Vanessa hit the gas when the light changed. She raised her voice to speak over the wind. “It’s when the ground freezes. The point is that when many other flowers would die from being too cold, pansies can survive. Pansies can handle it. Pansies are tough. They are beautiful and tough as nails.”

“Really?” Frances said.

Joan turned to see that Frances had lit up, entirely focused on Vanessa’s next word.

“Yeah, so you are a pansy, I bet,” Vanessa said. “And he’s an idiot.”

“Well,” Joan said, “we try not to call people ‘idiots.’ ”

Vanessa wasn’t listening. “Next time he says something like that, you know what you say? You tell him that you can learn how to throw a ball farther if you want to, but he’ll always be stupid.”

“Frances, do not ever say that!” Joan corrected.

Frances was already laughing. “He will always be stupid,” she said to herself, nearly wheezing. “It’s true.”

Joan looked at Vanessa like a teacher scolding the class clown. Vanessa bit her lip, then mouthed, “Too much?”

Joan nodded.

“Hey, I have an idea,” Vanessa said. “Does anyone want to go out for milkshakes?”

Joan turned to the backseat to see Frances’s reaction.

“YES!” Frances yelled. “OF COURSE!”

—

At the diner, Vanessa ordered a strawberry milkshake and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which she cut into four pieces.

“When I was really little, even younger than you,” Vanessa said, across the table from Frances, “my dad would take me to this diner, and do you know what he and I always got?”

“Milkshakes?”

Vanessa acted as if Frances were a mind reader.

“How did you know that?”

“It’s what I would do.”

“Well, yeah. That’s what we did. A strawberry milkshake,” Vanessa said. She handed Frances a piece of the sandwich. “And we also always got a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to dip in it.”

Frances laughed. “A sandwich in a milkshake?”

“Don’t knock it until you try it.”

Frances took the piece of sandwich and dipped it in her chocolate shake. She made a face like she thought it was just okay.

“I should have been clearer,” Vanessa said. “A strawberry milkshake is what you need for a peanut butter and jelly.”

She took another piece and dipped it in her own milkshake and handed it to Frances.

When Frances tried it, her eyes went wide. Joan could barely make out the words coming out of her full mouth. They were something along the lines of “Wow, that’s really good.”

Vanessa dipped hers and did the same thing. “See?”

“All right,” Joan said. “Somebody let me try.”

She grabbed a piece and dipped it in Vanessa’s milkshake.

“See, Joanie?” Frances said.