I go over and kiss him. “So then it will just be us for Thanksgiving.”

“Once again, I thank you for your understanding and appreciation. Although I might add that I don’t completely believe you.”

So Fritzie and I go off to buy a turkey that’s not too, too gigantic (meaning it will fit in the oven), along with potatoes and green beans and the cans of fried onions, and I explain to her how you have to put canned fried onions and mushroom soup in the green beans just this one time of the year, which is a rule that she says she never heard about. Apparently it’s not being properly enforced in all the states. But I want her to know about this, because it hits me that I might only have one Thanksgiving with this little girl, and forever after I’d like to imagine her stopping on Thanksgiving Eve and remembering that people have to have fried onions with the green beans. That will be my legacy to her.

And then what do you think happens? Blix would have known to warn me about this, I think. I hate to invoke the universe because people get sick of hearing that the universe is doing things—but really, we’ll call it the spirit of all that is good about love and life and community decides that our Thanksgiving must be fixed after all.

As soon as we get home and are putting away the food, Laramie’s mom calls me and says that her mother has had some sort of setback and they need to go the following weekend instead—and if the offer is still open, she would love nothing better than to have a normal Thanksgiving, outside of the shelter, with us. She’ll bring Laramie, her three-year-old twins, Luna and Tina, and her baby, Marco. If that’s okay.

So what could I say? I didn’t even hesitate. I said, “Yes, yes! Come on!”

I go in to tell Patrick that, oops, there will be company after all, and he just groans. He doesn’t even go crazy. “It’s fine. I knew it would happen this way,” he says grimly. And then he says, “What if the guy makes it sound like I think I’m some kind of hero? I think I could take anything but that.”

“Please. Call the reporter, and tell him what you’re worried about,” I say. After three times of saying this, I just shorten it to “CTR.”

On Thanksgiving morning, when I’m clearing the breakfast dishes and have had to say, “CTR,” at least a couple of times, Fritzie gets up and takes her plate over to the sink.

“Well, Patrick, I talked to the reporter, and I thought he was very nice,” she says.

“What? You talked to the reporter?” he says. “How did I not know this?”

She squirms. “I just asked him some questions, and he asked me a couple of things. He told me he has a little girl, too.”

Patrick says, “I did not give permission for him to interview you.”

“It wasn’t an interview,” she says.

He stares at her for a long moment. “Oh my God. What is this story going to consist of?” he says.

“CTR,” I say. “CTR, CTR, CTR!”

“Why are you mad at me?” says Fritzie. “I didn’t say anything wrong to him! I was nice.”

Patrick staggers over to the fruit bowl, gets himself an apple, and heads back to his studio, shaking his head and clutching his heart. I would worry, except I think the apple is a good sign.

“What?” says Fritzie to me. “And don’t say CTR.”

“He’s just being dramatic,” I tell her. “Here’s a little secret about people: sometimes when they seem like they’re nervous about one thing, it’s really all about something else instead.”

“What’s he nervous about then?”

“He’s nervous—well, he’s nervous, I think, because he’s finding himself so happy to have a little girl here who belongs to him, but—” I can’t believe I’m saying this.

“Marnie.” She laughs and shakes her head, like she feels sorry for me, being so deluded. “Patrick is not used to me. I would not say he’s all that happy about me. Yet.”

She’s right, of course. I shouldn’t have tried to run that line on her. “Well, honey, he’s scared because a long time ago he lost somebody he loved very much, and now he doesn’t want that ever to happen again. So he’s protecting his heart. But what he hasn’t learned yet—but what he will learn—is that you can’t live and protect your heart at the same time. You have to go full-out into love as hard as you can. Remember that for your future life. Give everything you have to love. It’s the only thing that counts.”

“You’re good at the love stuff, aren’t you?” she says.

I go over and kiss her for that. And then, because I’m good at the love stuff, we call her mom and do a FaceTime, and yes, it seems to me to be stilted and weird, but maybe it’s only because I don’t understand Tessa so well, and so when she talks to Fritzie and tells her about the buildings and the churches she’s seeing and doesn’t ask about the stuff Fritzie is doing—well, I take it personally. It pierces me just the slightest bit hearing her one question, which is always, “Are you being a good girl?” But, having said that, I think the occasional phone calls are important, and I wish they happened more often, but I’m good at the love stuff, so I make them happen.

Even when they hurt.

Gloria shows up about noon with her entourage. Laramie is very sweet and shy, and the twins love bouncing on the bed in Fritzie’s room, and I fall into crazy, mad love with Marco, a gurgling, drooling happy six-month-old, who holds out his arms to me the minute we’re introduced, as though he’s been looking for me all his life. He lets me carry him around on my hip for the rest of the day, giving me his toothless, love-struck grins and at times planting wet, openmouthed kisses on my cheeks.

Honestly, it’s embarrassing, the way Marco and I feel about each other. I think I am smitten. Maybe he and I are destined to be soulmates, and when he is forty-five and having a midlife crisis, and I am well into my wise old seventies, we’ll travel to Europe together and I’ll tell him everything I know about life and wine.

Or maybe he’s just come to me so that my ovaries can get to thinking about how fun it would be to have a baby boy of our own, and that this inspires them to dust off their best egg and spiff up the fallopian tubes, fluff up the uterus. Or whatever needs to be done.

Patrick comes out of his lair and does the hostly jobs of filling drink orders and carving the turkey. He is only slightly robotic. Fritzie gets all silly and tries to drag him into the living room to dance with her, which he finally does. He even smiles at Marco and the jumping-bean twins—and then Luna, who can’t seem to take her eyes off him, bursts into hysterical tears.

“His face is . . . hurting him!” she says. “It hurt him!”

Why is that what kids always think, I wonder. We all keep saying how it doesn’t hurt, he’s fine, he’s not in pain—and finally Patrick, who is looking grimmer and grimmer like he might actually be in pain, motions to us to be quiet and he kneels down next to her on the kitchen floor. She hides behind her hands.

“Here,” he says to her softly. “See? You want to touch my skin? It doesn’t hurt me. It’s just wrinkled up and pulled funny. But it’s just skin, like your skin.”

He touches her face very softly, and I hear him whisper, “Now you touch mine.” But she shakes her head and won’t look at him.