“Second best is X,” Kitsune says, having chewed this over with the bagel. Padgett grins back at her and kisses the apple-smelling top of her head. She’s a quick little girl, the kind, Padgett thinks, who will learn everything, bright-eyed facts and methods of which Padgett did not, and will never, dream. School for Padgett was just some shoe she put on each morning, a dead building she walked into without more than a glance. She never really wanted to learn anything, and by God she hasn’t. The future spreads out from each moment, right now, like passengers in the water of a shipwreck, struggling every which direction. This scheme will be a blip, failure or some skewed success, Martin in prison or out from under debt, the bar a San Francisco landmark or another floundering room. Kit surely will be safe—it is unthinkable to think otherwise, these little fingers shiny and grubby, resistant to Padgett’s mouth-moistened napkin—and she herself, what? In trouble too, betrayed and betrayer, or somehow free and clear. She thinks of the parade Martin wants, music and floats and what did he say, confetti. Happy and ruined, desperate and triumphant, like snowflakes all these routes seem finally the same.

Her phone doorbells while she’s at Kit’s face, and then doorbells again. “Two people are calling,” Kit says.

“I know,” Padgett says brightly.

“I want a phone.”

“When you’re six,” Padgett soothes, but it’s too late now, or at least almost. Padgett’s phone is on time—it must be, nothing runs fast or slow anymore—but the school, across the block, doesn’t look early. Normally now the entrance is quiet, but she can see parental figures, the preschoolers holding their hands like scarves dangling. They’re in little groups, worrying together or just chatting, as pigeons do, and Padgett turns from them to her screen as it tolls again.

“Three people!” Kit says in delight. “One two three!”

“One two three,” Padgett repeats absently. The messages, all of them, say call now. One is a mom she can’t stand, toothy and full of drama, and then Vic and then Nina, whose tall body she can spot over there by the school. Cancellation, maybe? Something flooded, a fire drill? Will this plan come to nothing and Martin will do what, in panic or in fury? Is she relieved, is it time yet to be relieved? Padgett does not wait for an answer.

“You’re pulling me too hard!” Kit says. “Padgie! You’re pulling me too hard!”

“We’re in a hurry now,” Padgett says. She shakes her head like her whole morning, her whole lifetime, has gotten stuck in her eyes. “We’re hurrying. One two three four.”