“Poopy,” Timmy said. “Yuck!”

“No, it’s green,” Rose Noire said, in a deliberately upbeat, patient voice.

A dozen flash cards made absolutely no dent in Timmy’s cheerful refusal to play. But I could tell he was getting to Rose Noire. Worse, even Timmy could tell.

“Why don’t you give the flash cards a rest for the time being?” I suggested. “Sometimes, with kids, it’s not necessary to do anything with them—just be present for them.”

“Oh, that’s so wise!” she exclaimed.

I didn’t tell her it was a line straight out of one of the child care manuals she’d brought over on Timmy’s first day with us. I’d been boning up.

Rose Noire’s method of just being present was to smile encouragingly at Timmy every few minutes, and occasionally pat his shoulder. The first time she did this, Timmy earned a time-out by spitting some of his juice on her. Even after I made him apologize, she was clearly upset by this.

“I’m just no good with children,” she kept moaning.

She cheered up a bit after I suggested that Timmy, like Dad’s pet llamas, used spitting as a form of pack bonding behavior.

Rose Noire must not have been listening when Dad explained the llamas’ spitting. Llamas spit to establish dominance. Timmy was succeeding beautifully.

Of course, the only way I had thought of to impose a time-out in the car, where Timmy was already strapped into his car seat, was to interrupt the musical entertainment. A few minutes after his time-out ended, Timmy asked if he could have another one. I deduced that he wasn’t all that fond of Rose Noire’s New Age music. So by the time we made our stop at the bookstore, I’d insisted on a return to Led Zeppelin, and we cruised into the ritzy suburb of Westlake to the dulcet strains of “Ramble On.”

One nice thing about Rose Noire was that she bounced back from defeat as cheerful as ever. And our arrival in Westlake sent her mood soaring.

“Oh, this is such a nice neighborhood!” Rose Noire exclaimed. “Look at that house! It looks just like a castle! And there’s a Spanish hacienda!”

Faux gothic and faux Spanish colonial, actually, but I let her enthuse while I concentrated on peering at the mailboxes for the house numbers. We were getting close to Nadine’s address.

“Look at all the open green spaces!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t it lovely? What a beautiful neighborhood! Why didn’t you and Michael move here?”

“Because there isn’t a house on this street that goes for less than a million and a half,” I said. “The farmhouse was a bargain in comparison.”

“Oh, I can’t believe that,” she said. “Look at that quaint little cottage there—you can’t tell me that’s a million-dollar house.”

“No,” I said, following her pointing finger. “It’s the gatehouse. The big house is up there!”

I saw Rose Noire’s jaw drop as her eyes traveled up the hill behind the cottage and saw the huge faux Georgian mansion looming overhead. You half expected Mr. Rochester to come striding out in pursuit of Jane Eyre.