“Yes,” said Laura, wishing Polly could stay on one topic at a time.

“Well, he decided in his infinite wisdom—and I’m not saying he was stoned, I’m just saying his wisdom may not have been naturally that infinite—to buy every child here an ice cream cone.”

“Oh,” said Laura, frowning, “I bet Nina wasn’t pleased about that.”

“No,” said Polly. “So I can’t really leave until we get all the kids down from the bookcases and Nina is able to damp cloth the surfaces.”

Laura opened her mouth to ask . . . and then closed it again.

“Polly,” she said, “will you stay on the phone with me while I drive, in case I get lost?”

She put the key in the ignition, and turned it. The engine came on, and she had a flash of clear, blind panic. Then she heard Polly’s voice.

“Of course, I’ll be all mission control or air traffic control or some other kind of control.” She held the phone away from her mouth and yelled, “Hey, Nina!”

Laura put the truck in gear, closed her eyes, said a prayer, and stepped on the accelerator. She heard Nina’s muffled response, then Polly said, “Laura’s driving to the airport and needs support, I’m going to conference you in.”

Then she disappeared for a second and came back, and two seconds later Laura heard Nina saying, “No, you can’t jump from one bookcase to . . .” and then her voice went away again and Polly said, “I’ll get her back in a minute. Where are you now?”

Laura looked left and right and pulled out. “I just left the driveway.”

“Alright!” Polly laughed. “Dude, you are crushing this already.”

Laura tried to smile. “I have literally driven half a block.”

“Half a block more than you could six months ago,” replied Polly. “It’s progress, not perfection, you know.”

“Good point,” said Laura, waiting at the intersection of Third and August. “There’s a lot of traffic.”

“Yup,” said Polly, and then Nina’s voice was there again.

“The good thing about traffic,” she said, calm despite the absolute chaos that was clearly going on in the background, “is that it means no one’s going very fast.”

A car shot by on Third doing at least sixty.

“Uh, I don’t think that’s true,” said Laura, trying to slow her breathing. She thought about what her therapist had told her about focusing on her breath, about being in the now, and decided maybe she should pull over and give up on this.

“You know,” she said to the phone, “maybe this was a bad idea. What if I get into an accident?”

“You won’t,” said Polly. “Don’t quit before the miracle. You can do this, we are right there with you, aren’t we, Nina?”