“Not there,” he cried. “Not that bed.”

Mrs. Trent guided Ezra across to her cot. “Would you leave us now, please, Nyle?” she said.

“Fine!” I screamed. “Just fine.”

I gathered the puppy in my arms, turned my back on the Trents, and stormed out of the room.

Fourteen

I heard voices downstairs in the kitchen, voices drifting through the grate as I lay in bed that night. Women’s voices reaching through the floor to me, Gran and Mrs. Trent. They’d become friends in these last weeks. They had nothing in common, would never have noticed the other under ordinary circumstances, but these were not ordinary circumstances. They had made a connection.

Pulling a pillow over my head, I chose not to listen to them. But still I saw them in my mind—talking over steaming cups of coffee, leaning softly toward each other. Gran and Mrs. Trent, their voices rose and fell like the singing of cicadas.

The next morning Gran stood at the stove, scraping the spatula across the cast-iron skillet, frying up eggs.

“I’m driving you to Manchester after chores today,” she said.

“Manchester?”

“I have sheep business there this morning. You can get your Christmas shopping done. I’ll come back and pick you up around six.”

What shopping we did, we usually did in Cookshire. Even though North Haversham lay halfway between the two towns, the roads into Cookshire made for easier driving. And Cookshire offered a wider variety of stores. But now there was no Cookshire. How could there still be a Christmas?

“What about Ezra?”

Gran kept frying eggs, ignoring my question.

I sliced a piece of sharp cheese and nibbled at it.

“If we’re heading for Manchester today, could Muncie come?” I hoped to smooth things out between us—if she’d even go. I wasn’t sure she’d go.

“Ask her,” Gran said.

Manchester sparkled in its silvery wrappings. A mantle of snow outlined the trees and buildings. Tinsel garlands ran from streetlamp to streetlamp. Ropes of evergreens snaked around window fronts and door frames.

In the window of the Northshire Bookstore, a plastic Santa wore a gauze mask. Several shoppers wore masks too. At least Muncie wouldn’t be the only one in a mask today.

Muncie had agreed to come, but she squeezed herself so close against the door on the way to Manchester, I worried about her falling out. After Gran left us, though, she warmed up and started acting herself.

Stepping up to a sparkling shop window, I leaned closer to take it all in. An angel was spinning jerkily at the top of a beribboned Christmas tree.

“Look, Nyle,” Muncie said. She spun on her short, bowed legs on the slushy sidewalk, imitating the angel. She would have just fit in that window display, too.

I laughed with Muncie.

A few girls from school caught up to us, said hello, and then moved on. It surprised me, seeing them. I didn’t know anyone from North Haversham who shopped in Manchester before the accident.