“Jeez, does he always have to be so sour?” said Marlin.

“I like him,” said Charlie. “He says what he thinks and he never makes me nervous.”

Fiona was startled by this comment. Did the rest of them make Charlie nervous? Did she? Did she hover? Part of her was constantly tweaking her job of taking care of all of them. Maybe she was being too nice to Charlie, too solicitous. Maybe she should bark “none of your business” more often. It seemed all she ever did was worry that she was inadequate to the job of keeping them all afloat and that she was doing it all wrong.

But she had one respite from these constant worries. One place she could retreat to in her head. And that was daydreaming about Davy. There was some kind of magical electrical current between them so that she could swear she knew where he was in the school at any time. One day she was sitting idly on one of the tree stumps in the yard in front of the school waiting for the bell to ring when she thought, He’s going to walk around the corner of that building right now and he did. He saw her there, her face full of surprise at her own prescience, and he smiled at her. She was so startled she didn’t have time to turn away and there was no one she knew nearby with whom to engage in conversation so she just sat, her mouth slightly open, until he came up.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” she said back, her face getting hot.

“You’re new this year, right? You and your sisters. My little sister is in class with Natasha. She says that you guys came from Borneo.”

“Yep,” said Fiona.

“Wow,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you I thought that was pretty cool. Borneo.”

“Thanks,” she said, then wanted to give herself a kick as she thought what a stupid thing that was to say. Thanks for what?

“I’m Davy Clement,” he said.

“I know,” she said, and then wanted to give herself another kick. How would she know unless she had asked about him? “I’m Fiona McCready.”

“I know,” he said, and smiled again as if they’d made their first joke together. “So what do you think of St. Mary’s By the Sea?”

“I haven’t seen much of it. Mostly just the grocery store when I do the weekly shopping.”

He looked surprised. She was so rattled she was making small and silly mistakes after being careful for weeks. What fourteen-year-old did the grocery shopping for her family every week?

“I like to grocery-shop,” she elaborated, hoping that would make it sound more normal. “So that’s sort of become my chore.”

“That’s cool that your parents let you,” he said.

“My parents are dead,” said Fiona flatly. She still had trouble saying it so baldly, as if by saying it, she lowered the coffins. There had been no bodies to bury so her parents’ death remained in many ways abstract. Something that could be changed, even though she knew better. Stating aloud that they were dead felt disloyal. It seemed like a willingness to kill that small barely discernable hope.