“That’s the symbol for camping. Making a fire was one requirement. But we also had to pitch a tent. The old kind, with stakes. String up food from a tree branch to keep it from animals. Dig a latrine hole.”

“What’s this?” Cate rubs a thumb over another embroidered circle.

“Pathfinder. You had a little map and had to find your way out of a place in the woods.”

“That sounds a little risky. What if they lost a kid?”

“I think it was a small patch of woods. I don’t remember any of the badges being that hard to get. But I was in, like, fourth grade. They were solid little accomplishments.”

“Don’t you want to keep this?”

“I’m all about getting rid of stuff now. I don’t want to hang on to anything I can imagine myself fondling when I’m ninety in assisted living, showing it to my home healthcare aide. Telling her I was a little pathfinder.”

“Yeah,” Cate says, adding a little social awareness to the conversation, “while she probably arrived here in an overcrowded boat and worked her way up here through the Everglades, then hitching rides with truckers. Washing up in gas station restrooms. Sleeping—”

“Yes. I think we’ve got the picture,” Ricky says. “The thing is, now that I have so much past, it’s like I’m dragging it behind me and I want to lighten the load. Looking back turns out to not be all that interesting.”

“Are you going to see your father for Christmas?”

“Just before.”

“I hate when you go down there. I always think you’re going to be disappeared. Your ear will come back to me in a FedEx envelope. And I’ll have to be one of those powerless, cynical women. Like in an old Joan Didion novel. Drinking at the airport bar. Bleakly scanning the crowd for you.”

“I know. I think about that every time I go. But really, nothing bad is going to happen. Dad picks me up at the airport.”

“Is he still with the amazon?”

“Yes. They’re a pretty solid thing. And she’s not an amazon, just a powerful person.”

That’s all Ricky wants to hear about Seneca. “Can you get me some Ambien while you’re there? I’m almost out. And whatever else looks interesting. Do you remember that yellow cough medicine you got me once, the one where you had to already be in the bed before you took it?”

Cate’s single most important goal in life is not turning into her mother. Still, she takes her money.