Frank’s mother had gone to meet him, and to spend a couple of days in the warm sunshine before coming home to the New England winter. She said it was a good time because things were about to change. “Soon you will have a little brother or sister,” she had told Frank; she was already wearing different clothes, a full blouse, like an artist’s smock, with a bow at the neck. For years he had begged for a sibling but at age seven had given up and stopped asking. At ten, he found the news embarrassing, given the things he had learned—how this would have happened—and he fought hard not to let any imaginings of his parents doing anything like that enter his mind. The situation was especially complicated by his father having already been away from home so much; his visits had not been long enough to fully get beyond the awkward readjustment and go back to the way life had always been.

Before going to bed, Frank had listened to his favorite show, Captain Midnight. He lay on the living room floor while the sound of airplane engines filled the room. Captain Midnight could fly anything, and though Frank was drawn to the fantasy of being him, he was more comfortable as the young Chuck Ramsey, his charge and underling. That’s what Frank had been to his grandfather, and he was missing him in ways he didn’t know how to articulate.

Lil had said that maybe he had had a premonition of what was to come, but what would it have mattered anyway? What he knew was that his dad had promised to take him the next week to get his junior flight badge with the secret decoder. They were going to do that, and they were going into Boston to see the Christmas lights, like they always did, and they were going to Jordan Marsh, to get all that he needed for Boy Scouts—the canteen, compass, mess kit. But the most important was the badge, because each episode ended with a clue to decipher, and every kid with a decoder who solved the message would be entered in a special drawing. Then there was always an ad telling you to drink Ovaltine. It used to be the one about antifreeze, something Frank’s dad quoted whenever he took the car to be serviced. Kids, tell Mom and Dad to take you to Skelly Oil . . . it’s time for antifreeze. Remember to remind your dad that it is cheaper to prepare than repair!

Captain Midnight and Chuck Ramsey were once again having to battle Ivan Shark and his mean daughter, Fury; Mr. Jones, which was a code name for the president, was depending on them. During the breaks, a salesman kept begging kids to drink their Ovaltine and to get their badges, which Frank swore to the radio that he would do.