Josie felt an unexpected surge of love and need, and she had to put her hand over her heart to still the swell. Tyler hated kisses, and yet he had figured out a way around the sloppy mouths and close proximity, figured out a way to make them soothingly numerical.

“Tyler,” she said.

He had turned back to the shelves, and although she wanted to grab him, to gather him up into her arms, she stayed where she was.

“Tyler,” she said again. “It’s okay to count, and to measure.” She needed him to know this, needed him to feel her kiss him back. “Don’t let anyone ever tell you it’s not.”

He stood where he was, staring at the giant boxes of cereals, when a woman pushing a shopping cart stopped to baby-talk to Maddy. She was about Josie’s age, and a baby, a boy, was sitting in her cart, gurgling to himself and waving a set of plastic keys.

The woman smiled. “How old is your baby?” she asked.

“Fifteen months.”

“She’s so cute,” she said. “Daniel is sixteen months.”

Josie smiled at the boy and tried to get Maddy to wave.

“And your son?”

“He’s seven.”

“You’re lucky to have a boy and a girl.”

Usually Josie was quick to say that the kids weren’t hers, but this time she realized she felt a deep longing for this.

“I have another boy; he’s five,” the woman said.

Josie smiled and encircled Maddy’s ankles with her thumb and forefinger.

“Is your son in first grade?”

“Second.”

“Tinfoil,” Tyler said, and put the box in the cart.

“Your mommy says you’re in second grade,” the woman said. “Do you like it?”

Josie’s heart quickened, and Tyler looked at his feet.

“Do you have a favorite subject?”

“The moon is two hundred and thirty-nine thousand miles from Earth,” he said.

“Well,” the woman said. “You’re a smart little boy.”

Tyler shifted his weight from foot to foot. “We need paint,” he said.

“Yes; okay,” Josie said. She smiled at the woman and wheeled the cart down the aisle. They found the silver spray paint, duct tape, a few more bags of candy, and a pack of metallic markers, and Josie unloaded the cart and paid the checker. On the way out, Tyler stopped in the parking lot.

“She thought you were my mommy,” he said.

“Yes; she did.”

He nodded. “It’s okay,” he said. “I think it’s okay.”

She didn’t say anything, but she felt her heart expand in her chest, aching to hold tight to his.

*   *   *

When they got home, Josie helped Tyler get into his space suit. It was really just a gray sweat suit, but it didn’t scratch at him, and it was the right color. She figured she could write NASA on the front with a black marker, duct-tape some metallic stripes, and no one would question him.