“I’d kinda like to get back home.” Jérôme has this new computer game where you each pick a character and give her a job and a house and a life. Jérôme likes managing the family budget; Rat likes arranging the furniture.

“Look where we are,” Vanessa says. “The shoe store’s right around the corner.”

They are standing in a tiny square tucked in an angle just behind the big shopping streets. It’s called the place des Orfèvres—a hidden place Rat’s never noticed before. The square’s centerpiece is a medieval fountain crowned by three frogs, out of whose mouths the water flows. The frogs are made of the same local marble that paves the downtown sidewalks and arcades—an orange-purplish marble with white streaks. They are square-cut, childishly rough, like grotesques on a cloister pillar.

Rat goes over to dip a finger in the fountain—an instinctive good-luck gesture. Rat’s outgrown most of those loserish sort of tics that other kids tease you for, but she still retains a few. Running water is always magic. Marielle has a friend who’s a water-diviner. The word for “water-diviner” is almost the same as the word for “witch.”

There’s a man sitting on the bench by the fountain. He has a dog on a leash. The dog’s some kind of Border collie: speckled black-and-white, low to the ground. Its eyes are motley: one light brown, the other an eerie pale blue. It doesn’t look especially sociable, but Rat doesn’t mind. She loves animals. She’s young enough still and maybe vain enough to think she can stick her head in a crocodile’s mouth with impunity.

Rat bends down to stroke the dog, and it utters a low warning growl. For years afterwards, she will think, If only I hadn’t gone over and patted that dog, our lives would have been so different. Its owner speaks. “Girl, you should never touch a dog you don’t know.”

The dog glances briefly at the man as if he’s been maligned, and looks away again. But Rat’s recognized the high-pitched, slightly nasal voice. She’s like that. By now, she knows not to let on, mostly. People tend to think you’re some kind of stalker if you tell them, I saw you at a bus stop three years ago; you were wearing a red hat.

He is rougher, more down-and-out than when Rat last saw him. His black jeans and T-shirt have faded to the color of rust and it smells as if he’s been sleeping in them for a while.

“Your daughter’s very trusting,” the man says to Vanessa.

“Hummmph,” grunts Vanessa. “Only with animals.”

And now he recognizes them.

“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” Takes a moment to place them. “Didn’t you used to live up in Brix?”

“We go to Brix from time to time,” Vanessa admits.