“Wow,” said Davy. “Who do you live with?”

“Oh, we have a legal guardian named Al Farber,” she said. “We were going to live with my great-aunt Martha but she died too.”

“That’s a…you must…how long ago did your parents die?”

“Well, it’s been over a year. So it’s not, you know, fresh.”

“Still, I guess you don’t really get used to it.”

“No. Well, you sort of do and sort of don’t.”

He nodded. “Was it a car accident or something?”

“Tsunami.”

“Wow. That one in Thailand?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow. I saw that on the news. That’s horrible.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Well, I was just going to ask you if you wanted to walk into town after school today and I could show you where the Fudge Fairy has her stand. That’s what she calls herself. She’s been around forever. She makes fudge and bow ties for a living. I thought you might not have found it yet yourself. It’s kind of tucked away on a back street. She makes a hundred and twenty-two kinds of fudge, not all at once, but she has that many flavors concocted and she rotates them. She usually has about a dozen kinds on the stand. It’s the best fudge you’ve ever had.”

“I can’t,” Fiona said quickly. “I have to watch my sisters after school.”

“Oh,” said Davy, looking embarrassed as if he’d taken a chance and now found he had read her wrong after all. He backed up two steps. “Does your guardian work or something and so you do the after-school care?”

“Yeah, sort of.”

“Okay, well, no problem.” He took two more steps back, turning slightly to go.

“I really do,” she said. “Otherwise I would. I’d like to see the fudge stand. But thanks for asking.”

“That’s okay,” he said, and sauntered off. “Maybe some other day.”

“Okay,” she said, but she said it quietly because she was thinking, What other day?

When would she dare to go off somewhere after school and not worry that someone was going to get treed by a bear or lost in the woods? She should have asked if he wanted to meet when she was in town to do the grocery shopping already. She left the others with Marlin then. Marlin was almost thirteen. Why couldn’t Marlin watch Natasha and Charlie after school if she could watch them on Saturdays? Why hadn’t she thought of that?

“Some other day,” she muttered again hopefully but he was out of earshot.

After that she didn’t see him for a while. She didn’t know if he saw her and avoided her or if it was just happenstance that they weren’t running into each other as much.

She had other things to think about anyway. Something was going on with both Marlin and Miss Webster. She didn’t know if the two things were connected but they both went around with the same air of suppressed excitement.

One day at supper Fiona said, “What is going on with you, Marlin?”