“You say it all the time, Mom,” she told me. “You said it when I was a baby.”

“I don’t think you remember being a baby, sweetie,” I said.

“Well, I do,” she said, defiant. “And you would say it to me at night, like . . . like a lullaby? I really do remember it.”

And I had, of course. I had told her every night, the only person I could tell, and I’d whisper it to her, the words piling up, but I said them so softly, underneath the sound machine, an ocean, which filled the room. But she had remembered.

“Well, that’s the secret,” I said. “That’s all it is.”

“I like it,” she said. “I like how it sounds. I like gold.”

“I know, sweetie,” I said. “I like gold, too.”

“We are fugitives,” she said.

“We are,” I told her.

“You and me?” she asked.

“Yes,” I told her.

“And Daddy?”

“Yes.”

“And Nana? And Pop-Pop and Gigi?”

“Yes.”

“And the Triplet Uncles? Uncle Marcus and Aunt Mina? And Dominic and Angie?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Yes.”

“And my teachers? All the kids at my school?”

“Yes.”

“And the whole world? Everyone in the world?”

“Yes, all of them.”

“And everyone that has ever lived?”

“Okay, sure.”

“And everyone that hasn’t been born yet but will be born? Them, too? They’re fugitives?”

“Well . . . yeah. Them, too.”

It was dark, but there were those little glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling, so many of them, like, we’d really let her go crazy with the glow stars, and I stared at them, the sky above us, the universe.

“Is it good to be a fugitive?” she finally asked.

“I think so,” I said. “It can be.”

“Good,” she finally said, and then she was fast asleep, unbothered. But I didn’t get up. Not just yet, but I knew I would.

Soon I would stand up and walk into the hallway and then into our bedroom, and into my own bed, with Aaron, and then the sun would come up, and light would fill the house, and I would wake up and things would go on from there. But right now, looking up at those stars that were not stars but more like stars than the real ones to me, I lay in that bed, breathing, alive. I said the line. Nothing had changed. I said it, and every single word was exactly the same, just as I had made it that summer. It would never change. So I said it again. And again. And again.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the following:

Julie Barer, the most important person in my writing life, who has made so much possible for me, and everyone at the Book Group, especially Nicole Cunningham.