“How do you know what’s best for him?”

Gran got up and brought butter and maple syrup to the table. Our neighbors, the Hulls, made our syrup. What about this year? Would they boil sap? Would it be safe to eat? I brought the pancakes and steamed apples to the table and sat down.

“Gran, how can you even think about letting Ezra leave?” I forked a stack of pancake sheep onto my plate. “He’s the first person I ever met who likes your cooking.”

Gran buttered her sheep. “He’s not paying me any compliments. Fifteen-year-old boys eat anything.”

I took a mouthful of sticky pancakes.

“Thirteen-year-old girls, too,” Gran said, watching me shovel in my stack of sheep.

“Muncie would rather starve than eat your cooking.”

“I don’t have to listen to this. Unless you want to start fixing all the meals.”

“Would you eat pancakes three times a day?”

Gran cackled.

She got up to pour herself more coffee, nearly tripping over Bayley sprawled across the linoleum. “Darn cat. Always underfoot.”

“Gran!” I picked Bayley up. We used to let him out anytime he asked. But I worried about his eating contaminated mice, and so we kept him in most of the time now.

“Forgive me,” Gran said. “His royal mouse catcher deserves to sleep anywhere he pleases, even if he has to trip an old woman to do it.”

I poured some spicy apple slices onto Gran’s plate. “Sit down and eat,” I ordered.

Gran slathered butter over a line of sheep, then covered the pancakes with spiced apples. “We got Ezra to come out yesterday while you were gone.”

I sagged in my chair. “I wanted to bring him out.”

“You did,” Gran said. “He did it to prove to you he could.”

Gran cut off the head of a pancake sheep. She speared an apple with her fork, popped the mess into her mouth, and chewed. “Nyle, you better eat your sheep before Caleb comes along and drives them onto my plate.”

Between the two of us, every pancake disappeared, even the blackened ones, except a few I set aside for Ezra. I used my finger to wipe up the last of the spicy apple juice from my plate.

As Gran cleared the table, a commotion sounded in the hallway.

It was Ezra. He was coming toward the kitchen.

“Go help them,” Gran said. “I’ll bring Caleb out and get the sheep loaded to take to Lemmy’s.”

“What about chores?”

“Done already,” Gran said.

I suddenly felt shy and embarrassed, after the scene with the dog the other night. Ezra wouldn’t want me to come down the hall to help. I busied myself cleaning the kitchen instead.

“Do you like our surprise, Nyle?” Mrs. Trent asked from the hallway.

I turned toward her. Her eyes looked fresh and bright, like she’d slept well. The circles under her lower lids weren’t nearly so dark, and Gran had found her a nicer dress to wear.

She turned back toward Ezra. “Almost there.”