Celia continued reading, her eyes gulping down sentences. She shoved over the page to hurry to the next batch of words.

“I don’t want my jacket,” Celia said.

Dan watched her, weighing how best to bring her around.

“You might recall,” he said, “we were going downtown to buy you new shoes today.”

With a sigh, Celia looked up and met his eyes. “But why do I need a jacket, Dad?” she said. “It’s not cold outside.”

“It is cold,” Dan said. “And you’ll get sick without a jacket. And then you’ll be sorry.”

Celia appeared skeptical. Dan’s logic was not so bad. To wear a jacket was to keep warm was to avoid a cold. But from her point of view, the true rationale for the order had not yet been exposed.

“It’s not that cold outside,” she said again.

“It’s pretty cold,” Dan said. “Colder than it looks.”

“The car is warm,” she pointed out. “The store will be warm. We’ll only be outside for a few seconds, at most.”

“We might have to park far away,” he said. “And the car can take a long time to heat up.”

“I probably wouldn’t get a cold though.”

“No, probably not,” Dan admitted. “But let me put it this way. Your mother would not be happy if I let you go outside jacketless in November.”

“Ah-ha,” Celia said, drumming her fingers on the book’s cover. “It’s about Mom. That makes more sense.” Which was true enough. Melissa was the stickler for rules in the house. And with that, Celia placed her tome on the end table and climbed to her feet, pleased she had uncovered the root cause of the issue.

Celia fed the cat, selected a scarf, and decided on a book by Lloyd Alexander for the road as Dan watched her from the foyer. She had always been a serious kid, and she went about everything with a sense of sober deliberation. “This one’s been here before,” the doctor had said, meeting Celia’s suspicious gaze upon delivery. Dan still thought that might be true.

In the car, on the way to the freeway, Celia was full of questions about money. A week earlier, she had seen her first euro note at her friend Emily’s house. She’d been struck by its size and coloring and the unfamiliar artwork decorating its surface. Since then she had become interested in monetary currency in general. Buckled into her seat, pink down jacket in her lap, she patiently interrogated him. Where did money go when it got old, she wanted to know. Where was it manufactured? Who designed money? What if everyone decided it didn’t mean anything? What would happen if everyone stopped using it?