When Jenna was well enough to leave the hospital, the caseworker placed her with Miss Helga, a German-born nurse who lived near Nola's school. It was close enough for the family to visit, but while Nola went over every day after school to play with Jenna and teach her songs, and Dad sometimes went too, Mom never did. "Taking care of you is hard enough," she told Nola.

Nola wished she wasn't so hard to take care of, but didn't know what to do. Especially after Dad stopped coming home.

All summer she didn't want to fall asleep, in case he returned from his gigs and she’d miss him, but ended up falling asleep. Mom said Dad had a girlfriend with a little girl. Nola wanted to know whether it was that girl from Connecticut, who like her, made up songs and sang them. Were that girl's songs better? If only Mom weren’t against a phone, maybe Dad would call. He had once said that if she wanted something very hard it would finally happen. So she prayed very hard for Jenna to be better and for him to come home.

Suddenly, just as school started, Mom went away to a hospital and Nola couldn't visit her as she had visited Jenna. But Dad returned.

He told Nola that he had missed her and would never again live away from her. No, he hadn't been to Connecticut. Where did she get that idea? He had been to California, where a lot was happening, and to New Jersey of all places, which Bruce Springsteen was putting on the map. Dad brought new records: Air Supply. Blondie. New stuff from Fleetwood Mac. Kiss Unmasked. Nola stared at the faces with white-and-black makeup and tried to comprehend the music they produced. Dad had her listen to rap, which was new, but he didn't believe it would catch on because white people were bigots.

Dad bought a motorcycle to get to his gigs, and now that Nola slept, she’d wake up before dawn to hear the roar as he veered around the house and into the horse barn before he killed the engine. In the silence that followed, she would fall back to sleep, happy that he was home.

Together, they bought Jenna new clothes and toys and brought it over to Miss Helga’s. Mom was away for months, and Nola thought about how she could never have all the people she loved at the same time. It was terrible gaining one and losing another. "Trade-off" was a new word she had written in her notebook.