Bree didn’t take the bait. “Let’s go,” she said, and started walking.

The mouthy little con artist didn’t have any choice but to move her feet and keep up. “What’re you doing? Where we going?” she said. “You can’t arrest me, I’m just a damn kid!”

“I’m not arresting you,” Bree said. “You’re going to show me where you dropped that purse. Then you’re coming down the street to apologize for what you did. And I suggest you watch your mouth when you do.”

NANA GOT UP off the couch as Bree came in with their mugger in tow. She seemed to want to make a point of meeting them in the front hall on her own two feet.

“Oh now, see that?” she said, looking the girl up and down. “I’m a little embarrassed. I told my granddaughter-in-law here that you were something scary.” She pointed a crooked finger at the dusty ball cap on the girl’s head. “And you need to take that off inside the house. It’s only polite.”

The girl squinted back. “You joking, right?” she said, but Bree snatched the hat off for her.

The hair underneath looked like baby dreds at first, but it wasn’t quite that. It was regular braids that had been chopped off at some point. Maybe to look more like a boy out on the streets, Bree thought. In the close quarters of the front hall, it was obvious this one hadn’t known a shower in a long time either.

“What’s your name?” Nana asked.

The girl thrust the tan leather purse out at her. “I’m sorry, okay?” she said, not sounding very sorry at all.

Nana let the bag hang there between them. “I didn’t ask if you were sorry. I asked what your name was.”

“Ava,” she grunted out. Then she set the purse on the newel post and looked at Bree. “I said I was sorry, didn’t I? Can I go now?”

But Nana wasn’t done. She still had the floor. “Tell me something, Ava, and that’s a beautiful name, by the way. What was the first thing you were going to buy with my money?”

“Huh?”

“Huh is not a word. What I want you to tell me is why you needed to take my purse. I got knocked down for it. I think I deserve to know why.”

Bree was almost starting to feel sorry for the girl now. Ava’s face was like a stone mask, but one tear had escaped down each cheek. She scrubbed them off with her sleeve right away.

“I dunno,” she finally said.

“Well, if you don’t know, then you can’t go,” Nana told her.

The girl’s jaw dropped open. “Say what?”

“That’s what I used to tell my students,” Nana said. “I was a teacher, see, about a hundred years ago, maybe more than that. It seems to me you need some time to come up with a better answer.”