Gloria squatted down and painted the bottom of the door. I read the label on the can and the paint was called “Happy, Happy.” I nudged Rowan and pointed at the name. Maybe things would be better. Maybe the new door would make Gloria smile. Maybe Telly would come back after all, driving in slow and careful with no dust this time. Then we would all be happy, happy.

Gloria threw the brush into the can and went inside. I don’t think she was mad at me no more about the school concert because I called Telly at his garage, just like she said, and I did a good job. He got on the phone this time and I told him I missed him bad. He said he missed me too and he was sad we weren’t together and that he’d see me soon. That made Gloria real excited.

When she came out of the house she only had two lemonades. She gave one to me and said, “No sharing.”

Rowan didn’t get one because Gloria didn’t see him no more. She looked right through him. That was partly Chicken’s fault, to tell the truth. When he was hungry, he was Gloria’s dog, because she was the only one allowed to feed him and sometimes she forgot. But when he was full, he belonged to Rowan. Gloria didn’t like that. She called Chicken a “sneaky double dealer.”

No one was allowed to feed Chicken. Only Gloria. But last night, Rowan picked some fries off his plate and dropped them on the floor. Chicken was right there because he was half starved. Gloria probably heard the pat, pat of the potato dropping. Or she saw Chicken licking his chops a million times. Or she could’ve read my mind, like she does sometimes. She caught him. She always caught him. She grabbed Rowan’s fries and she threw the whole plate in the garbage. Then she disappeared him. She made Rowan vanish right out of her sight.

Sometimes he was disappeared for just a day. Sometimes she couldn’t see him for a whole month. Once she told me the problem started when his two front teeth came in. She found it hard to look at teeth that were so huge and crooked and stuck out funny because “He just wasn’t cute no more.”

Gloria gulped her lemonade. “You know it’s not easy taking care of two kids by myself,” she said. “You get that, right, Maisy? I’m not perfect, but I’m doing my best.”

I nodded.

“Takes everything I got to juggle work and keep the house and put food on the table and clothes on your back. Trying to make it look decent.”

“I really like the door,” I said. “It’s a good color.”