“Frances Adele Goldberg.” The voice intoned Francie’s name as if a period followed each word: Frances. Adele. Goldberg.

Francie, heart pounding, stood at the head of a line of students on the lawn of Princeton High School. The principal, Mrs. Allen, who was poised next to a podium, hand extended and clutching a rolled-up diploma, appeared to Francie to be miles away. She was, in fact, twenty feet away.

Francie felt frozen. Her blue gown rippled in a warm breeze, and from the corner of her eye, she could glimpse the fluttering tassel on her cap, but her limbs seemed disconnected from her brain and wouldn’t move. Just when she feared her name would have to be called a second time, Harrison Goldman, standing behind her, nudged her shoulder, and Francie stumbled forward. She reached Mrs. Allen, and the vice principal, who was manning the microphone, now added, “With high honors,” and a cheer rose from the crowd of parents and guests seated on the lawn.

Francie finally relaxed. She held her diploma aloft and, grinning, filed back to her seat, joining the brand-new members of Princeton High School class of 1988. She flopped down next to Carla Glassman.

“We did it!” said Carla. “It’s over.”

That was not at all how Francie felt, but she didn’t know Carla well enough to contradict her. High school might have been over, but the rest of her life was just beginning, a sentiment that had been reflected in every speech given that afternoon — by Mrs. Allen, by the class valedictorian, and by the class president.

The rest of her life.

The rest of her life.

Francie was awed by the phrase. What felt like an entire life was already behind her, and yet the rest of it, which she hoped would be much, much longer, still lay ahead.

“How does it feel to graduate?” Peter had asked her that morning. He had been excited about Francie’s graduation from middle school, but he was fascinated by her graduation from PHS — and the thought that she would soon leave Princeton and go to college.

“Well,” she’d replied, “it feels … grown-up. It feels like I’ve reached a milestone.”

“You have reached a milestone,” said Dana, who was sitting in the living room with Francie, Peter, and Sadie. “In a couple of months, you’ll be on your own.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”

“Of course you are,” said Dana.

“I wish I could be on my own,” said Peter.

Francie had smiled at him. “You need to stay here and keep Dana company while I’m at college. And you have to help her take care of Sadie.”

“That’s a big job,” said Peter solemnly.

“If you had to name the top ten highlights of the last four years,” Dana said to Francie, “what would they be?”

“Mo-om!” Francie rolled her eyes. “That sounds like an essay question on a college application.”

But Peter had leaned forward in his chair. “What would they be?”

Francie had let out a breath. She leaned over to pat Sadie, who leaped neatly into her lap, turned around twice, and curled herself into a comma. “The last four years,” Francie had repeated. “Well, graduation, of course, even though it won’t happen for a few more hours. Graduation is certainly a highlight. Do I have to list these in order or can I just name ten things?”

“No order,” said Dana. “And they don’t have to be ten good things either. But ten important things.”

“All right, then. Matthew’s wedding and being a bridesmaid.”

“I got to be an usher and wear a tux!” exclaimed Peter.

“You were the best usher there,” said Dana.

“Number three,” Francie continued, “Matthew and Maura’s baby. Sorry if these things are about Matthew, Dana, but they are important. I have a baby brother now. Let’s see. Okay, number four, well, Adele’s funeral, of course.”

“Don’t talk about that,” said Peter, so Francie said hastily, “Number five, Curtis.”

“Woo-woo! Francie has a boyfriend!” Peter hooted.

Francie refrained from adding that Curtis was her steady boyfriend, the only boy she’d dated for the past year, and the boy she would continue to see over the summer — and after she’d left for Smith College, although she wasn’t sure how that would work, since she would be in Massachusetts and Curtis would be attending the University of Colorado. But Curtis insisted that they could make it work.

“Six?” prompted Dana.

“Getting accepted at Smith.”

“You got accepted everywhere you applied.”

“I know, but Smith was my first choice.” Francie shifted Sadie in her lap. “Number seven, learning to drive. Number eight, the trip to the Grand Canyon with Kaycee’s family. Number nine, winning the writing award last week.”

“Your third writing award,” Dana pointed out.

“Number ten?” said Peter.

Francie screwed up her face. Then she smiled. “This,” she said.

“What?” asked Dana and Peter.

“This moment right now. All of us here together, Sadie in my lap.”

“We do this all the time,” said Peter, frowning.

“And I’m really going to miss it after I leave. What am I going to do without you when I’m at Smith?”

“You’ll find friends,” said her mother. “You won’t believe how fast you’ll find friends. And they’ll become your family.”

“Maybe I don’t want a new family.”

“But you won’t lose your old one. As you get older —” Dana started to say.

Francie and Peter looked at each other and groaned. “Not something else about getting old!” cried Francie.

“I didn’t say, getting old, I said, getting older. As you get older, you’ll find that you have lots of families. And they’ll all be important to you, but in different ways. You’ll have us, and you’ll have a family of childhood friends, and you’ll have a family of new friends. At Smith, you’ll sit around with these new friends — and by the way, I promise that some of these friends will become your very best friends, friends you’ll keep for the rest of your life, no matter where you live — anyway, you’ll sit with these friends and you’ll talk and laugh and cry and share all sorts of things. It might be hard to imagine now, but let’s have this conversation again in six months. I have a feeling things will look pretty different. Maybe you won’t even want to be sitting here with your old mother.”

“You mean, my older mother,” said Francie. “And please don’t start crying, Dana, or else I’ll start, and then Uncle Peter will start, and then we’ll spend graduation day having a cry fest.”

*  *  *

When the graduation ceremony was over, when the PHS class of 1988 was mingling noisily with parents and brothers and sisters and friends under a clear sky on a sticky June afternoon, Francie saw Curtis signal to her, and she broke away from Kaycee and Amy. Her oldest friends had been in the audience that afternoon, sitting with Dana, Peter, Matthew, Maura, and eighteen-month-old Jordan. Amy had finished her freshman year at Denison University and was back in Princeton for the summer. Kaycee had graduated from George School two weeks earlier, and Francie had attended the ceremony, cheering for her friend as she received her diploma.

“Back in a minute,” she said now as Curtis waved to her from the edge of the lawn. She made her way through the crowd to Curtis, who kissed her quickly and said, “What are you doing now?”

“Going back home. To Dana’s house, I mean. She and Matthew planned a family party, remember?”

“I know, but skip it,” said Curtis. “Come with me.”

“Skip it? I can’t. The party is for me. I’ll see you tonight at your house.”

“There’s going to be a huge crowd, though.”

Francie wanted to say, “Whose fault is that?” but she kept her mouth shut.

“We won’t have any alone time,” Curtis went on.

Francie frowned. “We have the whole summer. We’ll make plenty of alone time. I promise.”

“Why do you have to spend so much time with your family?”

“Because they’re my family.”

Curtis sighed. “All right. Come early tonight, though, okay?”

“I’ll try. I’m driving Beth and Dale —”

“Beth and Dale will be with you? So we can’t even grab a few minutes at the beginning of the party?”

Francie closed her eyes briefly. She loved Curtis, but he seemed to require an awful lot of her time. And patience. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said vaguely.

*  *  *

Dana and Peter had made a banner that read CONGRATULATIONS, GRADUATE! and hung it over the garage doors. Francie burst into tears when they pulled up to the house after the graduation festivities and she saw it for the first time.

“What’s wrong?” asked Peter. And then, in alarm, he added, “Did we make a spelling mistake?” He turned to study the sign.

Francie wiped at her tears as she and her mother and Peter climbed out of the car. “No, it’s perfect!” she said. “Thank you. I’m happy, not sad. Really.”

All afternoon, she kept bursting into tears. She burst into tears when Matthew and Maura arrived for the party and Maura handed Jordan to her. She burst into tears when her parents gave her a box that contained a gold ring with her birthstone embedded in it. She burst into tears when Peter donned his cowboy hat for the party, and later, at the mere sight of Sadie. Finally, Dana said to her, “Pumpkin? Do you need a little time to collect yourself?”

“I guess so. I think I’ll go to my room for a while before I leave for Curtis’s. Is that okay?”

“Of course.”

Francie sat on her bed, Kleenex in hand. She looked around her room and wondered which of her possessions she would take with her to Smith. She thought about Erin Mulligan, who should have been completing her junior year at PHS. She thought about her grandmothers, Grandma Abby and Nonnie, neither of whom had had the chance to go to college. She examined the photos stuck around the edges of her mirror: Francie and Kaycee and Amy, waving sparklers in the dark on a long-ago Fourth of July evening; Sadie as a puppy, guiltily edging out of the kitchen with a pilfered bagel in her mouth; Adele with a thoroughly bald head; Matthew and Dana, much younger, seated formally on a couch; Jordan when he was two hours old.

She knew she had a photo of Curtis somewhere but she couldn’t find it.

Francie sat and thought and finally dried her eyes and rejoined her family.