Despising herself for feeling so needy, Claire patted Evanelle gently, reassuringly. “It’s okay. I’ll take you home.” She set the sheets and the Pop-Tarts on the wicker rocker by the front door. “Come on, honey,” she said, leading the sleepy old lady down the stairs and to the van.

When Tyler Hughes got home, Claire’s house was dark. He parked his Jeep on the street and got out, but then he stopped on the walkway to his house. He didn’t want to go in yet.

He turned when he heard the clicking of small dog feet on the sidewalk. Soon, a tiny black terrier skittered past, hot on the trail of a moth that was popping from one streetlight to the next.

Tyler waited for what was coming next.

Sure enough, Mrs. Kranowski, a spindly old woman with a hairdo that looked like vanilla soft-serve ice cream, appeared. She was chasing after the dog, calling, “Edward! Edward! Come back to Mama. Edward! Come back here now!”

“Need help, Mrs. Kranowski?” Tyler asked as she passed.

“No, thank you, Tyler,” she said as she disappeared down the street.

This neighborhood spectacle, he’d quickly discovered, happened at least four times a day.

Hey, it was good to have a routine.

Tyler appreciated that better than most. He would be teaching classes that summer, but there were a couple of weeks between the spring and summer semesters, and he always got restless when he didn’t have a routine. Structure had never been his strong suit, though he took a lot of comfort in it. Sometimes he wondered if he was made that way or simply taught. His parents were potters and potheads, and they had encouraged his artistic streak. It wasn’t until he started elementary school that he realized it was wrong to draw on walls. It had been such a relief. School gave him structure, rules, direction. Summer vacations had him forgetting to eat because he spent hours and hours drawing and dreaming, never moderated by his parents. They had loved that about him. His had been a good childhood but one where ambition ranked right up there with Ronald Reagan as taboo subjects. He’d always assumed that, like his parents, he could make a meager living from his artwork and be happy with that. But school was nice, college even better, and he didn’t like the thought of leaving it.

So he decided to teach.

His parents never understood. Making good money was almost as bad as becoming a Republican.

He was still standing there on his walkway when Mrs. Kranowski came back down the sidewalk with Edward now wiggling in her arms. “That’s a good Edward,” she was saying to him. “That’s Mama’s good boy.”

“Good night, Mrs. Kranowski,” he said when she passed him again.

“Good night, Tyler.”

He liked this crazy place.

His first position after getting his master’s was at a high school in Florida, where they were so desperate for teachers that they were paying premium salaries, living expenses, plus moving expenses from his home in Connecticut. After a year or so, he also started teaching night art classes at the local university.