“Yeah,” she says. “I did that, too, one time.”

“And was Tessa fine?”

“I guess so. So, where is she, huh? How come she didn’t come to the school to meet me?”

“Well,” I say. Okay. So here we are. I try to think of what to say. I’ve been trying to think of what to say all afternoon long. On the sidewalk there’s a gingko leaf torn and now in the shape of a heart. I try to let it give me some courage. I believe in signs from torn gingko leaves.

She has stopped walking and is looking at me. Her eyes are guarded, like she knows what’s coming and has steeled herself for it.

“Well, sweetheart, your mom left for Italy today,” I say. “It was kind of a big surprise to everybody—even to her, I think. Richard showed up in Manhattan with an airline ticket for her, and so they left.”

“Oh,” she says. Her face goes dark, and without looking at me, she picks up a stick and starts dragging it along an iron fence, clanging it on the bars as she walks. It’s like watching storm clouds coming up over the horizon: you can see them coming, but there is no escape.

“I’m sorry. It’s kind of a shock, I’m sure.” When she doesn’t answer, I say, “I was wishing she could have said good-bye to you.”

At this, she sits down on the ground, on the sidewalk. Just plops herself down and folds herself up, her arms wrapped around her knees and her head down.

I stop walking. “Are you okay?”

“Leave me alone.” Her head is buried in her knees.

I stoop down and put my hand on her back, and she pushes it away.

I can’t imagine what would be the right thing to say. What I want to do is pick her up and hug her and hold her and tell her that she’s safe with me. But she wants me to leave her alone, so there’s that. I look up and down the street, as if the answer might be found in one of the parked cars or any of the people walking by. Finally I say, “We can talk about it. Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.” Her voice is muffled. Then she says, “I just thought she would say good-bye.”

“I know. It sucks that she didn’t. I’m really sorry.”

Some teenagers go by, making a wide circle around us. Up ahead, I can see Emily Turner already at the corner, looking back in our direction. She does the “are you okay” gesture. I nod. And then I sit myself down next to Fritzie on the sidewalk. She’s still all folded up, rocking back and forth, and I can hear little sad sounds coming from her. Little peeps, like a chick would make.

“Do you want to go home?” I ask her finally. I put my hand on her back, and this time she doesn’t push it away.

“No.”

“Okay. That’s fine. We can just sit here.”

“Go. Away.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“You should go because I’m going to stay here forever, and I am never going to talk to you.”

“Okay then. Me, too. I’m not going to talk to myself either.”

“You might as well go see Patrick, because I am not moving.”

“Nope. Patrick will have to come find us if he wants to see us.”

We sit in silence. She keeps her head down on her arms. I’m stiff, sitting on the pavement, so I inch myself over to the little patch of dirt and grass, the place where every dog in Brooklyn has probably peed. For a while I can’t think how this will ever end.

And then—I don’t know, about four eons in, I remember something I once believed about love and how it’s in the messiness that all the good stuff comes, and I close my eyes and beam her over some love. And then a couple of eons after that I say, “You know, when I’m really as angry and furious as I ever could be, I like to yell and scream and run around in a circle and bang on something.”

She peeks out from underneath one arm.

“Let’s see,” she says.

So that’s how it happens that at 3:45 on a Wednesday, the first day of school and the first in my life as a substitute mom, I am on Clinton Avenue in Brooklyn letting out bloodcurdling screams and running in a circle and then banging on somebody’s stone fence post with a stick. And the little girl watching me is grim-faced and serious with streaks of dirt on her cheeks where the tears were. But at least she’s watching.

“Stop it,” she says sternly. “You’re making an idiot of yourself.”

“Oh, yeah? You think you could do it any better?”

She gets to her feet and grabs the stick from me and then she zooms around and around in a circle, shrieking so loud that airplanes are probably having to be rerouted from Kennedy Airport, and then she beats on the stone wall until she’s completely exhausted, and then when she’s done and sweaty, she says, “That is the way you do it.”

I say, “That was very impressive. What do you say? Shall we go meet a bride at Best Buds?”

“Why is there a bride at Best Buds?”

“Oh, she thinks she wants some flowers for her wedding. Silly of her, I know.”

“Okay,” she says at last. “But I am not ever going to be happy again.”

“Absolutely not. Me neither.”

As soon as we get home, Fritzie marches in the front door and goes to find Patrick, calling his name over and over again. I’m putting away her backpack and hanging up her sweater when he comes out from the study across the hall, lifting his eyebrows to me.

“Patrick,” she says. “You are going to have to get used to me, because my mum has gone away, and I am never going to speak to her again.”

“Well,” he says, blinking. “Okay, then. I’ve been put on notice.”

“I HATE THEM! Her and Richard. I HATE THEM!”

I hold out my arms for her, but she doesn’t come any closer. She’s like a little feral animal, not looking for cuddling.

Patrick runs his hands through his hair, and we look at each other because we have no idea what to do, except I’m thinking maybe eating dinner would be a good idea. Patrick says he would like to make Fritzie’s favorite food, whatever that might be, and she walks around in a circle for a while, pondering and then says that would be hamburgers and artichokes and cherry pie and root beer. With butter sauce for the artichokes and thousand island dressing for the hamburgers.

He and I exchange glances again. He lifts his eyebrows. “It can’t be pizza from around the corner?” he says. “Or a chicken from Paco’s?”

“No!” she roars at him and goes over and pretends to pummel him in the stomach, only she really does get carried away and actually starts hitting him, and he has to fend her off, which almost makes her start crying. She is perched on such a delicate edge.

And you know what, because we would do anything to make her feel better, Patrick cooks the hamburgers on the grill on the rooftop, and I go to Paco’s and get artichokes and cherry pie filling and instant pie crust and root beer, and I come home and make a pie. We’re all hard at work, even Fritzie, who whirls around in a circle in the kitchen singing one of those tuneless songs from childhood—this one about worms going in and out of a corpse—and then I see her eyes light up as she hits on the idea of chasing down Bedford and dressing him in one of her T-shirts. He puts up with the shirt business, but apparently draws the line at wearing underwear on his head. They both come running through the kitchen and then the living room, with him barking and her shouting, and then suddenly she bursts into tears and runs and hides behind the couch and won’t let either of us hug her.