THREE

Ann Arbor

October 2018

Ella returned to the blue house on Third Street, crouched down behind two bushes, then watched and waited for the little girl to appear. The neighborhood was unusually empty today, with only a few cars and a battered white truck.

She had walked here from her apartment in Kerrytown, the way she always did, taking different routes so that no one would begin to recognize her. It was just a short walk, an easy half hour, even quicker if she took her bike. This neighborhood was eclectic and becoming gentrified. Two-story historic houses, with real porches, walkways to the doors, and even turrets on the windows, mixed with two-story clapboard homes that looked as if they had seen better days. Her daughter’s home looked like a combination of both, with its white wraparound porch badly in need of a paint job. The windows weren’t fancy either, but they allowed her to see snatches of the rooms from her crouched position behind the bushes. And some days, like today when no one was around, she could stand up and casually explore.

It was only October, but already she shivered from cold. She wished she could afford one of those expensive sheepskin coats so many of the college kids wore. Well, they probably had trust funds, rich families. All Ella had was herself—and the check Helen had given her, but she couldn’t bring herself to use it unless she had to. Unless one of those coats found its way to the Salvation Army store on campus—so marked down that she could afford it—she would never have one.

She had been in Ann Arbor less than two months, arriving in September with the onslaught of students, and here it was nearly Halloween. When she realized how walkable the city was, she had sold the car Helen had given her and bought a bike, socking away the money, not telling her mother. That cushion of cash made her feel better, and having a bike helped her blend in with the students.

She came to the Third Street house almost every day, always at different times. She told herself over and over that she was twenty-two years old, not sixteen. She kept hearing that lawyer’s voice in her head, and Helen’s, too: They will never give your child back. But her yearning pulled at her like a rubber band, constantly stretched to the edge of snapping. She had to know her daughter. Even if all she did was see her, she had to somehow be close to the one beautiful thing she had created in her life.

She didn’t see the family every time she came here—not even most times. The first time she had seen them had been a chilly day in September. They had come out the front door, and Ella had stumbled backward, almost falling. She figured that the burly man in the baseball cap taking the front steps two at a time had to be Mark. The woman with the long curly hair had to be Marianna. And oh! That child! In overalls and a green velour T-shirt, her chocolate hair in pigtails. “Carla, let’s go,” Mark said, opening the car door, and then Ella knew her daughter’s name. Carla. A name so beautiful it almost made her cry.

She had watched as Mark reached for Carla’s hand. “What, you lost another mitten?” he said. Carla then showed her father her free hand wearing a sky-blue mitten. “One does no good,” Mark said, scolding, but his voice was gentle, and Ella liked the way that Carla grinned and then wrapped herself around her dad, putting her hands in his jacket pockets. She had a good daddy, then. That was something to hold on to. Marianna was laughing. That was something to hold on to, too. They seemed like a happy family today.

The family piled into a white Honda Accord and then sped away, while Ella stood, hugging herself tight, waiting for her heartbeat to slow.

She spotted them again a week later, when she was biking across campus. They were walking home, everyone carrying a bag, and she circled around the block twice, then three times, for another glimpse before they vanished.

Ella came back the next day and the next, and each time she saw them, she learned something new. The man had a collection of baseball caps, a different one every day, each one festooned with the name of a sports team. Does he like them all? she wondered. She once heard the man snipe, “Please, not gluey spaghetti again tonight,” and the woman dipped her head, so Ella knew she wasn’t such a hot cook. And the girl! The little girl could whistle songs. She could hop on one foot for the count of fifteen. She was always saying, Look at me! Look at me! And Ella always looked, snatching these moments from odd angles through the windows.

But the truth was, she didn’t know how she might parent her own child. She hadn’t had siblings or ever really been around kids. She had never babysat. This gave a new purpose to her watching: she’d take her clues from Carla’s parents to figure it out.

After a while, she noticed a pattern. During the weekdays, the family left the house each morning at eight. They bounded home around three. The little girl went to Green Tree Elementary School, just a block and a half away, and sometimes to one of the two neighborhood playgrounds: one next to the school on Fifth Street, and then a larger playground where kids played soccer next to a big hill that she knew had to be great for sledding come winter. On weekends, the family walked to campus to get frozen yogurt, always at Get Spooned, or to a movie, or sometimes just to the dollar store. She didn’t think they had ever noticed her, though she could never be sure, and one time, she was almost certain that Marianna had been looking right at her.

One night, Ella followed Mark, letting him lead her to the Old Town Tavern off West Liberty Street, where he worked as a bartender. While Mark served drinks and cleaned glasses, Ella sat at a booth and nursed a glass of red wine, waiting. She leaned forward so she could catch bits of his conversation, not relaxing again until she heard him tell someone his wife was an accountant and maybe she could look at this guy’s taxes for him. Ella returned to her drink.

The bar closed at eleven, but Mark stayed, cleaning up. Ella waited a block away until she saw him locking up, and then she followed him home, waiting yet again until he had gone into his house before she wound her way back to her apartment.

Ella climbed the side stairway up to her apartment on the second floor, quietly opening her door with her key. The people downstairs had their TV blasting, and she knew it would come up through her floor. But she was used to noise. Plus, to her surprise, it made her feel less alone.

She had a fold-out couch to sleep on, a table for her laptop, a chair, and a tiny kitchen, and she loved it. Her own place! She could lock the door when she wanted privacy, and she could open both her windows when she wanted noise: the churn of motorcycles, the buzz of people.

She had tried her best to make it homey. She had bought supplies at Ann Arbor Arts for a vision board, hanging it right over her little table, pinning up photos of what she hoped her life could be. A little house by the Arb and the Huron River so she could smell the trees all the time. In the corner was a tiny photo she had surreptitiously taken of Carla. She reached up and gently touched it.

THE WEEK SHE arrived, Ella had walked over to the ground-floor office of the Grapevine Arbor on North Division Street. There were several rows of cubicles filled with people, phones ringing, and in the back, a glass office. There was Pearl, looking out through the glass wall and waving her over. She looked to be about the same age as Helen, and she seemed surprised when she saw how young Ella was. “Ah, well,” Pearl said. “Sometimes the unexpected can be good.”

Pearl asked someone to bring them lattes, and then led her into the office, talking nonstop. She learned that Pearl drove a Mercedes and lived in the village of Barton Hills, on an acre of land, in a house you couldn’t even see from the road, with her husband, a banker. She showed Ella a photo of her house, which looked like a mansion—all woods and dormer windows.

“People think that because I live in the Hills Village, I don’t do anything but golf, but I’m different. Some of the women there have a lot of money and they just need things to keep them busy,” she said. “Not me. I admit I aspire to greatness. And I don’t want this paper to be just for people who have third homes here. I want it to be for everyone. Reader-friendly and all that. And I assure you, the newspaper is so much more than a hobby.”

She continued, “So. Let’s talk about your being our Clancy Brown. After my know-it-all aunt, whom I loved devotedly and who died two years ago. I’m still not over it.” Pearl wanted to use a doctored photo of her aunt for the column. “No one knowing who Clancy is just adds to the intrigue. And I like to think it’s making the real Clancy happy somewhere.”

The process would be simple, Pearl said. Dear Clancy would run every Sunday, and all Ella had to do was make sure she had everything emailed to Pearl by Friday. Pearl would edit the column herself and pass it on for web upload. Ella would have a special email address for the digital letters, and an assistant would forward mail from the Dear Clancy post office box for the readers who preferred to handwrite their queries.

Ella was sent on her way, flustered but excited.

SLOWLY, QUESTIONS BEGAN to trickle in. The first few letters were easy to answer—about getting a cat when your boyfriend was allergic (“There are hypoallergenic cats,” Clancy suggested), or whose turn it was to do the dishes (“Make a chart,” Clancy said)—but Pearl told Ella not to worry. “They’ll deluge you soon.” In the meantime, she recommended that Ella get to know her “inner Clancy” and settle in.

Ella started a second vision board, this one right next to her first board, both in her bite-sized kitchen—just a half fridge, a two-burner stove, and one cabinet. Since her meeting with Pearl, she had begun the process of becoming Clancy, starting with the doctored photo of Pearl’s aunt. In the picture, Clancy was a striking middle-aged woman with a dirty-blond shag and a bobbed nose, smiling empathetically at the reader. Ella had found photographs of what she thought Clancy’s personality would be like, slowly building a vision of who she imagined her character to be. A photo of a woman striding down a gravel road in cowboy boots represented Clancy as an ass-kicker. A couple holding hands showed that Clancy knew love. A woman accepting an award for writing meant Clancy was acclaimed before this, so of course Clancy could do this job easily.

It felt good to be Clancy. To be someone else. It felt safe. And every day, once she stepped into that space, she knew just what to say, just how to respond to people.

THE DAY AFTER she met Pearl at the newspaper, Ella was back by the blue house, crouching for hours, waiting for the family with no success. She walked home through the Diag, the square in the middle of campus, then past a huge block sculpture resting on a point. People looked at her as if there was nothing wrong with her striding among these college kids. She didn’t want to go home just yet, so she wandered to her other favorite places: Literati, a bookshop with a black-and-white painted checkerboard floor she loved. She loved too, that the owners, Mike and Hilary, always said hello and let her browse. She stopped at Wooly Bully, a yarn store, and then at Rad Threads, where the students shopped. She studied the purchases of other young people so that she could buy the same things and look even more like them. And finally, before she went home, she wandered over to Vicki’s Wash and Wear Cuts on Murray Avenue, a maple-lined street with cozy two-story homes that looked like they came from It’s a Wonderful Life. Helen had always trimmed her hair growing up, and then Ella had learned to do it herself in prison. But now she wanted to treat herself, and if that meant giving up a little control, so be it.

Ella had heard women at the yarn shop talking about Vicki, the proprietor and stylist, how much they liked her, how she could coax your hair into turning somersaults if that’s what you wanted. As soon as Vicki came to the door, slender as a swizzle stick, her hair rambunctiously curly, her face bright with a smile, Ella liked her. “Come on and sit and we’ll talk hair,” Vicki said.

There was a confident gentleness in Vicki’s hands on her scalp, a soothing cadence to her voice. “I see your natural color growing in,” Vicki said. “Red as a russet apple!” Vicki told her to leave it alone, not to coat it with dye.

“It doesn’t look stupid like this?” Ella asked, and Vicki assured her that the only thing it looked like was real, and real was always beautiful.

The scissors seemed to whisper by her, and Vicki kept talking, all the while helping Ella build a new lexicon. A Squared was shorthand for Ann Arbor. The Ugly meant the UGLi, the undergraduate library. She now knew not to go out when the Michigan football team had a home game because the streets would be clogged with frat boys in team jerseys and hats, their faces painted half yellow and half blue, and crazy fans pumping their fists into the air and shouting. Vicki told her about the town of Ypsilanti, how it was cooler than A Squared and so close, but also full of crime.

When she left Vicki’s, her hair trimmed, her scalp feeling like it was glowing, she walked back home, studying how girls her age acted with one another, how they threw their heads back and laughed, how some girls moved as if they owned the street.

It was later now, almost dusk. She knew she could go to the bars, pick someone up, go home with him, and then leave before daylight. But she didn’t feel ready. Maybe she never would.

She turned a corner and there was Wood You, the handmade furniture shop on State Street. She needed a chair for her apartment and this store always had strange things in the window that drew her eye. A punk Barbie on a blue-painted wood stool. A dog perched on an intricately carved end table. She entered the shop and noted a few customers milling around; Ella could tell by the way they were dressed that they had money. She knew she couldn’t afford to buy anything here, but she kept running her hand along the smooth wood anyway.

A guy with floppy hair and a porkpie hat came over to her. “Hey,” he said. “What can I show you?”

“I love your stuff, but it’s priced too high for me,” she admitted, and he studied her.

“You a student?” he finally said, and she shook her head. She thought of the college catalog she had picked up one day on impulse, but she wasn’t sure if they would take felons and she didn’t want to ask. Still, she had taken it home and read it, as if it had been a menu and she was starving.

“Me neither,” he said. “My dad says I was born with tools in my hands and wood on the brain. And that’s probably why I own this shop.” He laughed. “But not everything is expensive, you know.”

He asked what her apartment was like, how much room she had, and what kind of chair she was looking for.

“You’re being kind, but—” Ella said, and then he told her he was just going into the backroom, and he’d be right back.

When he came out, he had a bright blue chair. The arms were curved, the legs delicately etched with small vines, and as soon as Ella saw it, her hand flew to her stomach. “I think I need that chair,” she said. “How much?” Maybe she could pay for it in increments.

He studied her again. “Do you work?”

“I have a job,” she said. “I write.”

“Ten dollars then,” he said.

“Come on. You’re joking.”

He lifted the chair up and settled it into her arms. “I’ll tell you a secret. This was my old office chair and I recently made myself a new one. No room for this anymore, so if you take it, you’d be doing me a favor.”

“Can I at least give you twenty-five?”

“Take the offer of ten before I mark it down to five.” He tipped his hat at her.

“You’re so kind,” Ella said.

“Sometimes I am,” he said. “I’m Henry. See you next time.”

And she said it back.

THAT EVENING, ELLA settled into the chair to begin work. How beautiful it was! How comfortable! She loved the feel of the wooden arms as she stroked them. She couldn’t stop looking at the graceful contours of the blue-painted wood.

When Ella had started her job, there had been only five letters. After a few weeks, there had been twenty and then thirty. Circulation of the Grapevine Arbor had gone up, and Pearl had called her to thank her, which had made Ella glow. If she could help others, then maybe she could help herself.

Ella scanned today’s letters. Most came by email, but a few had been forwarded from the post office box. For some reason, the handwritten ones were the saddest. Some of the pages had been stained with coffee or wine, the handwriting crumpled with emotion, smeared from tears maybe.

I feel you. I know this pain.

There were recurring themes about one partner wanting sex more often than the other, in-law clashes, horrible bosses, troubled kids, and nasty siblings. She knew enough about psychology to intuit that most of the writers already knew what they wanted to do, they just wanted Ella’s approval. For her to say: You are not as bad a person as you think you are. That was what most people wanted to believe.

She’d do just two letters tonight, she decided, and she opened the first. Immediately she felt the desperation rising from the words like steam:

My sister told me that I am “dead to her” because her ex asked me out. She believes I coerced him to want me instead of her (I don’t want him at all and said no to him!) and that I did it deliberately to hurt her. I love and want my sister back. I sent her an expensive designer dress for her birthday, and she sent it back to me, scissored up into squares with a note thrown in that said: “You like this. I don’t.” How can I have a relationship with her again?

Ella rubbed her temples.

She started to write:

Sometimes people vanish from your life and we cannot know why. Sometimes they vanish, like your sister, because she was so hurt that it might be easier for her to believe that you were the siren that drew her boyfriend to you, rather than for her to admit that maybe things just weren’t going well in the relationship. Or maybe her ex isn’t who she thinks he is. Let her feel her feelings. It’s probably safer for her to displace her rage because she knows you will always be there for her. While him? Probably not. Tell her you hope she forgives you, even if you think you have nothing to be forgiven for. Tell her you love her. That’s what really matters.

She lost her momentum. How could she tell a stranger how to keep someone in her life when she had been unable to do the same with Jude? With Carla? She’d have to finish that one later.

She opened the next.

I know I am homely. Don’t try to convince me that I am not. I know that I am, and people have told me so. I’m not enclosing a photo, so don’t ask. Don’t tell me that photos lie. Even so, I am desperate for love and since I know I cannot have it, I want to know how to learn to live without it and still be happy. Can you help?

This one was hard. Ella knew all about learning to live without love, but her personal lessons weren’t for this guy, even if she did feel for him.

How brave to write a letter about something you believe about yourself that causes you pain, and which may not be true at all. But you know honesty, bravery, are much better qualities than a button nose or big blue eyes. Those are the things people will respond to if you let them. And to prove this, I want readers who might like to get to know you to write to you here at Dear Clancy.

Ella knew she’d get responses. She wasn’t asking anyone to do more than write to him, and just a few letters of interest or support might be enough to give this man confidence. She couldn’t really tell people how to live their lives, especially when she had made such a mess of her own, but she didn’t really have to: the whole secret was to let people know you were listening, that you were bearing witness, helping them see there could be new versions of themselves.

Her cell rang and she picked it up.

“Baby girl,” Helen said. “How’re you doing?”

“Busy,” Ella said. She waited for the onslaught of questions, the familiar feeling that she was a safe that Helen was trying to pry open. Ella hated herself for it, but sometimes she would cut her mother off completely, telling Helen she had a deadline when she didn’t. Other times she didn’t answer the phone. But this time she sounded so lonely, like she had become a dry, twisted sponge that could no longer expand.

“I read your most recent column. It was great. When can I visit you there?” Helen asked.

“Soon,” Ella said. Her hands ran down the lovely arms of her new chair. “What have you been up to in the city?”

But as Helen began to answer, Ella heard something different in her voice, a brightness. She told Ella that she had gone to hear the Philharmonic earlier that week. Another afternoon, she had gone to a museum to see a Van Gogh exhibit and had stood in front of a painting for so long, a guard came over to her, suspicious. When Helen paused, Ella could hear something in the background. Music, she thought.

The conversation didn’t really go anywhere, but something felt strange about it and Ella couldn’t place it. “What made you start going out?” she said.

There was a moment of silence, and Ella braced for what her mother might say next.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Helen said. “Don’t I deserve to? I miss you so much I feel eaten up alive sometimes. I just try to keep busy, so I won’t feel it as much.”

Ella looked around her small room, glancing outside at the rusty dirt of the yard below. She loved her mother, but she wasn’t ready to share her solitude, to open up her new world to her mother’s scrutiny.

“You can visit soon,” Ella promised.

Helen wasn’t really falling apart without her, and wasn’t that a good thing? Wasn’t that what Ella wanted? Still, it unsettled her a little.

“What are you doing these days?” Helen asked, and Ella could feel the wire of tension in her mother’s voice.

“You know what I’m doing. Working. Living. Why would you even ask me that?”

“Because I worry. Because I’m your mother. Because I know you.”

“You think I’m going to screw things up?” Ella said.

“No, baby. Of course not. That’s not what I meant—”

Ella felt herself snapping shut.

“There’s my doorbell,” she said, a lie. “I have to go.” She hung up and shut down her computer, then picked up her needles and the yarn she had bought at Wooly Bully. She thought about Carla, her small cold hands, the missing mitten, and she began to knit a pair for her. She’d use a special yarn, a soft blue that looked like the mitten Carla had lost. She’d leave them at the door. No one would have to know she was the giver.

ON THURSDAY, WHEN her columns were finished and Carla’s mittens were done, Ella walked over to Carla’s house. The car was gone, so she carefully placed the mittens in the mailbox.

Then she walked to Green Tree Elementary, hoping Carla might be on the school playground and she could watch her. See if her daughter had friends, if she was a runner, or if she stayed quietly in a corner by herself. She didn’t see Carla among the spill of children coming out of the school, running to their parents or caregivers, but she kept waiting.

As usual, she pretended she didn’t see the ALL ADULTS MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY A CHILD sign. She ducked down to a bench, sitting among all the nannies, the harried young mothers, and the occasional father.

She reached into her bag and took out her knitting—a sweater for Helen, which she planned as a kind of peace offering. It was a seed stitch in burnt orange that she knew her mother would love. Helen would say that every time she wore it, she would feel Ella, and maybe that was okay for now. In any case, she could knit away her nerves. She anxiously scanned the playground for Carla. She craned her neck. She got up and walked around. She sat at three different benches, finally settling into her knitting.

She was finishing a row—concentrating so hard that the laughter and yelps of the kids, the calls of their nannies or parents, blurred into a kind of music—when she felt something bounce against her leg. Surprised, she reached down to pick up a red ball.

“Hey, that’s mine,” a voice called out, and she looked up to see a little girl coming toward her, her dark hair in braids, a bright canary yellow coat thrown open, wearing gloves that were way too big. As the child came closer, Ella realized with a shock that it was Carla. Had she been here this whole time and Ella had missed her?

Ella’s hands were shaking but she held the ball out to Carla, willing her to come closer. She wanted to touch her hair, her arms, hold her hands. She wanted to burrow her face in her neck and smell her. Carla was the image of Jude, slim as a straw, with his almond-shaped eyes and long lashes, and Ella struggled to swallow the pain of that realization. She was about to reach out and touch her, but then another voice interrupted, and there was Marianna running to them.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” Marianna said, her long black curls casually corralled into a ponytail. A black leather jacket, Mark’s most likely, was falling off her shoulders.

Carla exuberantly flung herself into Marianna’s arms.

When Marianna sat down next to her, Carla stared at Ella, and Ella realized with a start that she had no idea what to say to a kid. But then Carla said, “Mommy, watch me,” and ran off to the swings, and Ella felt she had missed her chance.

“You look familiar,” Marianna said, scanning Ella, her face suddenly serious. “I’m so bad with names. Do we know each other?”

“I don’t think so,” Ella said. She kept knitting to calm herself down.

“I’m so sure I know you. Do you know Mark?” Marianna said, and then her voice turned pointed. “My husband? He works at the Old Town Tavern nights?”

Ella rested her knitting on her lap, staring at the stitches before she looked back up at Marianna.

“It’s such a small town—maybe I have seen him around.”

Marianna gave her a deeper look and then seemed to relax.

“Yes, of course. There’s this one guy I always see around with this long white beard, but after all these years, I still have no idea who he is.” She stuck out her hand. “Hi. Sorry. I’m a little on edge today, I guess. I’m Marianna.”

“Ella,” Ella said.

Marianna craned her neck, watching Carla. “Which one of these little hooligans is yours?” Marianna said, and Ella stiffened.

“I don’t—” she said, and stopped, because saying none wasn’t true. But Marianna just nodded and then studied Ella’s knitting.

“This is gorgeous,” she said, reaching out, touching the yarn. “I wish I had time for something like this.”

“It’s easy. I can show you.”

“I still wouldn’t have time. I work full-time most days as an accountant. And then I have that one over there running around like a racehorse—Carla. And, to be honest, my husband is a full-time job himself…”

She smiled when she said it.

“I used to have so many friends when I was younger,” she continued. “I miss them, I really do. But everyone’s so busy that when you do have time to do something, well, you’re just too exhausted.”

Ella started another row, the click of the needles soothing her. “You’re lucky,” she said quietly. “You have a husband, a child.”

“Ha,” Marianna said. “You think so?”

Ella looked closer. Marianna had lines like parentheses by her mouth. Her eyes, beautiful and green as they were, were beginning to be hooded. She hadn’t known Marianna’s age, but she must be forty, Ella realized. Closer to Helen’s age than to hers. Closer to Pearl’s.

Marianna was now looking at her as if she had read her thoughts. “You’re so young. And if those are things you want—a husband, a kid—then you have plenty of time. Just don’t rush things. You a student?”

Ella shook her head. “I write. I sell pieces here and there.”

“Anything I’ve seen? Would I know your name?”

“Probably not.”

“Ah, not famous yet,” Marianna said.

“I don’t want to be famous. Fame is overrated,” she said.

“What’s your byline? I’ll look out for it.”

“I use different ones,” she said.

“Well, what’s your name then?”

“Ella Fitchburg,” she said. Her new last name still felt funny in her mouth, as if it were a marble rolling around her tongue.

A group of older students walked by, chattering and laughing, and Marianna looked up, her face full of yearning.

“Sometimes I look at all these students and I wish I were one of them. I wish I could talk to them, but no one has time for an old mom like me.” Marianna laughed.

“You’re not old,” Ella said.

“Oh, you’re being kind,” Marianna said. “I like that in a person.”

Ella felt something roiling in her stomach. Marianna spun her wedding band on her finger and sighed. “Oh well, what’re you going to do?” she said, half smiling. “It is what it is. And everyone’s lonely sometimes, right?”

Ella studied Marianna. Just because you got to know someone didn’t mean you had to tell them every secret you had. You could have companionship, someone to sit and talk with, someone to join for coffee. Plus, the more she could see Marianna, the more she could see Carla.

“I have time,” Ella said. “I just moved here a few months ago and I don’t know many people.”

Marianna tilted her head. “Well then, I hope I see you around here again.” She waved her hand at Carla, who was zooming down the yellow plastic slide.

“Carla!” she called. “Time to go, baby tiger! We need to go get dinner ready and I’m going to need your help.” Marianna turned to Ella conspiratorially. “She makes more of a mess, actually, but I love the company. And Mark’s so old-school he never really helps, either. He thinks male cooking is restricted to tossing a salad and grilling.”

“At least he does that,” Ella said, a knot unraveling in her stomach. This was a good family, she thought, a good way station for her daughter. She pictured them sitting around a table tonight, maybe talking about the surprise of the mittens, which might lead to how Marianna and Carla had met a woman in the park who was knitting. Maybe Marianna would talk more about her, and what would that be like? Would Mark say, “How wonderful, I want to meet her.” She tried to imagine it, a place for her at their table, too.

“Carla doesn’t always listen,” Marianna said, beckoning to her daughter.

“How do you get her to, then?” Ella said, curious, and then Marianna dug around in her purse and pulled out a five-dollar bill and waved it in the air for Carla to see. Bribes, Ella thought, tucking the information away.

And it worked because Carla galloped over, grabbing the bill and skidding to a stop.

“Oh, that’s pretty-y-y,” Carla said, her fingers finding the knitting. “Can I try?” She tugged at the needles.

“Don’t pull at it, baby,” Marianna said, grabbing Carla’s hand.

“It’s okay,” Ella said. “No damage done. Maybe next time, I could teach you?” She hated the way it sounded like a question, the way her voice seemed drenched in yearning.

Carla’s face brightened. “Really? When?” she said. “When can you teach me?” She looked at Ella confidently. “I’m a very good learner.”

Marianna stood, gathering her things. “Another time, baby,” she said. “Now it’s time to get you and me home.”

After grabbing Marianna’s hand, Carla turned back to Ella. “What are you going to dress as for Halloween?” she said. “I’m going to be a space alien. I thought about it for a long time and that’s what I’m going to be. A space alien from Saturn because that’s my favorite planet. Because of the rings.”

“I don’t know yet,” Ella said.

“I could help you think up an idea,” Carla said. “I’m very good at ideas.”

“There you go,” Marianna said. “But we can think them up for her later. Time to go. Come on, kitten.”

Ella watched the two of them as they walked away, hand in hand. Another time, Marianna had said. Next time. And Carla had offered to help her think up a costume.

Ella knit another row, the sun warming her face. Next time maybe she would bring another color yarn, show them how she could weave it in. Yellow might look good against the burnt orange. Or maybe the surprise of blue. Maybe she could do a fancy stitch. Basketweave. Or intarsia, crossing colors to craft a spray of roses in the pattern.

A teenaged couple walked by, holding hands. The boy stopped and kissed the girl so passionately it looked as though he would devour her. Embarrassed, Ella concentrated on her knitting, dropping a stitch and picking it up. When she looked up again, they were gone, but she couldn’t stop thinking about them.

Love, she thought. In prison, women turned to other women for partners and lovers and sometimes seemed happy. Some even had prison weddings. Ella had attended one event, bringing ramen packets from the commissary, tied together with yarn—a makeshift bow. There had been singing, and dancing, too.

But Ella couldn’t trust love, no matter how inviting it might seem. You thought it was going to last forever because you had been so changed by it, like a shower of diamonds had fallen over you. She and Jude had been so in love, like two runaway cars without brakes, with engines that had roared too fast. But though she wasn’t—she swore she wasn’t—pining over him, she couldn’t let go of the wondering, the need for some sort of closure. She wondered where he was now, if he still thought about her. Maybe he hated her. What would he think if he knew Ella had found the little girl they had made together? How would he feel if he knew she still thought about him, about the night she lost him?

You’ll get over him, Helen had told her. Young love doesn’t last.

But sometimes it does.