He’s standing by the cellar door wearing his tool belt and holding Mom’s egg carton of tomato seeds. I hear water trickling into the basement, and the big rock’s smell fills the house.

“Dad. I looked all over and I can’t find Lilygirl.”

Dad hesitates a moment and looks quickly around the house. Lilygirl is nowhere to be seen.

“We can’t wait. We need to go. It’s time, James,” he calls out.

James runs into the kitchen with a big black plastic bag. It’s so heavy he’s dragging it across the floor. Dad opens the back door for us to leave. He grips the metal doorknob for a few extra seconds before he closes it behind us.

Chapter 10

Meteorites, and their parent planets, are the most likely sources of the Earth’s water.

—Astrobiology Magazine

WHEN WE GET to the top of the hill, Birdie has the happiest face in Nana’s house. She’s in the living room swinging herself in the kid swing Nana had bolted to the rafters. Its chains and wooden seat hang almost to the floor so Birdie can get in and out of it herself. The house smells like the tapioca Nana is stirring on the cookstove.

Some of Nana’s fingers are bent sideways and her knuckles are puffed up and red. She used to pull dandelions in the spring and can the greens the way her own mother did, but now it hurts her too much to do it. On the dresser in her room, Nana has a framed photo of her and her mother in the field next to the river where they picked dandelions. Once, I told Nana she looked the same in the picture as she did now and she kissed my cheek. It’s true, though. Her hair is short and white instead of brown and long, but her face is the same, and she’s not much taller than she was then.

“Nice swinging, Birdie,” I say. I hold my backpack in one hand and my pillow in the other, not sure where to put them.

“Go high,” she says, pumping her legs up and down, up and down.

James is the next-happiest person. He carefully sets down the heavy plastic bag in the middle of the living room rug.

“Guess what?” he says. “I brought something for everyone from the house. Isn’t that great?”

I see exactly what Dad meant about James’s one hundred percent. James has his head and arms practically inside the bag. The first thing he pulls out is for Mom.

“Here. For when you make ployes. I found it in your cupboard.” He gives Mom a glass jar of her maple syrup.

“Thank you, James.” She holds the jar carefully in two hands, as if the amber-colored syrup is liquid gold.