Sadie,

I’m never at the bus stop on Thursdays (I have a Dr. appt. every week before school on Thursdays). What did your mother say after we got off the phone last night? Did she believe us?? I was awake thinking about it all night!

—m.m.m.

PS Your mom seems very nice.

I had noticed that there were some days she didn’t ride the bus, but I never paid too much attention to know that it was always Thursday—I was just relieved when she wasn’t there. It’s funny how things can change so much in such a short amount of time.

Underneath her words, I write:

OMG! I’m so happy to see you here! I forgot about Thursdays. But, why do you have to go to the doc so much? Are you sick? Are you okay? Is that rude of me to ask? If it is, you don’t have to answer . . .

Yes, both of my moms believed everything! Thank you thank you THANK YOU, M.M.M.! ☺

It takes ten eternities to get to lunchtime. We sit at the end of the cafeteria table: Macy with a container of noodles and veggies that look so much better than yet another day of cold pizza leftovers for me.

“Looks yummy,” I tell her as I slip my napkin note from my lunch bag into my back pocket, hoping Macy doesn’t see. She does kind of glance at what I’m doing, but I’m too fast for her to see the writing: Love you always, Sadie! XOXO, Moms.

“Sobo’s soba,” Macy says, grinning. “It’s kind of an inside joke. Soba is the kind of noodles. And Sobo is my grandma? Get it?”

I smile, but it’s hard to laugh because Macy mentioning her grandma instantly reminds me of Gramps and how confused he was last night.

“Are you okay?” She asks me the same question I had asked her in our note. She didn’t answer me then, and now I don’t know how to answer her either.

“It’s probably nothing,” I lie.

“Are you sure?” Macy asks, slurping a bite of her noodles. “Because you’re making a face like you’re locked in an outhouse trying not to breathe.”

The laugh collecting in my lungs forces me to exhale. “Something really weird happened with my gramps last night.” I tell her all about our conversation: how he had figured out about the flyer being a fake but said he’d take care of things with Dewey anyway, even though he called her Marshmallow, and then the whole bizarre tea thing.

“I think . . .” I conclude, “I think he thought, for just a minute anyway, that he was my dad and I was my mom, and not just in the saying-the-wrong-name way—it was like he was stuck in a memory or something.”

“Wow,” Macy breathes. “That’s kind of scary.”