He rubbed his unshaven face again, shrugged. Don was probably in his early thirties, but he seemed older, and wiser than his years would suggest.

“And that’s why I couldn’t have my picture in the paper,” Trixie said. “Worst fears realized and all that.”

“I saw Merker’s mother, in Canborough,” I said.

“Isn’t she a treat?” Trixie said.

“She said one of Gary’s old friends had called him, said he’d seen the picture in the Oakwood paper. She passed the message on.”

“A real darling.”

“About that night,” I said. “When the three bikers were shot. Did you see Gary do it?”

Trixie hesitated, shook her head. “No.”

“But he thinks you did? You said he’d be wanting to talk to you about that.”

Trixie was about to say something when Katie ran in, her curly-haired head not reaching the top of the kitchen table. “I’m hungry,” she said. She sidled up to Trixie and pressed her head into her side.

“It is getting to be dinnertime,” Claire said.

“Are you going to live here now?” Katie asked Trixie.

“Well, sweetheart, I’ll stay here as long as I can, but you know I can never stay for a long, long time.”

Katie gave Trixie a squeeze, and then said to me, “Do you have two moms?”

“No,” I said.

“I do,” Katie said, beaming.

“You’re very lucky. I just had the one.”

“Does she come and visit you all the time?”

“Not anymore,” I said.

“Is she dead?” Katie’s eyes danced.

“Yes,” I said.

“You must be sad,” Katie said. “I don’t want any of my moms to die.”

No one could think of anything to say to that.

“Are we going to have hamburgers?” Katie asked.

“Chicken,” Claire said.

“Is it with the icky sauce?” Katie asked.

“No. It’s the sauce you like.”

“Okay,” Katie said, and ran back into the living room.

I looked at Trixie, and I guess she could sense a question. She said, “We’ve told her the truth, at least some of it. That I’m her mother, but I’m the mommy who can only come to visit once in a while. But Claire, even though she’s her aunt, is really more like her everyday mother, so she calls her that.”

“Okay,” I said. My next question for Trixie I blurted out before I considered its implications: “If your problems with Merker disappeared, would you become her everyday mommy?”

Claire’s head went up, and I saw something in her face at that moment. Fear, maybe. Fear of giving up a child she’d come to love as if she were her very own, in every way.