there are different kinds of ice cream, there are many different kinds of families. Some families have moms and dads and sisters and brothers. Others have just a mom or just a dad or a grandma or a grandpa. What’s important to remember is that they are all families no matter how they are made up.”

Reid scratched his head.

Rachel raised her hand.

“Yes, Rachel,” Miss Becky said.

Rachel smiled. “I like Sarah’s picture.”

From that day on, Rach and I were inseparable.

“And God bless Mommy and Daddy,” says Olivia, her fingers, stained with magic marker, interlocked and her eyes pinched shut. “And Emma and Jack. And the nice lady at the deli who gave me a slice of cheese. And the man who came to the house and gave Mommy flowers from Daddy. And my teacher, Mrs. Plato. And those people Mommy and I saw waiting for food outside that building on the way to school today. Oh, and God bless Pepper. That’s our neighbor’s cat. He has three legs. Amen.”

“That was a very nice prayer,” Elizabeth says, brushing Olivia’s ringlets off her face.

Tom agrees. “I know who Emma is. Who’s Jack?”

“He’s new at school. I played with him today. He said he doesn’t have a mommy or a daddy. He has a grandma.”

Tom looked at Elizabeth. “Well, princess. I’m glad you played with Jack. I’m sure that made him feel good.”

“Yeah. He cried. A lot. And then when we started to play, he stopped. For a little. But then when his grandma came to pick him up, he cried again.”

“I see,” Tom says.

“Emma asked him why he cries so much and that made him cry more. Why does he?”

“Cry so much?” Elizabeth asks.

Olivia nods.

“Sometimes people are sad,” Elizabeth says. “And they just need time to be happy again.”

“Will he be happy again?” Olivia asks.

“I’m sure he will,” Tom says. “But you can keep praying for that to happen.”

Tom pulls the pink blanket up to Olivia’s chin and kisses her on the forehead. Elizabeth tucks Olivia’s teddy beside her and kisses her on each cheek.

“Sweet dreams, Princess,” Elizabeth says. “Love you bunches and bunches.”

Every night, Grandma and I had the same routine. Even when I got older, parts of it remained. Like the part where she hugged me and kissed me on the cheek and told me how much she loved me and how proud she was of me before she went to bed. No one has ever loved me as much as Grandma. I thought that Bryan did. I thought he was my Prince Charming, coming to take me away. But I was wrong. So wrong. But that’s a moment for another day.

The best part of our nightly routine was Grandma reading me a book. Of course, we said prayers, too. But the book always came first

“Got the book you want to read?” Grandma asked me, then five.

I grabbed a book from the bookshelf Grandma had found at a yard sale. She sanded and painted it and made it look like new. I loved my pink bookshelf.

“Didn’t we just read that book last night and the night before and the night before that?” Grandma asked.

I nodded and my pigtails laced with purple ribbons bounced.

“Well, OK then. Hop on up.”

I snuggled next to Grandma on the patched sofa. She slipped one arm around me and started to read, her index finger sliding under the words as she went.

I loved the story of Cinderella. How she went to the ball and met the prince and had mice for friends. Oh, and a fairy godmother who made all of her dreams come true. In my mind, the fairy godmother looked like Grandma, whose basic wardrobe was tan khakis and some sort of button-down blouse she made, usually a floral print.

Grandma tucked me in bed and placed a glass of water, half full, on my nightstand. I always liked to have a drink nearby so if I woke up and was thirsty, it would be right there.

I folded my hands and Grandma folded hers and we prayed together.

“Wait,” I said when we got to the “Amen” part.

“And God bless Rachel and Grandma. Oh, and can you make Matt happy and love me like he loved my mom?”

I heard Grandma gasp, and I opened my eyes to see her wiping her blotchy face on her pajama sleeve.

I prayed and prayed my whole life for Matt to be happy, but he never was. I wanted him to be happy more than I wanted him to love me. I gave up on him loving me when he stopped coming around after Grandma kicked him out of the house. I wasn’t mad that Grandma kicked him out. He kept wrecking things and made Grandma cry all of the time. It wasn’t long after Grandma kicked him out that we moved into a small apartment where the landlord mowed the yard and did other outside work. My bedroom wasn’t as big as it was in the house, but it was right next to Grandma’s instead of down the hall and I liked that.

Chapter 7

Olivia sets her pink and purple princess table with her ceramic floral china set. There’s a setting for her and her best friend, Emma, and one for Olivia’s doll, Sadie, and one for Emma’s doll, Nellie.

“Is it time yet?” Olivia calls to her mother.

“Almost,” Elizabeth says.

Each week, the five-year-olds have a play date and this week it’s at Olivia’s house. The doorbell rings and Olivia races to the front door. The girls hug and Emma and Olivia run to the playroom where they’ll spend most of the afternoon. The room is packed with every toy a little girl could want – from a play kitchen to an immense dollhouse to a puppet theater complete with a red velvet curtain.

Elizabeth walks in with a plate filled with grapes, carrot sticks, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut into quarters, diagonally. She places a quarter on each girl’s plate.

“Don’t forget Sadie and Nellie,” Olivia says. “They’re hungry.”

Elizabeth puts a quarter on their plates, too, and sets the rest in the middle of the table.

The girls dig in Olivia’s sparkly pink dress-up trunk for hats and boas to wear. Olivia wears her Cinderella gown and Emma chooses the Snow White dress. Olivia picks the tea-party hat with the pink chandelle feathers and matching boa and short-sleeve gloves. Emma picks the tea-party hat with the ruffle trim and matching boa and long-sleeve gloves. They pull out the pink and purple chairs with heart-shaped cushions and place their dolls across the table from one another. Then they pull out the other two chairs and sit.

“What’s that, Sadie? You think this is good? Me, too,” Olivia says.

“Nellie thinks it’s good, too,” Emma says.

The girls’ giggles draw a curious Elizabeth, who peeks in the room and finds them changing their dolls’ diapers.

“You have a real baby sister to change,” Olivia says. “I wish I did.”

“Maybe you could ask Santa for one?”

Ever since Emma got a baby sister, Olivia’s been asking her parents for one. They’ve told her that she’s special, picked just for them and that even if she never has a baby sister, or brother, she can always have friends over to play. Olivia doesn’t quite understand the why behind it, but having Emma over always helps.

“You’re my bestest friend,” Rachel said, hugging me.

It was the first — and only — time Rachel was allowed to play at my house. We spread the blanket out on the living-room floor and pretended to have a picnic on the beach. The tan vinyl hassock was a sand dune and the sofa was our sailboat. We had so much fun pretending – until Matt came home.

It was in the middle of the afternoon and Grandma was in the kitchen baking chocolate-chip cookies. Matt opened the door and stumbled in with a woman whose top was cut so low that I thought her double-Ds would pop out. He knocked over the black tole-painted TV tray inside the front door where Grandma kept her keys. Grandma heard the noise and rushed into the hallway.

“Matt,” Grandma said. “It’s the middle of the afternoon. Sarah has a friend over.”

Matt took a couple of steps toward Grandma, almost knocking her over. “I have a friend over, too.” His speech was slurred. “This here’s Candy.”

“Matt,” Grandma said. “Not now.”

“Get out of my way, old woman,” he said, swatting her with the back of his arm.

He looked at me. “What are you lookin’ at, kid?”

I swallowed hard and stepped in front of Rachel to protect her. “Go. Don’t hit Grandma.”

Rachel was holding onto the back of my shirt so tightly that I thought it was going to rip.

“Oh, Mattie,” the woman said. “Let’s just go to my place.”

Matt looked at Grandma, then at me.

They stumbled out the same door they came in and Grandma ran to the kitchen to take the burning cookies out of the oven. The kitchen filled with smoke and the fire alarm made a shrill sound, the kind that no matter how well you cover your ears, you still hear it.

“Want to play grown-ups?” Olivia asks.

Emma nods.

“I’m a dancer. What do you want to be?”

“A teacher.”

The girls divide the room, each taking a half for her “apartment”.

Olivia pretends to call Emma. “Were the kids good today in school?”

“There was one little boy who was bad. He pulled a girl’s hair.”

“What did you do?” Olivia asks.

“Gave him a timeout.”

“Want to come over for dinner?” Olivia asks.

“What are you having?”

“Macaroni and cheese.”

“The SpongeBob-shaped ones?” Emma asks.

“Yes,” Olivia says.

“Be right over.”

Elizabeth stands outside the room and smiles. I think she loves listening to the girls play. I know these moments are some of my favorite to record. Olivia and Emma act out what they see in real life.

One night, I was playing with my Barbie dolls in my bedroom. I was around five. I didn’t know that Grandma could hear me.

“What are you doing here?” Barbie asked. “You can barely stand.”

I made Ken wobble. “Come to get me some money.”

“But I gave you money yesterday,” Barbie said.

“And I need more today, woman.”

“You know better than to come here like this,” Barbie said.

“Are you going to give me the money or am I going to take it?”

Grandma walked in. Her hands shook. “No, no, no. That’s not how we play.”

She sat on the floor and picked up the Ken doll.

“Would you like to go out for dinner?” Grandma said in her best male voice.

“Ken doesn’t like to go out to dinner. He likes to drink,” I said. “He likes that bar around the corner.”

Grandma shook her head. “He stopped drinking.” Again, Grandma pretended to be Ken. “Would you like to go out to dinner?”

“That’s too expensive. Why don’t you pick up a roasted chicken at the grocery store and we can pretend that it came from a fancy restaurant?”

Grandma put the Ken doll down. “I can’t play anymore,” she said, and went to her room. I heard her crying.

Chapter 8

Olivia bites into an apple and her eyebrows jump to the top of her forehead. She pulls the apple away to look at it.

“Mom,” she yells. “My tooth’s in the apple.”

Elizabeth sets down the basket of laundry. “So it’s finally come out. That tooth has been dangling for days.”

Olivia grabs some tissue and dabs the blood. She hands her mom the apple.

“Emma got a dollar for her tooth last week,” Olivia says. “Wonder what the tooth fairy will bring me.”

Elizabeth pulls the tiny tooth out of the apple. “Guess you’ll have to put your tooth under your pillow tonight and see.”

Olivia jumps up and down. “I have that special pillow Daddy bought me. It has a pocket for the tooth.”

Elizabeth smiles. “I forgot about that. You’ll have to show Daddy when he gets home.”

By the time I lost my first tooth, Matt wasn’t living with us anymore. Despite Grandma’s efforts to get him help, he sank deeper and deeper into a drunken abyss.

Sometimes, I’d catch Grandma looking through old photos of Matt when he was a baby. She even showed me a lock of hair from his first haircut and a baby-food jar filled with his baby teeth. Grandma did the same for me. She kept a curl from my first haircut in a plastic baggie and she covered a baby-food jar with pink construction paper and wrote “Sarah’s teeth” with a black marker on the side. I lost my first tooth at school.

“Look, Rachel,” I said, pinching one of my bottom teeth with my thumb and index finger and wiggling it. “Grandma said it will come out soon.”

“Want me to pull it?” Rachel asked. “My dad pulled mine and got it out.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t brave enough.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Rachel said. “I’ll do it quick. Promise.”

For a second or two, I considered Rachel’s offer but the bell rang and we had to go back to our classroom. Recess was over.

I kind of forgot about my loose tooth until I took a bite of my peanut butter and jelly sandwich at lunch and something crunched in my mouth. I spit out the chewed blob of sandwich and found my tooth inside it.

“You did it.” Rachel clapped.

Rachel was always my biggest cheerleader. No matter how bad something was, she’d always find something good in it.

Tom opens the car door for Olivia and bows as she slips into the back seat. It’s daddy-daughter date night and they’re headed to dinner and the ballet.

“When I grow up I want to be a ballerina,” Olivia says.

“You’d make a beautiful ballerina. It takes a lot of practice, though.”

“Miss Dawn says that we should practice every day, and I do.”

Tom nods.

“Emma does karate. Why does she do that and not ballet?”

Tom smiles. “Because it’s what she likes. Just like you like chocolate cake and Mommy likes vanilla. It’s good when people like different things. If everyone liked the same thing, the world wouldn’t be as interesting.”

“But what if someone likes chocolate and vanilla?”

“That’s OK, too. But sometimes you can only have one and you need to decide which one it will be.”

“Why can’t I have both?”

“We don’t always get what we want, Libby. You’re little and most of the things you have to decide are little like you. But when you get to be a big girl, the decisions will be harder to make. Sometimes you can have chocolate, sometimes you can have vanilla and sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can have both.”

I can see the wheels turning inside Olivia’s head. She doesn’t entirely understand, but I know that with age comes wisdom. I pray that the little girl I am keeping moments for will always get whatever flavor cake she wants.

I looked at the pink sign with green lettering on the school door. “Daddy-Daughter Dance.”

“Are you going?” Tracey Carmichael asked.

Tracey was in my first-grade class.

I shook my head.

“Why not? It’ll be fun.”

“I don’t have a dad.”

Tyler Butler overheard me and walked over. “You do too have a dad. I’ve seen him. He rides a motorcycle and has tattoos on his arms and a red bandana on his head. My mom said he’s a biker.”

“He’s not my dad.”

“Then who is he?”

“His name’s Matt.”

I walked away from Tracey and Tyler. I didn’t want to talk to them anymore. When I got home, Grandma asked me what was wrong. She said she could tell I was upset about something because I was extra quiet and I didn’t want my usual afterschool snack of Oreos and apple juice.

A tear slipped from my eye, followed by another. Within seconds, it became a deluge. It was as if the tears had been holed up all day just waiting for the right moment to bust loose. “There’s a dance for daddies and daughters and I don’t have a daddy and everyone else does.”

Grandma bent down and wrapped her saggy arms around me and kissed me on the forehead. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I wish things were different. But we don’t always get the things that we want.”

“Like the time I wanted chocolate-chip ice cream and there was only that yucky kind?”

“Exactly,” Grandma said. “Sometimes yucky’s all there is and you have to make the best of it.”

“Like you putting chocolate syrup on it?”

Grandma nodded. “It made it taste better, didn’t it?”

I smiled. “Yeah. It tasted better.”

Chapter 9

“There she is!” Olivia yells.

Olivia, six, is dressed in her blue Cinderella gown with tulle petticoat. A bejeweled heart-shaped cameo accents the bodice.

She runs toward Cinderella Castle at Disney World and her beaded tiara with glitter organza ribbon flies off. Elizabeth picks up the tiara and places it back on Olivia’s head.

Olivia gets in line behind two girls.

Olivia loves Disney World. Her parents take her every year. She loves seeing the princesses and getting their autographs. Elizabeth always makes her a keepsake album that includes all their favorite photos. Several albums line the bottom shelf of the bookcase in Olivia’s room. One of Olivia’s prized possessions is a pink lanyard covered with collectible Disney pins. She has dozens of them.

Cinderella is her favorite character. She always eats breakfast and dinner with Cinderella in Cinderella’s castle. And she usually stops by the Crystal Palace at the end of Main Street for breakfast with Pooh and his friends and at Chef Mickey’s at the Contemporary Resort for dinner with Mickey, Minnie and their friends. It’s always a whirlwind week full of laughter and love and happiness. Wonderful moments to record.

I’ve never been to Disney World. I always wanted to go. I remember when I was in first grade and Tracey Carmichael came back from a trip to Disney World with a carriage-load of souvenirs. She brought them in for show and tell, a new thing each week. There were Minnie Mouse ears, a Cinderella dress and matching purse, a Snow White umbrella, jewelry and T-shirts and pens and pencils and markers. Oh, and a mug for the teacher and lollipops for everyone in the class. Everyone liked Tracey. And they liked her more when she gave them treats.

I remember asking Grandma if we could go to Disney and see Cinderella as Tracey did.

“And she had breakfast in Cinderella’s castle,” I said. “And there were fireworks and Tinkerbell flew down from the sky.”

“She did?” Grandma said.

I nodded like Tracey’s Mickey bobble head that she let everyone hold — everyone except me. She said that I was too clumsy, recalling the time I tripped over the carpet while carrying the classroom goldfish and dropped it on the floor. The fish died.

“Yeah, and Tracey said she got real pixie dust.”

For the next several months, I bugged Grandma about going to Disney World. Tracey Carmichael wasn’t the only one who went that year. Alex and Michael Deamer went and Katelyn White got to go, too.

Then one winter day Grandma said she had a surprise. We were going to see Mickey and Minnie and Pluto and Goofy and the rest of the Disney gang. But, she quickly added, we weren’t going to Disney World.

I had seen Grandma put change in the empty red coffee container she kept in the cabinet near the sink. She explained that she had been saving money for a year to take me to see the Disney on Ice show coming to the area.

“I know it’s not Disney World,” Grandma said. “But you’ll get to see the characters and you might even get their autographs.”

I was so excited I could barely sleep that night. I kept checking the small glass container of pixie dust Grandma had given me when she told me about the show. I sat it on my nightstand when I went to bed. Looking back, it was probably a mixture of very fine blue and silver glitter. But to me, at that age, it was the real deal.

Just like Tinkerbell, Grandma had spread her magic dust and I was flying higher than I ever thought possible. Not even Tracey Carmichael could bring me down.

Tom watches Olivia get off the bus in front of their house. They live in a gated community with manicured lawns and colorful gardens; many have waterfalls and gazebos. Olivia skips toward Tom, her blonde pigtails bouncing and her pink princess backpack swinging from side to side.

Tom opens his arms and Olivia runs into them.

“I got a surprise for you,” Tom says.

A smile erupts on Olivia’s face, dusted with light freckles.

“Come with me.”

Tom takes Olivia’s hand and leads her to the patio behind the house where Elizabeth stands with a video recorder.

Olivia’s eyes pop and she jumps up and down when she sees the pink sparkly bike with “Princess” printed on the crossbar. “Is it mine?”

“All yours,” Tom says.

Olivia drops her backpack and climbs onto the seat and starts to pedal.

“Wait,” Tom yells. “You never ever get on a bike without this.”

He holds up a pink sparkly helmet and puts it on Olivia, adjusting the straps to make sure it fits tightly.

“Promise me you’ll always wear a helmet,” Tom says. “I just had a patient the other day who was hurt because he didn’t wear a helmet.”

Olivia knows from the tone of her daddy’s voice that he is serious and means what he says. She doesn’t often hear that tone, but when she does she knows she must pay attention.

“I promise,” says Olivia, pedaling in a circle around the patio.

“Emma rides without wheels,” Olivia says.

“We’ll take the training wheels off when you think you’re ready to ride without them,” Tom explains.

Olivia follows Tom to the front of the house and he walks while she rides on the sidewalk down to the stop sign and back. After a few times down and back, Olivia gets brave and wants to go around the block. So, Tom takes her around the block, breaking a sweat as he runs to keep up with her.

I’ll never forget my first bike. Someone had put it out for trash pickup and Grandma and I saw it on our way home from the grocery outlet.

Grandma pulled over to the curb next to the Hulk bike.

“What do you think, Sarah? Some new paint and a new seat and we’ll have this bike looking as good as that bike you saw in the store.”

“Are we allowed?”

“Sure we can take it,” Grandma said. “These folks don’t care. They want to get rid of it. Doesn’t matter to them how that happens, whether it’s the garbage men or us.”

Grandma popped the trunk on the old Chevy and lifted the bike. I saw a woman watching from the window as Grandma eased the bike into the trunk then slammed it shut.

By the end of the week, Grandma had that bike looking better than any store-bought one. She painted it pink and added a pink and silver sparkly seat, a water-bottle holder and a bell. She even found a pink plastic basket with flowers to put on the front so I could haul stuff.

“Oh, Grandma,” I said. “It’s the best bike ever.”

When I rode down the sidewalk, I felt like a peacock presenting his feathers. Kids playing in yards pointed as I rode by and I rang my bell. I was happy. I had a new bike. And it was better than anyone else’s bike. I was certain of that.

Chapter 10

I watch Olivia sleep. She looks so peaceful in her pink canopy bed. She always sleeps with her right hand over her heart and the left one down across her belly button or off to the side. I was a Pledge-of-Allegiance-sleeper, too. That’s what Grandma called it.

Olivia is restless tonight. She’s having a bad dream. She’s dreaming that she’s riding her bicycle and a stranger approaches her in a van. She tries to ride away from him but no matter how hard she pedals, the bike doesn’t move. I feel her anxiety and try to will her out of the dream. Sometimes, if I think happy thoughts and direct them toward her, I’m able to disrupt the nightmare. But tonight is a particularly bad one. She and her dad role-played different “bad person scenarios” earlier in the evening and this was one of them. Olivia screams and within seconds Elizabeth and Tom fly into her bedroom.

Tom flips on the light switch. Elizabeth leaps on the bed and wakes Olivia. “It’s just a dream, sweetie. Just a dream.”

Elizabeth holds Olivia in her arms and rocks her gently back and forth. Tom rubs her back.

“Shh. It’s OK. Daddy and I are here.”

“That’s right, pumpkin. It’s just a dream,” Tom says.

They finally get Olivia calmed down and tucked in once more. I continue to record the moments – never stopping, never sleeping.

I remember when I was about Olivia’s age, eight, I had this particularly bad dream. I thought Matt was going to take me away from Grandma and make me live with him. It was after Grandma kicked him out of the house. Occasionally, she would invite him to dinner and hope that he wasn’t drunk. She never stopped reaching out, even though Matt pummeled her outstretched hands time and time again.

This one Sunday, she made her pot roast, which Matt loved, and his favorite dessert, chocolate cake with peanut butter icing. We rushed home from church so Grandma could make her homemade blueberry biscuits. He loved those, too.

Matt was late. Really late. In fact, he was so late that Grandma and I ate dinner and cleaned up. When he did show up, it was late afternoon.

I was playing with my Barbie dolls in my bedroom. Grandma had made me a Barbie house out of a bunch of old cardboard boxes she fastened together. It wasn’t as fancy as the Barbie penthouse complete with an elevator that Tracey Carmichael had, but I liked it better because Grandma had made it. She even made Barbie clothes out of the same material she used to make my clothes so we could match.

I heard Matt first. It sounded as if someone fell against the apartment door.

“Grandma,” I yelled. “Did you hear that?”

I found Grandma snoring on her favorite chair with the Sunday paper on her lap. I shook her arm to wake her.

“Someone’s at the door.”

Grandma put the paper on the coffee table. By the time she reached the door, Matt was inside, swaying and trying to remain on his feet.

“Matt,” Grandma said. “I told you never to come here like this.”

Matt looked at me, clutching my Barbie to my heart. “What ya lookin’ at, kid?”

I looked down at the floor.

His speech was slurred. “Maybe you should come live with me?”

“Sarah,” Grandma said. “Go to your room. I’ll take care of this. It’s not good to see your dad like this.”

“He’s not my dad,” I yelled, and ran to my room, slamming my door and locking it. I could hear Grandma’s muffled voice. It sounded as if she was in the kitchen. Probably making Matt coffee. That was usually what she did. Made him coffee and got him sober enough to ride his Harley home.

Matt left a couple of hours later. I came out of my bedroom and heard Grandma crying. I found her in the kitchen doing the dishes.

I hugged her waist and she bent over to brush the curls away from my face.

“I love you, Grandma,” I said.

“I love you, too, Sarah. I wish you had a better dad.”

“I don’t want a dad. I want you.”

“And you’ll always have me, Sarah.”

“And you won’t let anyone take me?”

“Never.”

That night, I dreamt that Matt kidnapped me while Grandma slept. I don’t think I’ve ever screamed louder. Grandma let me sleep with her. In fact, it was weeks before I slept in my bed. It was the worst nightmare ever and I kept having it over and over until Matt died. I didn’t have it anymore after that.

Olivia sits on the couch next to her dad. Tom puts his arm around her, pulls her in close and kisses the top of her head.

“Do you like helping people, Daddy?” Olivia asks.

“Yep.”

“Then why are you sad?”

“Today was a tough day.”

“Why?”

“You know how when you fall and hurt yourself?”

“Like the time I fell out of Emma’s tree house and broke my arm?”

“Yeah, like that. A doctor fixed your broken arm, right?”

Olivia nods.

“But doctors can’t fix everything. Sometimes a person can’t be fixed. They’re too broken.”

“Like my ball that got run over by the lawn mower?”

“Yeah. Like your ball. Sometimes there’s just too much damage and you can’t make something whole again.”

I wondered why Tom was so sad. It wasn’t like him to be this sad. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him this upset about something that happened at work. He seemed to be hugging Olivia more than usual and I suspected that a child was involved.

“I want to be a doctor just like you,” Olivia says.

“But I thought you wanted to be a ballerina.”

“I want to be a ballerina and a doctor. And a teacher. Like Miss Bogart.”

Tom smiles.

Olivia hops off the couch and returns with her white doctor’s kit she got from Santa. She takes out all of the instruments and places them on the couch beside her dad.

“First, I’m going to listen to your heart.”

She puts the electronic stethoscope that plays a heartbeat in her ears and listens to her daddy’s heart.

“You got a little cough. You need a shot.”

She grabs the squeaky syringe and gives him a shot in his left arm. She places the pretend bandage on his arm where she gave the shot and feels his forehead.

“You feel hot.”

She picks up the thermometer with four temperature readings, holds it up to his mouth and selects the highest temperature. “You are hot.”

Then she wraps the blood-pressure cuff around his arm and squeezes the pump, which makes the dial on the gauge spin. She wraps up her examination by checking his reflexes with the play hammer and his ears and throat with the light scope.

“You need to rest. Doctor’s orders.”

Later that night, after Olivia has fallen asleep beside him on the couch, Tom tells Elizabeth what happened in the ER that day.

“God, Liz, it was awful,” he says. “There were so many bruises on that girl’s tiny body that I couldn’t find a patch of white anywhere.”

Elizabeth dabs her eyes with tissues. The toddler had been bludgeoned to death by her mother’s boyfriend. He had whipped her repeatedly with a video-game controller.

“And just because she had a dirty diaper,” Tom says. “She was two, Liz. Two. And she never had a chance.”

Tom tells Elizabeth that the neighbors heard the toddler screaming for her mother. The mother was in the next room stuffing her face with potato chips and watching the soaps. The screaming got so bad that the neighbors called the cops. But it was too late.

I understood now the depth of Tom’s sadness and anger.

“God, after I pronounced her dead, I went to my car and cried, Liz. I’ve never done that before. But I felt so helpless. How can a human being do something like that?”

“He wasn’t human,” Elizabeth says. “He was an animal.”

Tom leans against her and Elizabeth wraps her arms around him and kisses the top of his head. “I wish I could take away your pain,” she says.

Tom sees Olivia’s white doctor kit on the floor, and he smiles.

I used to love to pretend that I was a doctor. I remember the day we found my doctor’s kit at the Goodwill store. It was brand new. Never been opened. Wasn’t often I found a toy that had never been opened at the Goodwill store, but that was my lucky day. And I was even luckier because Grandma bought it, after she got the clerk to take a dollar less than the ticket price.

I brought that toy kit home and played and played and played with it. Grandma would lie on the couch and I would do all of the things I just recorded Olivia doing – checking her reflexes, temperature and heart; taking her blood pressure; and giving her a shot.

Grandma even put some of the cinnamon candies we used to decorate Christmas cookies in an old plastic prescription container for me to use as pretend pills.

“How am I doing, Doc?” Grandma asked.

“Pretty good. But you need to make more cookies. That would make you feel better.”

Grandma laughed. “Are you sure, Doc?”

“Yes. Making cookies will make you feel better. And maybe some brownies.”

Grandma made the best chocolate-chip cookies in the whole universe. She didn’t buy the ones you break apart and bake like Rachel’s mom. She made them from scratch. And her brownies were good, too. Rachel’s mom bought brownies. They came individually wrapped.

“You rest while I check on my other patients.”

I always placed my dolls and stuffed animals around the room and pretended to do hospital rounds, visiting each patient.

I walked over to my stuffed panda bear, Lucy. “How are you today, Lucy?”

Grandma always provided the voices for my patients. “It hurts when I swallow.”

“Let me check your throat.” I grabbed the light scope. “Open wide. Just what I thought. Strep throat. Here’s a pill.”

I pretended to give Lucy a pill and moved to my next patient, a doll named Suzy who broke her arm. After examining Suzy, I used the roll of toilet paper Grandma had given me to use as pretend bandages and wrapped Suzy’s arm. After seeing my other patients, I returned to Grandma.

“Do you think I could go home tomorrow?” Grandma asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Provided you take this pill and get a good night’s rest.”

I gave Grandma one of the cinnamon-candy pills and she rolled it in her mouth until it dissolved.

“I feel all better,” she said.

And she closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep, even pretend snoring for more effect.

How I wished I could have cured Grandma with a cinnamon-candy pill when she got so sick that she couldn’t get out of her chair. Funny that as a child I could fix everything and as an adult, very little.

Chapter 11

Olivia holds a keepsake handprint plaque she made out of clay for Mother’s Day.

“Do you think Mommy will like it?”

“No,” Tom says, picking Olivia up and twirling her around. “She’ll love it.”

Tom puts Olivia down. “But you know what the best present she’s ever received is?”

Olivia’s gappy smile widens. She’s been told this over and over.

“You,” Tom says, tickling her belly.

Olivia giggles. “Do you think the lady’s tummy I grew in will get a plaque?”

Tom catches his breath. “I don’t know.”

Tom and Elizabeth have been very open with Olivia about her adoption, always explaining to her in an age-appropriate way where she came from. They’ve told her over and over that they are her forever family and will always love her. Still, Olivia sometimes wonders about her birth mother.

I, too, have wondered about Olivia’s birth mom. What kind of person was she? How old was she? Where did she live?

“Let’s wrap mommy’s present and then we’ll go for ice cream like I promised.”

Elizabeth is working at the hospital this weekend and when it’s just Tom and Olivia on a Saturday night, they always go for ice cream. Olivia’s favorite is vanilla with rainbow sprinkles.

When I was in kindergarten, we made pictures with our handprints for Mother’s Day.

Miss Becky gave each of us a piece of white construction paper and told us to place our hand in the poster paint on the plate in the middle of the table then press it on the paper. After we washed our hands, we were to print our name and the year in our “very best printing”.

“But Sarah doesn’t have a mom,” Reid said, wiping his snotty nose on his shirt sleeve.

Reid always had a snotty nose. His shirt always looked as if it had snail tracks on it. I knew what snail tracks looked like because I’d seen them on our screen door at home.

Rachel put her hands on her hips and gave Reid her squinty I-going-to-punch-you-in-the-noggin look. “She has a grandma.”

“That doesn’t count. It’s not the same.”

Rachel raised her hand. “Miss Becky, can you tell Reid that Sarah can make a picture for her Grandma since she doesn’t have a mom.”

“That’s right, Reid. Sarah’s grandmother is her mom.”

“But my grandma’s not my mom. She’s my mom’s mom.”

Reid always was a smarty pants. That’s something that never changed. It only got worse the older he got. By the time we were in high school, I stopped being in his classes. He was always in classes with the super-smart kids. I wasn’t so smart. Or maybe I just didn’t try.

But Reid’s comments did make me wonder about my mom, sort of like Olivia wonders about her mom. Grandma said my mom loved me, but I could never figure out why Matt, if he loved my mom so much, didn’t love me.

I know she died when she had me, but Grandma always told me that my mom knew she was going to die. That she chose my life over hers. Grandma said Matt let anger eat away at him like a cancer. When Grandma got cancer, I saw just what she meant. The eating-away part, I mean.

“Daddy,” says Olivia, sitting in a booth at the ice-cream shop. “That boy scares me.”

She points to a red-haired boy about her age with big ears and a Band-Aid on his forehead sitting across from his dad.

Tom looks in the direction Olivia is pointing. “Why? He doesn’t look scary to me.”

“He has his dad’s eyes.”

“What?” Tom asks.

“The lady who gave him his ice cream said that he has his dad’s eyes. And she pointed to that man across from him. And if he has his dad’s eyes, then his dad doesn’t have any eyes.”

Tom laughs and tears pool in Olivia’s green eyes. “Oh, princess,” Tom says. “It’s not what you think. That little boy didn’t take his daddy’s eyes. His daddy still has his eyes. The lady meant that his eyes look like his daddy’s.”

Olivia breathes a sigh of relief. “Do I have your eyes?”

Tom runs his fingers through his hair. This is the second tough question of the night and I wonder how he’s going to answer. “No, you don’t have my eyes. But we see the same thing with our eyes.”

Olivia smiles. His answer satisfies her – for now.

I asked Grandma once if I had my mom’s eyes. I knew I had her blonde curly hair. Grandma had told me that. But I wondered about her eyes. We were studying dominant and recessive genes in high school and our assignment was to see how our eye color compared to our parents’. My dad had brown eyes and Grandma told me that my mom had green eyes. I was glad I ended up with my mom’s eye color. It was bad enough I had my dad’s dimples. I hated those dimples. I didn’t want to have anything of his. I had always planned to get my dimples fixed when I got older and could afford it. I had read in my teen magazine that you could get them fixed.

“But, Sarah,” Grandma said the day I told her how much I hated my dimples. “When you smile your dimples are like exclamation points.”

“It’s a birth defect, Grandma,” I said in my know-it-all-teen voice. “A defect just like Matt.”

Grandma cried when I said that. I was mean and I shouldn’t have been. But Matt was meaner and Grandma knew it. Even so, I think I broke her heart that day. She had dimples, too.

I look at Olivia. She has dimples, too, and I don’t think they look like a defect. I think they look cute, just as Grandma thought mine looked cute.

Ice cream drips from Olivia’s cone onto the red laminate tabletop.

“Lick around the edges,” Tom says, placing a couple more napkins in front of Olivia.

Tom finishes his dish of raspberry ice cream. Steam snakes upward as the waitress refills his white coffee mug. He picks it up and takes a sip. “So what movie do you want to watch when we get home?”

“Snow White.”

“Didn’t we watch that the last time Mommy worked?”

Olivia nods.

“And you want to watch it again?”

Olivia nods again, trying to lick her cone faster than it can melt. She has been on a Snow White kick lately.

“OK. We’ll watch Snow White, but maybe the next time we can watch something different.”

Olivia nods.

I know what it’s like to love a movie. I loved Bambi. It wasn’t one of Grandma’s favorites. I noticed that she always left the room when Bambi’s father told him that his mother couldn’t be with him anymore.

“That’s kind of like my mother,” I told Grandma the first time we watched the movie. Rachel had all of the Disney movies and let me borrow them.

Grandma put her hand to her heart. “Come again, Sarah?”

“Bambi’s mom died like my mom, but she saved him just like my mom saved me.”

Grandma dabbed the corners of her eyes with one of her handmade cotton hankies. “Well, I suppose in a way it is,” she said.

“Was it my fault, Grandma, that she died?”

“Oh, come here.”

I jumped off the couch and bounced over to Grandma, who was sitting in her favorite rocker. She sat up straight, brushed the curls off my face, put her hands on my shoulders and looked me straight in the eyes. “Don’t you ever, ever think that it was your fault. Your mother wanted you more than anything. When she got sick, instead of saving herself, she saved you. And just like Bambi, you’re going to grow up and experience great things. Promise me that, Sarah.”

“I promise.”

I had forgotten about our Bambi discussion and my promise. In a matter of seconds I had broken my promise to Grandma, and a raging fire of guilt consumed me.

Chapter 12

Olivia and Emma approach a two-story brick house with its porch light on. Just as Olivia is about to ring the doorbell, a short woman with salt and pepper hair and pointy glasses opens the door.

“Trick or treat,” the girls say.

“What do we have here?” the lady says.

“I’m a cat,” Olivia says. “See?” And she turns in a circle to show her long black tail.

“And I’m a cheerleader,” Emma says. She shakes her blue and white pom-poms.

“You’re a very pretty cat,” the lady says, “and you’re a very pretty cheerleader.” She puts a chocolate bar in each of their plastic Halloween bags.

Olivia’s dad waits on the sidewalk as the eight-year-olds go from house to house. Olivia’s neighborhood is the type of neighborhood I would have loved to have gone trick or treating in when I was her age. She gets full-size candy bars at nearly every house. One couple even fires up the grill and gives away hot dogs and orange drinks to kids and parents.

In the apartment complex where Grandma and I lived, most people gave out lollipops or Smarties. Chocolate was a real treat. And when you got it, it was the miniature candy bars, never the full-size ones.

Olivia and Emma skip up the sidewalk to the next house. As they approach the porch they see three older boys standing in front of a bench with a big black plastic cauldron filled with giant Reese’s peanut butter cups. One boy is dressed as a pirate, one as a ninja and the other is wearing a scary mask that looks as if it got caught in a meat slicer. With its cuts and gashes and blood, it’s the scariest mask Olivia and Emma have ever seen.

Olivia sees the sign taped to the candy bowl. It says: Take one, please.

“Look at all that candy,” Scary Mask says. “We could take it all. They’d never know.”

Olivia and Emma look at each other. Olivia swallows hard. “No, that’s wrong.”

Scary Mask turns around. “Says who?”

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