“I don’t know.” I paused. “But you can’t keep running. You can’t live this way. Maybe, I don’t know, you’ve got something to trade? What do you know about the drug trade, that other biker gang in Canborough? Maybe, you tell the cops everything you know, help them clear some cases, you can cut some sort of deal.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll have to give that some sort of thought. Regardless, I have to move on. I stay here one more night, and I’m gone.”

“Trixie,” I said, stopping and taking her elbow, looking her in the eye. “Face up to it. Do what you have to do, try to start over.”

She pulled away from me, gently. Katie burst out the door, jumped off the porch, and ran toward her mom, shouting, “Chicken chicken chicken chicken!”

Trixie scooped her up into her arms, rubbing noses with her daughter, and the two of them disappeared into the house, the screen door slamming behind them. I stood outside a moment, alone, wondering how this would all play out.

I took the couch.

Trixie had a double bed in the third bedroom upstairs, and she’d whispered to me that if I wanted to share it with her, she’d be a perfect lady if I could be a perfect gentleman.

I thanked her for the offer, but told Claire the couch would be fine. She got out some sheets, even though I told her not to bother, tucked them into the sofa cushions and found me a cushy pillow. I was upstairs, coming out of the bathroom, when I heard Trixie in Katie’s bedroom. The door was open an inch, and the room was dark but for a bedside lamp, and Trixie was sitting on the edge of the bed, up close to Katie, who was under the covers, her head pressed into the pillow, her eyes wide.

“Tell me more about the princess,” Katie said.

“Well,” said Trixie, “once upon a time, there was a princess, with very curly hair, who was only five years old, and she could do anything she wanted.”

“Even stay up late to watch TV?”

“Not that sort of anything. Anything that was hard, that took a lot of work, anything that the other princes and princesses thought would be too much trouble, that was the sort of anything she could do. Like, if she wanted to be a scientist, she could do that. Or if she wanted to be a doctor, or a painter, or a dancer, whatever she wanted to be, she could do it.”

“Was she magic?” Katie asked.

“Some people thought so, but mostly, she was just special. And she was special because so many people loved her.”

“How many people?”

Trixie thought a moment. “Seventeen,” she said.

“That’s a lot,” said Katie. “So what did the princess decide she wanted to be?”

“What do you think she decided to be?”