by Nancy Star
you hear about Jem?”
She told him she’d heard the news about Jem. Her
basset hound–eyed seatmate had told her: Jem had been
laid off. Lane had already called Jem to offer the name of an attorney she used for her column, the one who specialized in workplace discrimination. “I’m not suggesting
you sue,” Lane said. “But at least talk it through.” And
Jem had agreed. But Lane hadn’t heard anything about
Sam other than that he was away. “Sam’s working on
Guild-Europe. Is there something else I should know?”
“Just rumors”—he lowered his voice—“that he might
not be coming back.”
That was an alarming thought. “Don’t listen to ru-
mors,” she told Hugo and herself.
“The thing is…” He looked around to make sure they
were alone. “Bert without Sam is a nightmare. People are
starting to bolt. Do you think I should leave? Or should
I wait it out? I mean it’s awful here, but at least I have time. To write.” He whispered the next. “I’m working
on a play.” He lifted up his phone to show her. “If I start a new job, I won’t be able to—”
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The double doors whooshed open. “Hugo.” It was
Bert. “I need you. Now.”
“Don’t wait it out,” Lane advised under her breath.
Hugo pasted on a smile and jogged over to where
Bert was waiting. “How can I help?”
h h
h h
There were delays on the A, C, B, and D lines. By the
time a train finally came there were no seats left. Lane
snagged a leaning spot at the door at the rear of the car. A team of buskers boarded and brushed by doing backflips
and spins around the poles. Everyone’s dead eyes stayed
stuck on their phones. When they finished and walked
the car with their hats out for money, Lane thought about
how Aaron would have put in a dollar. She thought about
how often his dollar made the people around him reach
into their pockets. She didn’t have any dollars on her so
like everyone else she stared at her phone, half reading an article she’d clicked through from the Guild home page.
Your Child Is Stressed: The News Could Be Good.
A muffled announcement came over the speaker.
She turned to a woman standing near her. “What did
she say?”
“Who knows?” The woman shrugged. “Guess we’re
going express. Next stop, 137th Street.”
Lane peered out the window as the train accelerated
past the 96th Street station and struggled to accept the
fact that in her haste she’d gotten on the right train in
the wrong direction. She pulled out her phone and called
the school but there was no service between stations so
she had to make do with reminding herself Henry was
safe. The aftercare teacher would stay with him no matter
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when she picked him up. Hopefully he’d be happily
drawing and wouldn’t even notice she was late. Unless
he was watching the clock. Henry liked to draw clocks,
different kinds, different shapes. If he was drawing clocks
… She shook off the thought but she couldn’t shake off
the feeling that she was failing him again.
If she were a person who wept, that’s what she’d do
now. She’d weep. But she wasn’t a person who wept and
anyway, what would weeping do? She checked her watch.
Sprinting. That’s what was called for. Good thing she was
wearing flat shoes. Sprinting was more useful than weep-
ing. With luck, when she got out at Times Square, if the
sidewalk wasn’t clogged with gangs of Elmos smoking
cigarettes or people walking four abreast while taking
selfies, she might get to the Port Authority in time to
make her bus.
h h
h h
She was a fast runner. The flat shoes were a help. But she missed the bus anyway. When she got to the aftercare
room, Henry was the only one there. As soon as she
walked in, he looked up at her and his face lit up. She
walked over and saw, with relief, that today his drawings
were not of clocks. They were of buses. The Red Rooster.
The Green Squirrel.
Mrs. Lindsey called over a hello and then motioned
for her to come to where she was sitting, at the desk. She stopped Lane midapology. “I get it. Stuff happens. But
you should know there’s a strict two-strikes-you’re-out
policy here for late pickup. Personally I think it should be three. Two seems severe. But no one asked me. Anyway
it’s different for me. I live alone with a cat. Most teachers 210
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here have to get home and make dinner for their families.
They have kids waiting for them. We can’t leave until
the last child is picked up.”
“I’m so sorry,” Lane told her. “It won’t happen again.”
In the car, she apologized to Henry. “I’m sorry you had
to wait, buddy.”
He was looking out the window when he answered.
“I wasn’t waiting. I was drawing.” Then he met her eyes
in the rearview mirror. “How come you were late?”
“I got on the wrong subway. Can you believe it?”
Henry nodded and she smiled. Then she took a breath and
told him what she’d forgotten to tell him in the morning.
“We’re invited to a dinner at Dana’s house tonight. She’s
making a party for us. A little party. With kids your age.”
His eyes locked on hers. “Will they try and make
me talk?”
“Absolutely not.” Like a child she crossed her fingers;
like a mother she crossed them at the bottom of the steer-
ing wheel where Henry couldn’t see.
h h
h h
Agreeing to come to the dinner was a mistake. While
none of the women in Dana’s bumped-out family room
seemed interested in making Henry speak, they were
unanimous in their opinion that he would have a much
better time if he went downstairs, where the other children were gathered under the supervision of Dana’s son, Eric.
“In human years he’s sixteen but he acts like he’s eight,”
Dana said. “Kids always love him. You’ll love him too,”
she told Henry. “Plus they have some really good food.”
A peal of laughter came from the direction of the
basement. Henry’s head swiveled toward the stairs.
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“There’s red velvet cupcakes down there.” It was
Karin, the baker from next door. “I’m famous for them.
I made biscotti for us,” she told Lane.
“Up to you,” Lane said quietly. “Want to have a quick
cupcake and then we’ll go?” He nodded and she excused
herself to take him down.
h h
h h
The basement, which had the same layout as Lane’s,
was crammed with a timeline of clutter. Bins of wood
blocks, stacks of kits and, against the wall, standing sports equipment: hockey and lacrosse sticks, baseball bats and
shin guards, a paddle with the name of a summer camp
etched on
it.
In the center of the room Eric sat surrounded by
children who had dug into what appeared to be an open
and nearly empty dress-up trunk. So far Eric was wear-
ing what looked like part of a hamburger costume, one
clown shoe, one skeleton-hand glove, and a hula skirt.
Two children stood next to him painting his hair with
green glitter glue. He smiled when he noticed Henry.
“Hey there. Who are you?”
“This is Henry,” Lane said.
“The new kid. Cool. Hey, everybody,” Eric called
out. “Say hey to Henry.”
Commingled voices shouted greetings and then ev-
eryone went back to what they were doing. A girl opened
a Sharpie. A boy pulled the stuffing out of a sock puppet.
“Don’t worry,” Eric told Lane. “I’m not letting anybody
do anything even remotely dangerous. But if they want
to pull out some stuffing or paint my hair?” He shrugged.
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“Cool with me. I get a hundred bucks if everyone stays
down here tonight. One person goes up, I get zero.”
A boy came and asked Henry if he wanted to help
him knock down a block tower. Henry looked up at Lane
for permission.
“Want to me to stay down here?”
“He’ll be fine,” Eric said.
Henry confirmed this by running with the boy toward
a high tower of precariously arranged wood blocks.
“He doesn’t speak,” Lane told Eric quietly.
“Cool,” Eric said.
“If he needs me, I’m right upstairs.”
“Got it.”
She hesitated. Henry noticed and waved goodbye.
h h
h h
“Fabbo,” Dana said, when she returned upstairs alone. “I
made you a plate.” She handed it over. “I knew Henry
would love Eric. Everyone loves Eric. Come sit.”
Lane returned to her seat and balanced her plate on
her lap. She tried to think of something to say but came
up blank. She was always a failure at small talk.
“So.” Rory the dentist sat next to her. Lane felt herself
relax. The conversational reins had been picked up. “What
happened that night all those cops came?”
Of course. Word had gotten around. Everyone was
wondering. “There was a mix-up,” she said and then
stopped. Best to leave it at that.
A woman whose name eluded her sat down in a chair
across from her. “I heard it was Francesca.” The woman
turned to the crowd. “Francesca went missing. And the
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cops came. And a bunch of teachers went over to help.
Mrs. Abramowitz told me,” she confessed. “She was
there. Francesca’s teacher was there too. And the gym
teacher, I heard.”
“I just love this town,” Dana said. “Something goes
wrong, everybody pitches in to help.”
“It was a mix-up,” Lane said again. “Her mother asked
me to take her to book group and when we got back to
her house the cops were there. They thought she’d been
kidnapped. I don’t really know what happened. Francesca’s
aunt was there when I picked her up. I told her aunt we
were going to book group.”
“Weird,” Karin said. “What did Claudine say?”
“I never heard from her.”
Karin looked puzzled. “You didn’t call her?”
Now everyone looked puzzled.
“No. Claudine asked me to take Francesca to book
group,” Lane said. “And then the police accused me of
kidnapping. I thought it was on Claudine to call me.”
“On Claudine?” a woman repeated.
“On the aunt, maybe,” Rory said.
“I know the aunt,” Karin said. “She’s definitely weird.”
“All’s well that ends well,” Dana said. “If you think
about it, the way we all rush around from one thing to
another it’s a miracle there aren’t more mix-ups like that.
You know what I’m upset about?” She turned to Lane.
“Your house. I honestly cannot believe all the things that have gone wrong in there. And it’s not like Nathan didn’t
take care of it. He did.”
“Just the surface,” Karin muttered. “Remember when
his driveway cracked? Right down the middle? He never
got it repaved. He threw on some tar and called it a day.
He’s a patch-it-up guy is what he is.”
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“Karin’s got a problem with Nathan,” Rory said.
“I’m not the only one,” Karin said.
Lane wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say so she
said, “Mmm.”
A shouted curse rocketed up the basement stairs.
Footsteps followed. Henry bolted over to Lane.
Eric was right behind him. “You cost me a hundred
bucks, you little snot.”
“Eric,” Dana warned.
Henry looked pale. Lane pulled him closer. She heard
the zoop of a text and watched as all hands moved to
phones, except for hers. Right now there was nothing
that would take her away from holding Henry.
“Mine,” Dana announced. Everyone set their phones
down. “Actually it’s for you.” She handed her phone to
Lane. “Nathan,” she told the crowd.
All eyes on her, she took Dana’s phone and read the
text. “My alarm went off again,” she said. “Sorry. My
phone must have been on silent. We need to go. I have
to organize a time for the electrician to come over.” She
hoped Dana wouldn’t challenge her. The text said her
alarm went off again, but it didn’t say anything about her needing to go home right now. But Dana was otherwise
occupied, putting out dessert.
“Before you go…” Karin hurried over to the buffet
and returned with a paper plate. “Sea salt and caramel
biscotti. My first try at making them. Let me know what
you think.”
“I once lost a tooth eating caramel,” a depressed-
sounding woman was telling the crowd as Lane and Henry
headed toward the door.
h h
h h
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According to Henry, the problem in the basement was
that he didn’t have a hundred dollars.
“They have a toe,” he explained
“What do you mean?”
“A toe. Like the kind you pay when you go over a bridge or in a tunnel.”
“You mean a toll?”
He nodded. “Eric said if anyone wanted to use the
stairs before it was time to leave, they had to pay him
a hundred dollars. But I didn’t have any dollars. So I
had to wait for you to know I wanted to leave. But you
didn’t.”
“I’m sorry.” She laid a hand on Henry’s head and gen-
tly twirled one of his curls around her finger. “But you
left anyway. You didn’t listen to Eric. That was brave.”
“I listened until he went to the bathroom and then I
stopped listening. I tried to make my feet tread lightly on the stairs, like in Grandma Sylvie’s Rule Number Four.
But it didn’t work. They have a squeaky step. Probably
so no one leaves without paying the toe.”
Tread Lightly So You Don’t Leave Tracks. Another
rule Lane didn’t remember sharing.
“You know what, buddy? What Eric told you about
the toll—he made that up. He said that because his mom
promised to give him a hundred dollars if no one went
upstairs. I’m really proud that you left anyway. If you feel uncomfortable somewhere, you leave.”
“Like when we felt uncomfortable in the apartment
and we left? Rule Number Three?”
Move Forward and Never Look Back. It was unnerv-
ing, Henry knowing so many of her mother’s rules. Had
he overheard her discussing them with Shelley? Where
was Shelley? They hadn’t spoken in days.
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“Do we have rules like Grandma Sylvie’s?” Henry
asked.
“No. I don’t think her rules work very well.” She
stopped. She was supposed to listen carefully to Henry.
“Do you want rules? Would you feel better if we made
some rules?”
“I would feel better if I went to bed.”
For Tell Me That Story, Henry asked for one about
the time they went camping, which was another story
Aaron often told him.
“We all slept in a big tent,” she said to start.
“Medium-size,” Henry corrected her. “And the door
zipper got stuck. And the flaps got stuck. And the screens that were supposed to keep the bugs out didn’t. And every
time you heard a bug, Dad made a buzzing noise and said,
‘No, that’s just me. I’m the biggest bug here.’”
That was true. He did do that, back when things were
good. She laughed remembering it.
“What else happened in that story?” Henry asked her.
Lane thought about it. “The campground was at the
edge of a lake. And we had kayaks.”
“Canoes,” Henry said.
“Canoes. And no one else was camping there. It was
quiet. Peaceful.”
“Except when the loons came out,” Henry said. “At
night.”
“Right. And they started to cry. That mournful cry.
And it woke us up.”
“Except not dad,” Henry said. “He stayed asleep.
Even when the loons stopped crying and started laughing.
And then we started laughing like loons.” Henry did an
imitation of his loon laugh. “And you had a laughing fit.
Which made your arm hit the pole. Which made the tent
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