Well, I'll be damned
There goes your ghost again
But it’s not unexpected
You don’t know you’re not wanted

So I’m back where I started
And here I sit, dreaming of tears I cried
Over some girl that died
Half a lifetime ago
Will I always be haunted?

I try telling myself
Your eyes used to sparkle
But that’s not the memory I have
I remember your photo
The colour of sand

Five decades ago
I bought you some grape juice
You left me nothing
I know these memories aren’t things
They’re just ashes and dust

Well, I have a new girl
I need to look after
She doesn’t quite have your name
It’s close but it isn’t the same
And she isn’t a girl
Like that matters

Now she wants to know of you
I don’t even know if I loved you
This vagueness isn’t enough
To keep me unhurt

Now I see you lying
On our narrow couch with a quilt
And sweat in your hair
Now you're smiling at that dumb lion
Who only knew one trick, but you didn’t care

And the smell of hot copper
And menthol hangs in the air
If I could have willed it
We both would have died then and there

Now she’s telling me
It won’t happen again
But it never stopped happening
I’ve always been so good with grief
And at talking things through
This just isn’t worth talking about

Annie, I know she’s not you
But I’ll let her down too
And if all we have is ashes and dust
I’ll keep your ashes

Hyacinth banged open her own back door without knocking or checking to see if she was going to hit anybody. That was usual.

Calliope followed after her, carrying Lucy. That was a little less usual, but Mordecai had been involved in the discussion about whether the Obvious Bondage Spider ought to go to the free clinic, and rational minds had prevailed for once.

He was opening his mouth to ask how it had gone, when Milo came in with a furious expression, a sucker in his mouth, and about a dozen more crammed in his shirt pocket behind the suspender.

So Mordecai changed course in mid-statement: “How did — What happened?”

He had already constructed a plausible scenario — Someone insulted Calliope at the bus stop, and they bribed Milo with sugar to prevent him from killing this person — when Calliope replied, “Lucy cried when they stuck her with the needle and Milo nailed the doctor to the wall with the skinny scissors…”

“Hinged forceps,” Hyacinth said.

Calliope nodded. “Right in the middle of ‘Fun Facts About Colon Health’ number four, ‘Fibre is a Friend!’…”

“A poster. This is a poster she’s talking about.”

“So we had to leave real fast and on the way out he stole all their candy.”

Milo pulled a handful of mints out of his pants pocket and dropped them on the counter with the suckers.

Hyacinth stuffed her purse in the usual drawer and closed it. “I think he just stabbed the coat, but we didn’t hang around to find out.” She sighed. “We don’t necessarily have to go back there, I can probably get hold of a vaccine somewhere. It’s just…”

Mordecai ripped the sucker out of Milo’s mouth and shoved him back against the counter. “We do not reward this behaviour with sugar!” he snarled in the man’s face.

“You try getting sugar away from Milo,” Hyacinth said.

Mordecai turned and glared at her, still holding the sugar he had removed from Milo.

She shrugged, “You surprised him.”

He wheeled back around and scolded Milo with his own sucker, “You are going to get changed and we are going to have a conversation, because I can’t talk to you about this. I know I literally can’t talk to you, but I am too pissed off to even try! I want to speak to your other half, and I want to know if it was too dumb to even try to stop you, or if you were too dumb to listen to it. Do you have that?”

Milo nodded weakly.

“Ann is not an ‘it,’” Calliope said.

“Ann’s occupation is an ‘it,’ and she’s slacking off,” Mordecai muttered. “Calliope, take Lucy and play in your room or go to the park or something. And take Hyacinth with you. I don’t want you on this. This…” He felt around for a moment and came up with the one thing that would probably get them to go, “This is dad stuff.”

Milo paused on his way out and lifted his head, briefly hopeful, and then disappointed. Aw, man. What the hell. I thought “dad stuff” was gonna be fun.

Mordecai threw the sucker in the trash and began to put together an angry pot of coffee.

◈◈◈

Ann started talking before she even had both feet in the kitchen, “I’m sorry, Em. I did try, but he doesn’t always listen. He knew it was going to hurt, I am positive he understood that. I wouldn’t have let him go in the first place if he didn’t understand that. It was only when that idiot in the white coat tried to lie to a baby that didn’t even understand him, and he got her to smile, and then he hurt her anyway that he lost it. Milo lost it.

“Anyway, Hyacinth can probably give Lucy the rest of her shots and that will be much less stressful for her. For Lucy.” She laughed. “Probably for Hyacinth too. I don’t think she’s overly fond of the free clinic. She thinks the doctors are all pill-heads and they’re only in it to steal medication from the poor. Or that may just be her opinion of doctors in general, I wasn’t listening very closely.

“Em, I wish you’d say something. Are you all right?”

“Ann, sit down,” Mordecai said. He put coffee and a milk bottle in front of her. The sugar bowl was already on the table with a spoon in it.

Ann did not begin to doctor the coffee to her specifications. She waited with her hands folded on the table in front of her.

“You and Milo put Lucy’s life in danger today and I do not care how stupid the doctor was,” Mordecai said. “Do you have that, both of you?”

“Em, I don’t think…”

“No, obviously you don’t.” He sat down. “Let me talk.”

He stirred his coffee and didn’t say anything for an uncomfortably long time, which Ann began to suspect was on purpose. He was trying to sweat them like the Mother Superior.

He was only trying to find the words. “I’ve… I’ve been around you, both of you, on more than one occasion when I’ve been unable to control or even remember the words coming out of my mouth. I don’t know what you know and I don’t know where to start. Do you, either of you, have any idea I had a little sister?”

Ann shook her head.

Mordecai laughed weakly. “Oh. Great. I feel like a character in a soap opera, and the lazy writers suddenly decided to give me a backstory. Yes, let me talk about my little sister who matters so much to me I never talk about her. I’ve always had one, ignore the continuity. Did you know I have older brothers and parents and all that too?” He shook his head. “Seriously, did you ever get the impression I came from somewhere or is it more like I materialized in that snowbank just before Hyacinth found me?”

Ann seesawed a hand. “Maybe sometime during the siege… Or, no. You were in a band at some point, weren’t you? And a revolution?” She leaned forward and lowered her voice, “You’re not in any of the library books about the revolution, do you know that?”

“I’m not making it up,” he said. “You ought to check the newspapers, if any of them made it through the siege. Everyone was calling me ‘Dad’ back then, though. We didn’t want to give the newspeople our real names.” He shook his head again. “I don’t want to talk about that now. I want to talk about Shoshanna. Except I don’t, really.”

He fell silent again.

“Em…”

“My little sister is dead because she wasn’t vaccinated for diphtheria, but that doesn’t mean very much if I don’t talk about it, does it?”

“Oh, Em.”

He waved her away. “Diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus.” He counted them off on his fingers and then held up his hand. “Three birds with one stone. Was Lucy getting that one? I can’t remember the schedule.”

“No, her next DPT isn’t for another three months. It’s that new one. Measles and mumps.”

“Measles?” Mordecai said. “Damn it, I need to take Erik back in. They keep adding new ones. When I read about DPT in the paper… I thought there would be a line around the block, but it was like nobody even cared. ‘Oh, tetanus too? But nobody dies from that anymore. No big deal.’ I thought maybe it was the siege, the war. Nobody cares about anything anymore, they’re just tired. The establishment has a habit of burning all its bridges, so it might be that too.” 

He sat back with a sigh. “Coloured people have a real problem with the establishment. Don’t listen to the General, I am not racist. Not more than average. It’s cultural. This is my culture. Even if I didn’t think these things myself, I’d still grow up hearing them from someone who looks like me. Probably more than one person. I do think them a little, but I pick and choose. Maybe I have such a problem with the establishment, I’ve decided it includes all the people I’ve heard telling me not to trust the establishment and I don’t trust them either.

“Anyway, the establishment — or as I like to call this particular branch of the establishment, ‘Smart People Who Have Done a Lot of Hard Work and Who Actually Do Know Better Sometimes’ — said, ‘Hey, we’ve figured out how to stop people from getting diphtheria,’ and my parents said, ‘We don’t believe you.’

“This was just about five years after it came out. Maybe they were dragging their feet waiting to see if anyone had a fatal reaction or grew a tail. Maybe they were suspicious of having to pay for it. We didn’t have free clinics back then, the government was handing out these vouchers to knock down the price and they wanted your information. That was what my mother said it was, my father didn’t want to give them the information, but she felt so guilty she would’ve said anything.

“A whole lot of other people must’ve been dragging their feet for whatever reason too, because the whole building got sick at once. There weren’t enough of us immunized to do that herd thing, it knocked us over like dominoes.

“I got sick, and my parents sent my brothers away to live with my aunt and uncle… I have a few of those too. Cousins. I can give you the names, but I walked out on the whole bunch of them and you’re not going to find them in books at the library. I don’t even have pictures. Pictures were expensive back then. They only took one of Annie… Of Shoshanna when she died.”

Ann had her hand on his arm.

He looked away. “I didn’t mean to say it. It’s not relevant.”

“But you…”

“Yes, I called her that because ‘Shoshanna’ is an absolutely ridiculous name to saddle a little girl with. She could barely say it herself. But they named me ‘Mordecai Abraham’ so what do you expect? My family was wall-to-wall bad decisions and I’ve continued the tradition myself. Just not about the shots. I know better about the shots because my parents kept my little sister home, I got her sick, and she died.

“Milo stabbed a man who was trying to give Lucy free access to lifesaving medicine, and you called him an idiot in a white coat trying to justify this behaviour. I trust your judgment, the man probably was an idiot, but when an idiot has something your child needs to survive and they are willing to hand it over for free, you smile and say, ‘Thank you, sir.’ You seem to have failed to pick up this information on your own, so it is vitally important that I straighten you out. You both out, Ann.”

She had her hand on his arm again, but this time she shook it to get him to stop talking. Her eyes were closed and she was shaking her head. “I’m sorry, I can’t… I can’t listen. I need… I need a minute, I’m sorry.”

“Is Milo having a problem with this concept or are you?”

“Milo… I can’t think if I have a problem with it or not because he won’t shut up! I’m sorry. I’m sorry to you, too, Milo. I feel like one of those watch cases getting the logo stamped in it.” She pressed one hand to each side of her head and squeezed. “I’m trying to be reasonable, but… No, we don’t. I know we don’t do that. We don’t suck up to stupid people, we stab them and take what we need. We don’t smile. They don’t make us fucking smile.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Em. I can’t… I can’t flip it around to see it like you see it. This is my life, and his life. We’ve lived it.”

“I’ve lived having someone I care about die because she didn’t get something she needed,” Mordecai said. “I’m ripping my heart out of my chest and slamming it down on the kitchen table because I don’t want you to live that. You are not going to stamp it ‘Return to Sender’ and throw it back in my face, Ann. Have… Have you never had someone you cared about enough to get over your pride? Are you just not used to it, or do you not even care about Lucy and Calliope that much?”

Ann slapped both hands on the table and stood up. The lid on the sugar bowl jumped. “You take back what you just said about Lucy and Calliope right now, Mordecai.”

“Your mask is slipping, Milo,” Mordecai said evenly.

Ann narrowed her eyes and smiled. “What’s the matter? Haven’t you ever had anyone you cared about so much that when they got mad, you got mad too? He can’t talk so I talk for him. I’m not about to do that stupid ‘quote’ thing with my fingers. We already know what you think of me. Take back what you said about Lucy and Calliope.”

“I just implied it.”

“You should be extremely glad I’m not Milo, because he’d like to slap you, and I wouldn’t be able to stop him. I’m the one who can ask you to apologize nicely, before I go after you with my fingernails or a skinny scissors.”

He dropped his face in his hands and spoke to the surface of the table, “I’m sorry I implied it. You hurt me so I bit you. You already know that about me too.”

Ann nodded once firmly and sat down. “I’m sorry we hurt you.”

“Milo isn’t.”

“‘It’s not pride, it’s survival.’ Do you need me to make quote marks?” She spooned some sugar into her coffee, added a dash of milk, and stirred.

“We’re both reliving our pasts right now, but I think my trauma fits and yours doesn’t,” Mordecai said. “Can you separate what happened from what’s happening? You stab the doctor who has something Lucy needs to live, and then what? You can’t steal healthcare and open it in a back alley with a brick…”

He put up his hand. “Okay, now that I hear myself saying that, I recognize this is not unlike what Hyacinth does every day, and she already said she’d try to do it for the rest of Lucy’s shots.”

Ann sipped her coffee and looked smug.

“This consequence is not a reward, you two,” he said. “Milo did not do a brave or smart thing. He did a stupid, thoughtless thing, and because Hyacinth is a good friend she’s going to help him clean it up, and make sure Calliope and Lucy don’t suffer for it.

“Milo didn’t steal this for Lucy, he took it away from her and stamped on it trying to break it. You got lucky because Hyacinth has a spare. If Lucy can’t go back to the clinic because of what he did, Hyacinth is going to have to spend money and favours to get something you could’ve had for free. That is the opposite of survival.”

He sipped his own coffee and winced. It was lukewarm and over-brewed. He hadn’t been paying attention. He reached for the sugar. “You do know that this… this…” He waved a vague gesture at Ann. “Every time I try to define it I get it wrong, but whatever you two have going on there is not a normal human relationship. If Milo does something that gets him punched in the face, you both have a black eye. If Milo does something that gets you punched in the face, you still both have a black eye. He can put on a pair of pants and have it for you. You share the pain.

“You can’t do that for Lucy and Calliope. If something happens to Lucy and Calliope — not something you can stab and kill, something like an illness, or an accident, something like what happened to Shoshanna, or Alba, or Erik — all you can do is sit outside of them and watch it happen. You couldn’t share it or change places with them or take it away no matter what.

“All you’d have is your own pain about watching someone you love be hurt and not being able to fix it. That pain doesn’t make their pain any less, and you have to hide it from them because if they knew how you were hurt, they’d be hurt even worse.

“If something happened that ended them, it might not end you. You would still be here with your pain. You would have to live with that for the rest of your life or put a bullet in your brain and leave everyone else who loves you. You don’t want to be in that situation.

“I don’t want you to be in that situation.”

Ann was quiet for a time, looking into her coffee cup.

“How old were you when it happened?”

“Eight, but don’t bother telling me it wasn’t my fault. That’s just like radio static, I don’t even hear the words anymore.”

“You were eight years old and thinking about putting a bullet in your brain?”

“I don’t know. It happens a lot and I don’t keep tabs on it. That’s too depressing. I don’t think it happened before then.”

Ann looked down and away. She was trying, discreetly, to do math. “Milo was at least nine,” she muttered.

Mordecai blinked and sat forward. “But not because he thought he killed someone he loved?”

“No.” She paused. She cleared it with him first. Then she added, “It was a lot of stupid people who didn’t want to give him what he needed to live, but we don’t want to get into it.”

“Workhouse?”

“Yes.” And that was all.

“You’re going to have to set me straight if I have this wrong, because from my point of view the soap opera writers have been pretty lazy with your backstory too. I have an idea Erik is the first person you ever loved who you had to sit back and watch be hurt because you couldn’t trade places with him and share it. I don’t want to be patronizing, but is that about right?”

“Not just unhappy, physically hurt?” She was thinking about Cerise.

“So unhappy you thought you might lose them forever?”

She shook her head. “Pierre had an accident and went to the hospital, but that wasn’t like Erik either. We sent him a cute little card with a kitty on it and a week later he was back and he was fine — well, Lalage and Barbara wouldn’t let him go back to work for another month, but he was fine. Milo was a little worried the hospital might hurt him, but that was just being silly. It wasn’t like Erik.” 

She had another sip of her coffee and looked past him, away. “Erik was hard for a long time. Calliope was hard for a long time too, but not like Erik.” She refocused on him, but she didn’t quite look into his eyes. “I don’t think any of that was like how Erik was for you.”

“No. That’s what I’m trying to explain. You can love Erik very much, but you’re not responsible for him the same way. I’m the last line of defence here.”

He laughed sickly. “This really is dad stuff, I wasn’t making that up to get Calliope and Hyacinth to bug off. I know he isn’t sure about Calliope yet, and I’m not sure what it’s going to mean to you, but he agreed to do the dad thing for Lucy like I agreed to do it for Erik — the person doing the mom thing sized him up and chose him. That’s a heavy responsibility and he agreed to pick it up. Feeling mad that somebody hurt your child is part of the dad thing, but you’re both going to have to grow the hell up and put her being above his feelings.”

“You haven’t grown up that way and you’re twice our age,” Ann said sourly.

“Do you want to be like me, Ann?”

She drank and looked away again, holding the mug in both hands. “Sometimes. Parts of you. But not that part.”

He nodded.

“You weren’t the last line of defence for your little sister, you had parents,” she said.

“I know that from the outside, but it didn’t feel that way on the inside.”

“Why didn’t they call Auntie Enora for her? Or for you? Or if they couldn’t, ask a neighbour or something. Knock on doors at random. Beg people. Somebody had to be able to hold her.”

“That isn’t necessarily so,” he said prudently. “Most people are not like Erik and Alba.”

He bowed his head, and shook it. “No, but we didn’t try to get her because we didn’t know about her. Sharing information about the gods can get a lot of people hurt, so we usually don’t. None of us thought my sister was going to die.”

He sighed and rubbed his cheek with a hand. “I hate that I’m defending those idiots, but I have to give them the benefit of the doubt here and say they must’ve known they could get my sister and me killed by blind-calling a god, and they didn’t want to risk it. Making deals with the Invisibles isn’t like filling out a form with your address so your kids can have life-saving medicine below cost.”

He didn’t say it. He let her say it. She had to say it or else they were just going to sit there drinking bad coffee in total silence.

“Or smiling at a stupid doctor?”

He shrugged.

“What was she like?” she said. “Your sister.”

He shook his head. He kept shaking his head. “I don’t know anymore, Ann. Does it matter? I told you they took a picture of her. That messed up picture of her where they wired her back to a chair and laced her fingers together after they were already stiff and cold and they painted her eyes open. I remember that more than I remember her. It’s been decades. She was like a hamster. I remember her because she taught me about death. That’s what I remember.”

“No,” Ann said.

“People used to die all the time when I was a kid. We didn’t need hamsters. It wasn’t a big deal.”

“Em.”

“Are you trying to hurt me? Are you still mad at me?”

“I love you and I want to know about you.”

“Those two things are not related.” He turned away. “They are opposites. Pick one.”

“No they’re not, but I don’t want to hurt you. You don’t have to talk about it. I’m… We’re sorry.”

“She was really funny,” he said. 

It was as if she’d plugged several coins into a machine. They all hit the return slot except this last one. The machine was contrary and only worked when it knew it didn’t have to. It startled her, but she let it run.

“She was blue like our mother, but she had more of our dad’s personality. When I got sick, she wouldn’t stop bugging me, asking if I was going to die. She wanted to learn about death, too, and she wanted my bank with the lion. I had this mechanical bank with a lion. She said she’d spend the money to bury me, but she wanted the bank.

“I told her to go to hell. That got me in trouble, and she thought that was hilarious. Coloured people don’t have a hell. I’m not racist. In general, we don’t have a hell. We don’t need one. She knew I didn’t mean it.

“I was four and a half years older than her. That’s more than between me and my oldest brother. But I was closest to her age, and I put up with a lot from her. I was willing to hang out with her but I was still cool. I knew how to make pancakes and chocolate chip cookies already, she thought that was great. I remember her eating chocolate chip cookies with grape juice and I thought she was out of her mind.

“She didn’t do tea parties, she liked to play school and be the teacher. She was really impressed that my brothers and I got to go to school, the gods alone know why. Her favourite toy was this rag doll my mother made out of a flour sack.

“She wore these white smock tops with a black bow on the front, and shorts underneath — a lot of them were my old clothes. There was a thing for unisex toddler clothing back then. It was supposed to make it easier for the girls to get around and slow down the boys. She was always running up and down the stairs.

“I don’t know if that rag doll was her favourite. I told Mom and Dad to put it in the photo, and I don’t think I should have. She just wanted it at the end because it was soft. She liked that lion bank. I let her play with the lion bank, but she couldn’t breathe and she just got too tired. I should’ve just said she could have the bank. I thought she was going to get better and I didn’t want her to have it. It didn’t matter. It would’ve made her happy.

“I don’t want to do this. You said I didn’t have to do this.

“None of this is real, Ann. This is a game I used to play when I was looking at that damn picture on the piano. I wanted to pretend I still had good things to remember about her and I could still love her. But none of this is real.

“I don’t know whose personality she had, she didn’t get old enough and I wasn’t paying attention. I don’t know if she didn’t have tea parties or I just don’t remember any. I don’t know what she thought about anything. I didn’t make a scrapbook of her because I thought she was always going to be there. Then all I had left was the damn photo and the lion bank. I don’t have them anymore. I took the bank with me when I left but I lost it somewhere. I was doing more important things.”

“Em, don’t.” She was crouched beside him and had her hands on his shoulders. She was sorry she’d put that coin in. Some machines weren’t meant to run. She needed to stop this before something broke, but it was going so fast. “Please don’t. It’s all right.”

“It didn’t matter. I should’ve let them bury her with it. It was something I used to tell myself a story about her, but it didn’t have any meaning. All I have left of her is how much it hurt when I lost her and that is an obscenity. You can’t let that happen to Lucy. You can’t let that happen to anyone you love, Milo.”

He twisted his hand into the collar of her dress and dragged her near. He stared into her eyes. Through them, like looking through the windows of a doll house. “Are you in a place where you can hear me and understand this, under all this insulation? The worst, the most awful thing you can imagine doing, the thing it would kill you to do, is a thing you will fantasize about doing gladly if the gods would just please fix the ruined memory of someone you loved. Not even bring them back, just fix it so you have something left of them that doesn’t hurt. Ann is the one who can talk, but you are the one I need to understand this. She didn’t screw up as badly as you!”

She put her hand on his hand. “Em, he can hear you, but you need to stop. We’re not going to let Milo or Lucy get hurt that way and you need to stop. It’s not going to happen again. We know this is serious and we screwed up, he knows he screwed up, but it is not going to happen again. You are safe. We are safe. We caught this before anyone got hurt, and nobody is going to get hurt. Lucy is going to have all her shots, I promise you. We are going to go back…”

She took a breath, shook her head, and spoke firmly, “Milo is going to go back, because I can’t do it for him. He is going to write his apology and beg them to let Lucy use the clinic. He can’t smile at them, I’m sorry. He would if he could. Even if they say she can’t come back to the clinic, Hyacinth is going to fix this and we are never going to screw up being Lucy’s dad this badly ever again. You understand?”

He twisted away from her and sat staring at his clenched hands in his lap. His voice was a whisper like fine sandpaper. “I don’t want you to do what I wanted because of this. I want you to do it, but not because of this. I feel cheap.”

She didn’t touch him. Not yet. She stood and folded her arms. “Em, you just put yourself through hell to make Milo and I understand something life-altering that we needed to know. How is that cheap?”

He turned his head and smiled at her. Twisted smile. “Maybe that’s just what I want you to think.”

She put her hands on her hips and inclined her head. “Milo and I know all about hurting yourself to get back in control when everything is out of control, but I must say your method is creative. I can’t make you stop. Can you stop?”

He turned away from her again. He dropped his head and shook it, only once.

She put her hands on his shoulders, this time from behind. When he didn’t tense up, she crouched down and slid both arms into a hug. “I’ll stay until you can. I know it’s hard. Would you rather have Calliope? That’s all right too.”

He shook his head.

“It’s all right. The clinic’s open for a long time. We have time.”

He smelled of varnish. She supposed it was part violin, and partly that stuff he used to keep his hair combed back. His body was stiff and angular; it was almost as if she were hugging an empty chair with one of his shirts hung on it.

But he was breathing — long, slow breaths with a shudder between each inhale and exhale. She could feel him trying to shut down and pick up the pieces, even if they were twisted or sharp and they hurt. She let him. She didn’t turn him around or try to give him a tissue in case he was crying. She just let him.

He let her hold him like that for a long time.

When he finally brushed her away, he wiped under both eyes with his sleeve and sniffed, then he turned back around.

“This is really dumb. Somebody’s going to come in. Lucy’s going to need a bottle or Erik is going to come home for lunch and I’m going to feel really dumb for hanging out in the kitchen like this.”

“Em, we know how it feels,” Ann said. Now she handed him a tissue with an apologetic frown. It had been down the front of her dress and smelled like drugstore perfume. There weren’t any manlier tissues within reach. “But you must understand, these people love you and they only want to help you. You don’t need to hide from them in pay toilets.”

He accepted the tissue anyway, but he shook his head at her. “Ann, please take me out of the Milo Box. It’s really weird for me in here. We’re not really related, we can’t possibly take after each other.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” She smiled. “You fit in there very nicely sometimes. I’m not sure if that means you’re good for us or bad for us. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, and I just like to sort you like Lucy’s toy blocks. Do I…?” She shook her head. “I don’t really mind if I fit the space or not, but… A lot of people call me Annie and I wouldn’t mind if you wanted.” She looked away, looking doubtful. “To do that. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but I wouldn’t be. Uncomfortable. You know, dear?”

He was frowning. “Are you asking me if I have an Annie Box and I’d like to put you in it?”

She didn’t look at him. She shrugged and bobbed a noncommittal nod.

He stood and put an arm around her waist. “I don’t want to play games like that anymore, Ann. I appreciate the gesture, but the Ann Box has a lot more stuff and better stuff in it. I don’t need to mix it with ashes and dust.”

He laughed and put a hand over his eyes, ashamed. “I’m not sure how to sort your stuff versus the stuff in my Milo Box, but I am trying. I promise.”

She lifted her head and smiled again. “I know you are. That’s why I didn’t slap you like Milo wanted. Would you like to go with him to the free clinic? He’s going to be terrified. He thinks they’re going to think he’s a crazy person and call the police, and no one will know what happened to him.”

“I’ll gladly go. If he wants to get started on that apology, I’ll make some cookies. They’re not going to call the cops on a man with warm cookies.”

Ann nodded. Of course, they weren’t really related, but Milo and his fake father had picked up the same tendency to bite and scratch when you backed them into a corner. It would be cruel of her to stay, and he might hurt her again if she did.

She paused and looked back with her hand on the kitchen doorway. “Milo wants to know if it’s absolutely necessary for the people at the free clinic to have all of the cookies?”

Mordecai managed a smile. “I’ll double the recipe.”