CHAPTER FOUR

As she entered the examining room for her next appointment, Catherine glanced through the slim file. Her patient—a two-week-old baby boy—had been born vaginally without complications, with normal weight and Apgar scores. Why, then, was his head lolling on his neck? And why was he wheezing?

Catherine found the mother’s name on the chart and said, “Hello, Kayla. My name is Catherine Standish. I’m one of the nurse practitioners here. What’s going on with Jamie?”

“He’s sick.” The girl was texting; she didn’t lift her eyes from the phone.

God help me, Catherine thought, barely restraining herself from grabbing the phone out of the girl’s hands and tossing it into the waste bin for needles.

She lay the baby down on the exam table and began undressing him. With infants, one common cause of breathing difficulties was RSV, a respiratory virus. But there was more going on here. Most babies made eye contact during exams or screamed bloody murder, depending on temperament. This one did neither. He was dull-eyed and listless. Floppy.

“Tell me more,” she urged the mother. “How long has Jamie been sick?”

“Two days? Maybe three.”

Catherine glanced at the girl as she took the baby’s temperature. The mother couldn’t be much older than Willow. Or Nola. Why did so many ill-equipped teenagers pop babies out like PEZ dispensers, while women like her, with careers, cars, retirement plans, and—until last week—a husband, couldn’t bear children, even with armies of fertility specialists?

No. She wasn’t going to dwell on that, or on Russell and his baby. Get through the day, Catherine told herself. Then you can fall apart.

Kayla had blue-black hair and a butterfly tattoo on her wrist. Her cargo pants were too tight, the loose skin of her post-pregnancy belly gathered above the waistband, mushroom white beneath the hem of her black T-shirt.

“What are his symptoms?” Catherine asked. “Has Jamie been vomiting? Running a fever? Crying more than usual?”

“All that stuff, yeah.”

“I see.” Catherine glanced at the thermometer. No fever now. She measured the baby’s head and length, then moved Jamie’s frail limbs between her hands to test his reflexes. They were off, but maybe he was dehydrated. “How much did he vomit?”

“A shitload,” the girl said. “He makes himself puke when he cries. I had to shake him to shut him up.” Kayla continued to glare at her phone, texting with rapid, furious jabs of her thumbs.

“You shook him?” Catherine took a deep breath to control her temper. Shaking a baby, especially as young as this one, would pitch the brain back and forth inside the skull, potentially causing brain damage.

The girl rolled her eyes without looking up from her phone. “It’s not like I shook him hard,” she said. “I just needed him to pay attention. I swear to God he’s ADHD. Jamie’s always crying to get me to pick him up. But I don’t want to spoil him, you know?”

“There’s no such thing as spoiling a baby.” Catherine knew her anger was starting to seep through. “Babies only cry when they need something. It’s your job as a parent to figure out what it is. Tell you what. I’m going to sign you up with a nurse who teaches free parenting classes at the hospital, okay? She can help you. I know the first few months of motherhood can be rough. And it’s hard to raise a baby on your own.”

“I’m not alone!” Kayla said. “And my boyfriend’s old enough to know what to do with a baby. He’s already got two.”

Catherine focused on keeping her expression neutral as she palpated the infant’s abdomen. She didn’t like what she saw. The baby’s rib cage was bruised and there was an inch-long, plum-colored bruise on his hip. She held the stethoscope to the infant’s chest, then gently diapered and dressed him.

She picked him up and held him close to her shoulder, cupping his hot head with her palm. His bones felt hollow. As always with cases of neglected and abused kids in her care, there was a tug in her lower belly. She longed to walk right out the door with this baby and take him home.

“How old are you, honey?” she asked.

“Sixteen. Everybody says I look older, though.” Kayla slid her phone into the back pocket of her pants. A second later, the phone buzzed and she whipped it out again. “Crap,” she said, staring at the screen. “Is this going to take much longer? I really gotta be someplace.”

“Just a few more minutes. Wait here. I’ll be right back.” Catherine carried the baby out to the main office, where she asked Alicia to call an ambulance. Then she called the Department of Children and Families to file a report.

A hectic hour later, everything was sorted. She’d filed the 51A form, and the emergency team from DCF had arrived at the office to accompany Kayla and her child to the hospital in the ambulance. Afterward, Catherine locked herself in her office, allowing herself to cry as she wrote up her notes and waited for the call from the social worker.

Finally it came. “The pediatric neurologist agrees with you,” the social worker reported. “Definitely shaken baby syndrome. Kayla will be charged with abuse.”

Catherine closed her eyes. “Is that really necessary? Kayla’s just a kid herself. She needs help, not a criminal record. And what if the father did it?”

“We know that’s a possibility, of course,” the social worker said. “This wasn’t my choice, either. I promise we’ll do a solid investigation.”

Alicia knocked on her door a few minutes later, telling Catherine her next appointment had canceled. When she saw Catherine’s expression, she said, “Go home. We can handle your appointments.”

“No, you can’t,” Catherine said. “We’re already overbooked. And I’m better off working here instead of going home and stewing about that poor baby. I’ll go out to eat my sandwich and get some air, but I’ll be back in an hour.”

Catherine took a brisk walk down to the Charles River, where she escaped most days to eat lunch in solitude. The river was nearly empty of boats now that it was September. She choked down half of her food without tasting it, then called Bethany.

She and Bethany had been friends since nursing school; they’d been bridesmaids for each other the same year and had planned their pregnancies for the next, imagining their children growing up as close as cousins. They’d succeeded in getting pregnant the same month and had happily swapped tales of morning sickness and thickening waists. Catherine, however, lost her baby at four months, and lost every baby after that, though one pregnancy had lasted six months. Four miscarriages in all.

Bethany had her baby, and, two years later, twin boys. Her oldest, a daughter, was in high school now. Catherine hadn’t thought she could be around Bethany and her family. Had been afraid she’d resent Bethany for her easy fecundity and jolly disorganization as a mother. Instead, the opposite had happened: Bethany’s children had become part of Catherine’s family as well.

She adored Bethany’s kids, who were all as noisy and plump as her friend. They often spent weekends and vacations together. Willow had benefited from this as well: Bethany always knew what to do in a crisis, whether that involved finding a gluten-free, nut-free recipe for a school bake sale or where to go for the perfect trendy sneakers at the start of school.

They always shared schedules on a Google calendar, so Catherine knew Bethany would be home now. “Hey,” Bethany said. “Thank God you called. I was just waging a war on dirt, and dirt was kicking my butt. What’s up?”

Catherine spilled it all: Russell and Nola, the shaken baby, and how she’d nearly fallen apart today at work. Bethany made all of the right sympathetic noises, including, several times, “that rat bastard” when Russell’s name was mentioned, then said, “We definitely need a pub date! Friday okay?”

“Friday’s perfect,” Catherine said, and smiled for the first time all day.

Still, she went through her afternoon appointments like an automaton, depressing tongues and listening to heartbeats, issuing prescriptions and counseling worried parents about fevers and teething, eyesight and speech, vaccinations and autism. She probably shouldn’t be here at all. Willow was at home alone. Catherine hadn’t had the heart to enroll her at the public school right away. She’d hated to go to work and leave her; she’d done so only after extracting a promise from Willow that she’d stay in the house and text her every two hours, which Willow had done. This was just the beginning of her life as a single parent, and Catherine was already worn-out.

She furiously wrote out an antibiotic prescription for a mother whose toddler had an ear infection. “Your daughter may need tubes, since this is her third infection in the past six months,” she said, trying to smile at the child—a little girl all in pink, right down to sparkling ballet shoes—and feeling the edges of her face crack.

“Tubes?” the mother said in alarm. “What do you mean?”

“It’s no big deal. A minor surgical procedure to prevent recurring ear infections and possible subsequent deafness.”

“My God.” The mother had paled.

“We’ll talk about that next time,” Catherine said, thinking, You think that’s bad? Ha! Let me tell you about my husband. Please. To the little girl, she said, “Okay, my nurse, Julia, is going to give you a shot.”

“But I don’t want a shot!” the little girl screamed.

“Too bad,” Catherine said. “Everybody gets shots here.”

She ignored Julia’s horrified glance and racewalked out of the room. Anger, she was discovering, was a useful emotion. It let you do and say all of the things you would normally filter out.

In the next exam room were a father and son. The boy was four years old, according to his chart, but he looked younger. He was sitting on the table and working so hard to breathe that he was sucking his abdomen in beneath his rib cage. His hair was a startling orange and his hazel eyes were enormous and frightened.

Catherine introduced herself and asked their names to double-check them with the chart, as she always did. “This is my son, Brady,” the father said, after introducing himself as Seth Cunningham.

She talked to Brady about the animal posters hanging on the wall as she examined him. His heartbeat was abnormally fast. A clatter of racehorse hooves in her ear. He was really struggling to take in oxygen.

“Does Brady have a history of asthma?” she asked.

The father, Seth, shook his head. “I don’t know.”

She gave him a look before moving the stethoscope to Brady’s skinny back. Seth’s hair was a rich chestnut color that had probably started out as red as his son’s; despite his height, Seth had the biceps and barrel chest of a man who worked in construction or some other trade that required lifting heavy objects. She wondered what he did for a living. Maybe he was a highway worker or a mechanic?

No, the hands and nails were too neat. Probably Seth was unemployed—that would explain why he was here with his son in the middle of the day—and spent his free time working out.

“Has Brady been sick long?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“He isn’t running a fever. Was he before?”

“I don’t know. I just picked him up this morning.”

“Does he have a history of allergies? Or has he suddenly come into contact with some new substance or a pet? This looks like an asthma attack provoked by an allergic reaction.”

Seth raised his hands. “No idea. You tell me.”

Anger blurred her vision for a moment. Some fathers shouldn’t answer to any name but “Loser.” How could this man not even know if his own kid had allergies? Brady was four years old!

Divorced dad and absentee father, probably. The sort who got his kid once a week and thought he was doing his fair share.

She warmed the stethoscope and listened to Brady’s chest. Kids suffering from pneumonia typically had rales, which sounded like a crackling noise and indicated sputum in the airways. Those experiencing asthma attacks had dry coughs and wheezed when they exhaled, like Brady.

She’d better act fast. Brady was starting to panic, the anxiety amplifying his symptoms. His lips were starting to take on a blue tint.

Catherine asked Julia to bring an inhaler. “This is what I call my special rescue medicine,” she told Brady. She demonstrated how he should put it in his mouth and watched while he took a puff. To the father, she explained that she was using a pressurized, metered-dose inhaler.

“What’s in it?” Seth asked.

“Albuterol, a corticosteroid that acts as a bronchodilator,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to rely on it for long-term or regular treatments, but it’s a good emergency measure when he suffers a flare-up like this. We’ll have to run tests, of course, but I’d say Brady has chronic asthma and this is a flare-up.” She smiled at Brady, pleased to see color seep back into his cheeks. “You sit there for a few minutes with Nurse Julia and rest, okay? Your dad and I are going to my office to set up your next appointment.”

Catherine led Seth across the hall and seated herself behind the desk. “Why don’t you know anything about your son’s medical history?” she demanded. “He could have died! You should have brought him to the ER, not waited for an appointment here. What’s wrong with you?”

Seth had remained standing. Now he narrowed his eyes at her. “What the hell’s wrong with you, scolding me like a kid in the principal’s office? Not very professional, sweetheart. Did you get up on the wrong side of the bed or something?”

“Did you actually call me sweetheart?” Catherine folded her arms, trying to contain the rage building beneath her diaphragm. “You’d never do that if I were an MD instead of a nurse practitioner.”

“I thought you were a doctor!” Seth sank into the chair across the desk from her and rubbed his face. “Look, I apologize. We got off on the wrong foot. I came here because I live close by and I needed to know how to help my son.”

“Know his medical history, for starters!” Catherine shouted. “Is that really so difficult?”

Seth glared back at her. “You don’t know one thing about me or my situation! Look, thanks for seeing us. I appreciate what you did for Brady. Now, just give me what we need and we’ll be on our way.”

“He needs an asthma specialist.”

“You’re right, Ms. Standish.” Seth made a big show of reading her name tag. “I’m sure Brady needs more than just a nurse practitioner.”

“Yeah, like a father who’s more than half-awake,” Catherine said under her breath. She wrote a prescription and handed him a business card with the name and number of a pediatric respiratory specialist. “Go see this guy. He’ll help you put Brady on regular medications, as well as providing a prescription for emergencies like these.”

“Thank you.” Seth stood up. “I would tell your supervisor exactly how helpful and compassionate you’ve been, but I don’t have the energy to deal with that right now. I’ll hope your mood improves and you won’t terrorize any more parents.”

After he’d gone, Catherine dropped her head into her hands. Three more hours until she could go home.

A sharp rap on the door brought her head snapping upward. “Yes?”

“It’s me. Julia.”

“I’ll be out in a minute.”

“I’m sorry, but we need to see you right now.”

We? “All right. Whatever.”

The door opened and Julia entered the office. She stood with her back straight and her chest out, like an opera singer. “Your next patient is here, but I’ve given her to Dr. Wentworth,” she said. She spoke slowly, forming every syllable, as if Catherine were deaf and lip-reading.

“Why?” Catherine said. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. You’ve made two patients cry, and the doctors and I all heard you shouting at that last patient’s dad. Everyone heard you, actually,” she added, glancing over her shoulder in the direction of the crowded waiting room. “We think you need to go home.”

“I can’t do that,” Catherine said. At home, everything reminded her of Russell.

Last night, she’d crammed his clothing into trash bags and taken apart his bike so he could carry it on the subway. She was damned if she’d give him their car. She’d put the bulging trash bags, along with the bike, outside the bulkhead to the basement. It was going to rain today and she was glad, imagining the soggy cartons disintegrating in Russell’s hands. She’d even poured his beloved Chinese tea into the compost. Then she’d had a sudden fit of fury and dumped the compost into the kitchen disposal. Grinding it up was another rare moment of satisfaction.

“Well, you can’t stay in the office,” Julia was explaining patiently. “You’re not doing anybody any good here.”

Now Dr. Patel, the pediatric director, crowded into the room behind Julia, frowning behind her square black eyeglasses. “No, indeed not,” she said kindly. “You are scaring the patients, Catherine. We have had several complaints. You must take the rest of today off and possibly the week as well, while you hopefully resolve whatever matter is obviously troubling you. I believe we owe you vacation time.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, and burst into tears.

Awkwardly, Dr. Patel leaned her round body across the desk and patted Catherine’s shoulder, enveloping her in a cloud of cinnamon and coffee. “I am sure things will look better to you in the morning.”

“I seriously doubt that,” Catherine said.

She gathered her things and left the office, ignoring the stares of everyone in the waiting room even when the metal water bottle dropped out of her backpack and clanged onto the tiled floor. Catherine froze as the water bottle rolled across the room, everyone’s eyes on it as if the bottle were a grenade, then picked it up and fled the building.

It was raining hard by the time she emerged from the T station closest to home. She’d forgotten her umbrella and kept her head down as she hurried along Mass Ave to the subway stop. The rain stung like tiny bees against her face and arms, her skin too chilled from the office air-conditioning. Several of the physicians and nurses seemed to require air-conditioning year-round now for their menopause-induced hot flashes. Last month one of them had bought battery-operated “crone fans” to put on all of their desks. Everyone had laughed about it. Oh, the hilarity of women past their prime! Sisters applauding their own invisibility and inevitable decline!

Sisters like her, almost. She was nearly forty. About to enter a new stage of life.

Catherine stopped to catch her breath, leaning against a building as she thought about how Russell was about to enter a new stage as well. But his would be crammed with the adventure and excitement of new beginnings, of parenthood. Everyone would perceive Russell as vibrant and lucky, with his young wife and baby. She would be a crone, while Russell would be like one of those aging male movie stars who always gets paired with dewy, twenty-year-old starlets.

There was a sharp tapping on the window next to her. Catherine flinched and raised her head, blinking against the rain. Water streamed down the collar of her blouse, and her hair was a misery of wet strands clinging to her head.

She wiped her eyes. To her horror, the person on the other side of the glass was the father she’d shouted at in her office: Seth. She blinked harder and saw that she’d been leaning against the window of a small corner store. Now she noticed people emerging from its red door with sacks of groceries. Seth was similarly burdened by bags. His son, Brady, was nowhere in sight.

Probably left him alone in the car, Catherine thought furiously. Like a dog.

Now Seth was outside and standing next to her, so quickly that it seemed like he must have walked straight through the glass. He awkwardly held a red-and-white-striped umbrella over both of them, his bags of groceries—cloth bags, she noted, so Cambridge, so PC, so fucking environmentally correct that she wanted to puke—slung over one arm.

“Are you all right?” he asked, shouting a little to make himself heard over the steady rain and whoosh of passing traffic.

“I’m fine,” she snapped back. “What about Brady? Where is he?” She made a point of looking around.

“I left him with my neighbor so I could get his prescription filled and grab a few groceries. I thought maybe ginger ale and ice cream would appeal to him.”

“Oh.” Catherine felt the anger drain out of her like the water rushing down the gutter in the street.

“He’s breathing much better now,” Seth volunteered. “And I made an appointment for tomorrow with the asthma specialist.”

Want a medal? Catherine nearly asked, but she bit her bottom lip to trap the words inside. She was too exhausted to be combative. Besides, she ought to save her strength for later.

For Russell.

She felt her face do odd things, as if the rain had softened her skin and bones. She imagined her entire body folding in on itself like cardboard. “Good you made that appointment,” she said. “See you.”

She walked away. Her arms and legs still weren’t working properly, as if she were a puppet with tangled strings, but she forced herself to put one foot in front of the other.

“Are you really okay?” Seth called from behind her.

“I’m fine!” she shouted, but her willpower wasn’t enough to drive her body forward. She lurched to a stop, causing a woman passing to stare at her in alarm.

Catherine didn’t want to imagine what she must look like. She closed her eyes the way she remembered Willow doing when she was small and playing hide-and-seek, as if shutting her eyes and blocking out the world could render her invisible.

“Right. You are definitely not fine.” Seth had come up behind her. “You’d better come with me.”

“My house isn’t far,” Catherine protested.

“Wherever your house is, it’s too far. Mine is closer.” Somehow, despite the umbrella and the groceries, Seth managed to take her arm. He began steering her forward.

They’d walked only half a block when Seth turned into the front entrance of a brick building, nodding at a uniformed doorman as they entered a foyer with a marbled floor. Glass doors opened into a pale blue hallway, where it took all of Catherine’s strength to remain standing while they waited for the elevator. When it came, she leaned her forehead against one wall of it the minute the doors slid shut.

“Are you sick?” Seth was sounding more and more alarmed. “Should I call your office?”

“No. Not sick.” Her voice echoed in the hollow space and she felt her stomach lurch as the elevator began its ascent.

When the elevator doors opened again, Catherine didn’t even bother to look at what floor they were on. If Seth were a serial killer, fine. This was as good a day to die as any other. Meek and dripping, she followed him down another blue hallway to a black door with a silver knocker shaped like a lion’s head. He unlocked the door and stood back for her to enter first.

They were higher than she’d thought: an entire vista of Cambridge spread before them. The tall windows were streaked with rain. She sat down on a sofa covered in gold fabric and let her head fall back against it, then worried her wet hair might leave a mark and sat up straight again.

Seth read her thoughts. “It’s fine. You can’t hurt that thing. It’s a beast. Sit back. I’ll go get Brady from across the hall.”

She felt more rainwater snake down her neck and shoulders as she studied the apartment. It was obviously expensive—condo? rental?—and well kept. The parquet wooden floors gleamed between scattered bright Orientals and the artwork was mostly landscapes in greens and blues. Around a corner, she could see into the kitchen, painted a soft plum, copper pans hanging from a ceiling rack. No sign of a child living here.

Now she remembered what Seth had told her in the office: he had just picked up Brady. From where? From whom? An ex-wife, presumably.

Oh, who cared? There were so many miserable marriages in the world. What was one more?

She sternly commanded her muscles to lift her body off the sofa. They disobeyed her and remained limp. How was she going to get home? She needed to shut herself in her bedroom, maybe have a drink or three, figure out what to say to Russell. Decide how they would handle Willow.

What was that awful word? How they would coparent?

Whatever happened, she was determined to keep things on an even keel for Willow. She closed her eyes.

The door opened. Footsteps approached. “Is she awake?” Brady whispered. It was the kind of whisper some children used that made them sound like they were trumpeting through a megaphone.

“I don’t know,” Seth whispered back. “Should we make her a snack just in case?”

“Milk and cookies!” Brady said.

He sounded so gleeful that Catherine felt her mouth twitch, despite her mood. She kept her eyes closed. The boy would want to surprise her. At least somebody should be happy today.

She opened her eyes when she heard a tray being set on the coffee table in front of her. On it were chocolate chip cookies, a glass of milk for Brady, and a pot of tea with two mugs. She made the appropriate noises and found that pretending to be happy actually helped a little.

Brady served her cookies on a red plastic plate while Seth poured the tea. They talked about Brady’s breathing, which he described as “sort of weird, like I was whistling, only I can’t do that yet!”

After their snack, Brady went off to watch television in another room while she and Seth had second cups of tea.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I was rude in the office. Then I had the nerve to land on your doorstep.”

He gave her a quizzical look. “It’s fine. You were upset.”

“I would have made it home. But thank you.” She had eaten half a cookie to please Brady, but Catherine felt it sticking in her throat now, the crumbs like shards in her throat. She took another sip of tea.

“Want to talk about it?”

She supposed she owed him some kind of explanation. “My husband has left me for someone else. I just found out.”

He nodded. “Been there. Done that. It’s rough.” He jerked his head in the direction of the TV noise, the frenetic music of a cartoon. “Didn’t have any access to my child until this morning. Brady’s mother broke our shared custody agreement and took him to Amsterdam when he was six months old. She’s Dutch. I was fighting to make her bring him home, but got snarled in red tape forever. Then, this morning, she suddenly showed up, said Brady was sick and she was done. The only time he’s not clinging to my leg is when he’s watching TV, poor guy.”

Catherine frowned. “Your ex said she was done with what? With Brady?”

“Apparently. For now, anyway.” Seth sighed. “I lost everything, fighting that custody battle: my savings, my house, my job. Pretty ironic.”

“Why?”

He made a face. “I’m a divorce lawyer, but I’ve only seen Brady three times since he was born. That’s why I didn’t know he had asthma. Now Vivian says it’s my turn to raise him.”

“And how do you feel about that?” Catherine twisted her hair, still damp, into a knot at the base of her neck.

He looked startled. “I’m delighted. How should I feel? He’s my son.”

“Oh.” She picked up her teacup, steadied her shaking hand against her chest. “That’s good, then.”

“You have children?”

“A daughter. She’s fifteen.”

“This news is hard on her, I expect.”

“I imagine so. It’s tough to tell right now. She acts like everything’s fine.”

“I’m sure it’s not.”

“Gee. Thanks.”

He held up his hands. “I apologize! It’s just that, in my work, I see lots of kids who seem to cope fine until, one day, they don’t. Keep an eye on her is my advice. What about you? Will you be all right tonight? Do you have someone who can stay with you for a bit?”

“No. But I’ll be fine.”

“It might help, not to be alone,” he said. “You’re never more alone than when someone has rejected you.”

“That’s a funny way of putting it, but you’re right. That’s just how it feels: like I’ve been rejected for not being good enough. Did Brady’s mother leave you for someone else?”

Seth ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back off his forehead. She had assumed, when she’d first seen him in the office, that he was a young father, but now she could see from the deep lines across his forehead that he must be as old as she was, at least. “Brady’s mother left me for many reasons,” he said. “Most are too boring to talk about. Can I get you something more substantial to eat? A sandwich, maybe?”

She shook her head. “I should be going. I’ll be all right now.”

Seth studied her for a minute, then said, “It could help, you know, to talk to somebody impartial. Someone who’s been through this.”

“I doubt very much that most people have been through this particular thing,” Catherine said, and stood up. “But thanks.” She reached out to shake his hand as they reached the front door together.

“Say good-bye to Brady for me.”

Seth held her hand and gave her such a searching look that she imagined he could see into the darkest, most terrified corners of her mind. “Call someone to stay with you tonight,” he said. “Promise me.”

“I promise,” she lied, just so he would let her go.

•   •   •

On Thursday morning, Willow was surprised to see the blind beggar in the rainbow hat sitting beneath a tree on Cambridge Common. You hardly ever saw homeless people here. Plus, how would a blind beggar get from Boston to Cambridge?

Maybe she’d taken the subway. Or been picked up and brought to a shelter. That was probably it: Cambridge had, like, five homeless shelters.

Or maybe the woman had come to Cambridge because the Boston cops trotted around on their horses like sheriffs and yelled at people, even at the skaters trying to land ollies on their boards. Like yelling at skaters would help make the world a better place. If every guy had a skateboard, the world would have a lot less war. They should just give out skateboards to terrorists in Afghanistan or wherever.

Willow had been hanging out on Cambridge Common all week, even though Catherine had told her to stay in the house. “Spend this week thinking about where you might want to go to school,” Catherine had suggested.

As if she had a choice.

Willow had overheard Catherine talking to her friend Bethany about money, worrying that maybe they’d have to sell the house, or at least the car, if Russell didn’t get another job.

She knew, too, that Nana had tried to give Catherine money, but Catherine had refused it. “I’m not Zoe,” she had said, whispering so she thought Willow wouldn’t hear her.

On the Common, Willow usually sat on a bench near the playground because she’d be invisible here, blending in with the foreign nannies. Most didn’t look much older than she was and a lot of them were just as blond.

Catherine had told Willow to stay away from social media, too. She’d taken away Willow’s computer “for your own good,” forgetting that Willow knew the password for the home computer and could Google stuff on her phone. Russell being fired “for inappropriate conduct with a student” didn’t make any of the big news sites, but the story was all over social media. Willow wanted to puke every time she Googled and got another hit. She kept looking for stuff anyway.

The tweets and Facebook posts had slowed down, but every now and then someone made another comment. Half the people posting called Russell a perv who should be locked up and castrated. The other half—kids at her school, mostly—said Nola was a nympho slut who couldn’t keep her knees together even around the teachers. Old bald dude beats out entire Beacon Hill Div. I football team to win Nola trophy, Trent had tweeted.

Willow kept an eye on the homeless woman, who was strumming her beat-up guitar. The tin can was at her feet, but what was the point? Nobody but students used Cambridge Common during the day, and Harvard students were so rich that they acted poor all the time, wearing ratty polo shirts and crap sweatpants. That woman should come here later, when the professors and businesspeople were walking home from work.

Maybe she was going to stay all day. What else did a homeless person have to do? In a way, that wasn’t much different from what Willow was doing now: waiting for nothing.

She shifted her weight on the bench, alternating her attention between the homeless woman and a nanny trying to calm down a little kid who was howling. His cheeks were red and his hair stood up in a mini black Mohawk. The nanny finally picked up the kid and carried him back to his stroller, the little boy’s feet thumping against her skinny legs.

Just then, the homeless woman bent over and took something furry out of the bag by her feet. An animal? She set it down on the ground, but it didn’t move. Was it even alive?

Willow squinted at it. After a minute she decided it was a dog. It was brown and had a squashed face like one of those stupid Ewoks in the old Star Wars movie that Russell made her watch with him, saying, “This is a classic.”

“A classic geek movie,” Willow had teased, feeling good that Russell wanted to share a movie with her. She’d even made popcorn.

Stupid asshole cheater.

It was a dog, definitely, running back and forth next to the bench like some dumb windup toy.

Willow had always been scared of dogs, after a bad experience with a pit bull in one apartment she’d shared with her mom, but this one was so small, she wanted to touch it.

She stood up and gathered her things. The nanny in the platform shoes had given the little boy a bottle and he was quiet now, his eyes almost closed as the nanny rocked his carriage with one foot and texted, her dark frizzy hair like a cloud over her round brown face. She glanced up and smiled as Willow walked by, her eyes a surprising turquoise.

Willow wanted to photograph her, but she was afraid to ask. The woman might be illegal, like a lot of the nannies who worked for the parents of kids she knew at school. She didn’t want to get anybody into trouble.

The homeless woman was still playing with the dog, making it dance around on its little hind legs. How did she feed it? Did she sleep on the street with it, or take it to her shelter?

Willow kept edging closer, thinking she could sneak up on them, but the dog sensed her presence and whirled around, wagging its stub of a tail and barking. Shit, shit, shit.

“Hello?” Willow said, trying to put a smile in her voice so she wouldn’t scare the woman.

She raised her head in Willow’s direction, sort of, then turned her head to the side, as if she were listening closely with one ear.

Probably not deaf, Willow thought. More likely just traumatized or nuts. What had happened, that this woman had ended up blind and playing guitar for money? Was she really homeless? She didn’t actually look that dirty.

Willow dropped down on the grass next to the puppy and started playing with it. “Cool dog. Is it yours?”

The woman continued strumming the guitar without answering. So either she was deaf or just didn’t like talking. That was cool. Willow didn’t need anyone else talking to her, telling her shit she didn’t want to hear.

“Is it okay if I take a picture of your dog?” Willow asked, glancing up.

To her surprise, the woman nodded. Okay. So she could hear. Unless she was just randomly moving her head.

Willow took out her camera. The dog’s head was oversized for its body and it had funny ears that stood up in little triangles. Its muzzle was smashed nearly flat, as if it had been pressed against a wall. Overall, this puppy looked like it had been put together out of spare parts. Willow smiled every time she looked at it.

The woman moved to the far side of the bench and pulled her shawl up to hide half her face. “It’s okay,” Willow reassured her. “I’m not taking your picture. Just the dog. Your dog made me smile. That’s, like, the first time I’ve smiled in a week. Since my parents decided to get divorced.”

The woman turned her head sharply in Willow’s direction. Willow pretended not to notice, but she was dying to photograph the woman’s clothes up close, to get those contrasts in texture between her rainbow tam and shawl, between awesomely bright fabrics and that black hair in shiny knotted ribbons. The hair was so black, it looked fake.

She kept talking. The guy who took their school pictures did that to relax you. “Yeah, now I’ll be like most kids, I guess, shuttling between two houses. I mean, if my dad even gets a house, now that he’s having a baby with this girl from my school.”

Willow glanced up when she heard a sharp intake of breath. What the hell? The woman was clutching the guitar like it was a joystick and the world was a video game. Was she having a seizure?

No cops around. Never when you needed them. But the nannies in the playground probably knew first aid, right? Willow bet you had to do all kinds of training to get a crap job like changing the diapers on somebody else’s kid.

“You okay?” she asked, sitting down beside the woman.

The woman had the shawl pulled up over her nose and turned away, but nodded.

“So you really can hear me!”

The woman nodded again.

“Okay, that’s good. I was starting to think maybe you were deaf.” Willow settled back against the bench, pleased. Maybe if they got to know each other the woman would let her do a portrait. Or she could do a documentary series of pictures following a homeless person around Boston! Mrs. Lagrasso would love that!

Then she remembered: no more art classes with Mrs. Lagrasso. Her eyes burned. She didn’t want to start her whole life over. Not again.

Willow felt the puppy scrambling up her leg. “Do you mind if I hold your dog?”

When the woman shrugged, Willow bent down and scooped the puppy into her arms. Its belly was round and hard and warm. His ears were going crazy, twitching back and forth as he stood on his back legs and tried to lick her face. Willow laughed and said no, like, ten times before the dog curled into a ball on her lap and settled down.

The woman was silent, staring straight ahead now. Willow followed her gaze. They were sitting directly in line with the bench where Willow had been hanging out every afternoon by the playground. She wondered if the homeless woman had been here in the park all along and she just hadn’t noticed her.

Willow felt comforted by the dog on her lap. The wagging had stopped, and the dog felt heavy as a brick. Sound asleep, even snoring a little through that mashed nose. So cute.

“I probably won’t have any friends for, like, two years after all the shit that’s happened,” she said. “I know these are first-world problems, but my life pretty much sucks right now.”

The woman stood up suddenly and gathered her things. Shit, Willow thought. She’d offended her. Here she was, whining about friends, when this woman probably didn’t even know where she was going to sleep.

Willow noticed the woman’s boots as she bent to put her guitar in the case and snapped it shut. The boots were better than they should have been, like the kind they sold in that shoe store in Harvard Square with the weird displays. Maybe she’d stolen them. Or it could be that the shelter gave them to her. Anyway, the woman was walking away in those boots, using her cane to guide her, the guitar in her other hand, the big cloth bag slung over one shoulder.

“Hey!” Willow hurried after her, carrying the puppy. “You forgot your dog!”

The woman held up a hand, waving Willow away. She kept walking, shoulders hunched beneath the red shawl, and mumbled something.

“What did you say?” Willow kept pace.

“Friend,” the woman said, her voice a surprise, a low growl, as if it took everything she had to say it.

Did she have sore vocal cords? A tracheotomy, like in that horrible TV ad with the ex-smoker talking through a tube in his throat?

Finally, Willow’s mind pieced together what she meant: the woman wanted Willow to keep the dog. She felt sorry for Willow and thought she needed a friend.

Crap. Life was really in the toilet if a homeless blind woman felt sorry for you.

“No, no,” Willow said. “This is your dog. You need to take it with you. I don’t think my mom even likes dogs.”

The woman kept walking. She was surprisingly fast for an old blind person with a cane. They’d nearly reached Mass Ave, and the traffic noise made conversation impossible, even if the woman had been willing to talk.

“Really,” Willow called, despairing now as the woman continued her head-down journey. “I can’t take this dog.”

“Friend,” the woman said again. Then she pulled the shawl up higher, wrapping it completely around her face except for the glasses, and dashed straight into the oncoming traffic.

Willow screamed and closed her eyes as a car horn blared. When she opened them again, the woman was gone, leaving Willow with the puppy in her arms.