“Thank you.” She handed Mrs. Lombardo some bills. The old lady gave Ronnie a wan smile, gathered her industrial-size handbag from the kitchen table, and excused herself with only a few murmurs of conversation. It was one of the reasons Ronnie liked the lady—Mrs. Lombardo never looked at Ronnie’s overly made-up face with skeptical curiosity, nor did she ask what sort of job Ronnie worked at that only required her to be gone for a few hours at a time. Ronnie felt silly for being nervous. Mrs. Lombardo just wanted pocket change for more lottery tickets.

She sat down at the counter barstool and pulled Esme on her lap. “What do you want me to make you for dinner in honor of your first day of school, baby? Anything you want.”

“Anything?” Esme’s eyes, which were sometimes chocolate brown but today were more of a honey gold, widened. “How about candy?”

“Not candy for dinner.” Ronnie poked her leg. “I know! What about pink pancakes?”

“You can make pancakes pink?” Esme frowned. “No, Mommy. I don’t think you can.”

Ronnie loved when Esme’s know-it-all attitude shone through. If they’d stayed in Cobalt, would Esme be so spunky, so happy, so smart? Ronnie sincerely doubted it.

“There is a way we can make pink pancakes,” she said, and then slid Esme off her lap and walked to the cupboard. Several boxes of food coloring were stashed behind the salt and pepper shakers—Ronnie had gone through a baking phase a while back but dropped it when most of her cakes fell flat. She opened one of the boxes and extracted a tiny vial with a red cap. “You can help me.”

Ronnie reached for a mixing bowl and a spoon and the instant pancake batter, then started dumping in the mixture. “So tell me about school. Are you excited to go back?”

“Uh-huh.” Esme was concentrating hard on squeezing a drop from the food coloring vial.

“Are all the kids nice? Did you make any special friends?”

“They’re nice. Well, except for this— Oh, so pretty!” The batter was now turning pink. “Oh, Mommy, I love it!”

“What were you going to say?” Ronnie asked. “Except for this— Was there a kid who wasn’t so nice?”

But Esme wasn’t on that train of thought anymore. “Do you think Daddy Lane will eat them? Boys don’t eat pink things, Mommy.”

“Daddy Lane eats things that are pink,” said a voice behind them, and there was Lane, bursting through the door, his ruddy face stretched wide with a smile.

“You will?” Esme said, looking delighted. “Pink pancakes?”

“Pink pancakes?” Lane smiled in question at Ronnie. “That’s what we’re having for dinner?”