Downstairs, she went to the back door, folded her belled pant leg around each calf, and stepped into the huge black rubber boots they kept on the concrete steps. Moving like Neil Armstrong, she made her way through the deep mud to the shed out back. Their old quarterhorse mare limped up to the fence, whinnied a greeting. “Heya, Sweetpea,” Kate said, throwing a flake of hay onto the ground, and then scratching the horse’s velvety ear.

“I miss you, too,” she said, and it was true. Two years ago they’d been inseparable; Kate had ridden this mare all that summer, and won plenty of ribbons at the Snohomish County Fair.

But things changed fast. She knew that now. A horse could get old overnight and go lame. A friend could become a stranger just as quickly.

“ ’Bye.” She clomped back up the dark, muddy driveway and left her dirty boots on the porch.

When she opened the back door, she stepped into pandemonium. Mom stood at the stove, dressed in her faded floral housedress and fuzzy pink slippers, smoking an Eve menthol cigarette and pouring batter into an oblong electric frying pan. Her shoulder-length brown hair was divided into two scrawny pigtails; each one was held in place by a strand of hot-pink ribbon. “Set the table, Katie,” she said without glancing up. “Sean! Get down here.”

Kate did as she was told. Almost before she was finished, her mother was behind her, pouring milk into the glasses.

“Sean—breakfast,” Mom yelled up the stairs again. This time she added the magic words: “I’ve poured the milk.”

Within seconds eight-year-old Sean came running down the stairs and rushed toward the beige speckled Formica table, giggling as he tripped over the Labrador puppy who’d recently joined the family.

Kate was just about to sit down at her regular place when she happened to glance across the kitchen and into the living room. Through the large window above the sofa, she saw something that surprised her: A moving van was turning into the driveway across the street.

“Wow.” She carried her plate through the two rooms and stood at the window, staring out over their three acres and down on the house across the street. It had been vacant for as long as anyone could remember.

She heard her mother’s footsteps coming up behind her; hard on the fake brick linoleum of the kitchen floor, quiet in the moss-green carpeting of the living room.

“Someone’s moving in across the street,” Kate said.

“Really?”

No. I’m lying.

“Maybe they’ll have a girl your age. It would be nice for you to have a friend.”

Kate bit back an irritated retort. Only mothers thought it was easy to make friends in junior high. “Whatever.” She turned away abruptly, taking her plate into the hallway, where she finished her breakfast in peace beneath the portrait of Jesus.

As expected, Mom followed her. She stood by the tapestry wall hanging of The Last Supper, saying nothing.