And you know what? I have chosen to believe her.

I don’t know though why Mr. Sandler chose to keep being an author a secret, never mind being the author of my favorite series. Sometimes I daydream that maybe one day he would have confided in me. But other times I think his dedications were his way of telling me—or at least telling me something even more important for me to hear.

Just as my mom and I are sitting at opposite ends of the couch in the den, smiling together over the shared memory of Jessie telling us about Mr. Sandler, there is a loud knock on the window. I jump up, startled, and then laugh when I see a swinging ponytail leaning way across the railing from the front steps.

“I was going to come over in a little while,” I tell Honey when I open the door for her.

“That’s okay,” she says as we head back into the den. “I had to escape. My family is driving me nuts. I needed some peace and quiet!” We all laugh, but I suddenly wonder: Has she always been “escaping” her own house when she comes here? Is the quiet that sometimes makes it hard for me to breathe relaxing to her?

“You can escape to us anytime, Honey,” my mom tells her.

“Thanks, Lori,” she says, ruffling Max’s hair and giving him a high five.

“Wanna have a Shabbos party now, Milla?” Max asks.

“Sure, Max,” I say.

We gorge on cookies, gummy bears, and chips, and then play a round of Go Fish, which Honey creams me and Max at. When Max goes to shul with my dad for the evening prayers, Honey and I head upstairs to the spare room. It already has a big new desk against the wall and a new bedspread and pillows for the trundle bed to make it look more like a couch when no one’s sleeping in it. The massage table is gone.

“Mom!” I cry, running downstairs to the den, where my mother is still reading on the couch. “You promised you wouldn’t get rid of it!”

“And I keep my promises,” my mom says mildly. “It’s in the basement.”

I make a face, and Honey and I trudge down to the basement, where indeed the massage table is set up against a wall near the old brown velour couch that used to be in my parents’ first apartment before I was born. It’s freezing down here, so I grab some tattered blankets from the closet where we keep old linens and camp stuff, and Honey settles herself on the massage table while I curl up on the couch.

“Do you ever wonder what kind of grown-ups we’ll be?” she asks.

I realize I have, even though I have never put it into those words before.

I think about Mrs. Wine. I love her big personality, the way she loves gathering people around her and making everything a party. I love her house, and I love the home she has made in it. But I suddenly realize that I probably won’t be like her when I grow up. I think I want children, but it is hard to think about that right now. I think I want to get married, but it is hard to think about boys as husbands. (Although Natalie says Noam likes me and is going to ask me to “go around,” which is kind of like “going out” but not exactly because we’re only twelve. And if he asks me, I will probably say yes.) I wonder if Honey will be like Mrs. Wine, and somehow, I don’t think so.