My cat had already recovered his balance. He’d also abandoned his pell-mell pelting and was, instead, crouching in front of my backpack, which was in its regular home, on the floor next to the front door. Eddie was doing that pre-leap thing, wiggling his back half from side to side, which did not bode well for my backpack.

“That’s not a cat toy, okay? And it’s open. There are books and papers and—hey! Get out of there!” I trotted up front. “Will you quit already!” I leaned down to pull the backpack away from him, but he’d managed to magically slide his front half inside. “How on earth did you do that?” I sat on the floor and started to detangle pack from cat and cat from pack. “Oh, quit purring. Or not. That could be the only thing that keeps you in treats.”

I extracted Eddie from the pack, but he was clutching something tight to his furry chest with his front paws and rabbit-kicking me with his back paws. “Let go of that, whatever it is. It’s not a cat toy, and—”

“Mrr!”

“Fine.” Because now I could see what he had, and what was a cat going to do with a cell phone? “Have it your way.”

He stopped, rolled one yellow eye in my direction, and bolted toward the bedroom.

“You are so weird,” I called.

“Mrr!”

“Am not,” I muttered, and reached for my phone, which had somehow ended up under the dining table. When I picked it up, I saw that Eddie had managed to turn it on and open up my Favorites list. Josh was always yelling at me to use two-factor authentication to protect my phone, and I finally understood why.

I started to shut it down but saw my brother’s name and pushed the Call button instead.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s up, sis?”

“Remember all those summers I got sent to stay with Aunt Frances when I was a kid?” I asked. “Why didn’t you ever get sent north?”

He laughed. “You want to know this now? Twenty-some years later?”

“Yep.”

“Sorry, but you’ll have to ask Mom and Dad,” he said. “I have no idea.”

“Really?”

“Really. My guess is they just never thought about it.”

That was not the answer I’d expected. “Were you mad?”

“At the time, a little. Didn’t seem fair that you got to spend all that time up there and I didn’t. But I got over it.”

“Would it help if I apologized?”

“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “And now please tell me you’re doing something about getting an engagement ring, because otherwise Jennifer might come up there and buy you one herself.”

“What was that? Sorry, losing the connection. Better go now, bye!”

I thumbed off the phone but continued to sit on the floor, staring at it. “I wonder . . .”