“Oh, I just thought of one,” I said. “What’s a duck’s favorite candy?”

“What?” Zoe said.

“Quacker Jacks.”

“What are Quacker Jacks?” Zoe said.

“Come on, you’ve never had Cracker Jacks? The popcorn with the—”

“You know”—Zoe patted my arm—“the Laugh Doctor says if you have to explain a joke, it’s not funny.” The Laugh Doctor is a kid’s guide to writing and telling jokes, and Zoe’s had it read to her so many times, she knows it by heart.

“Of course places don’t disappear.” Mom was staring out her window too, even though there was nothing to see but black mountains and black fields and black sky that all just blended together in the dark.

“He didn’t mean like poof disappear,” I said.

“So what did he mean?” Jeanine asked.

“Let’s just wait and hear Jim say what he meant,” Mom said.

“Maybe it’s a trick. Like when Uncle Philippe makes the penny disappear and then it comes out your ear,” Zoe said.

“You think Jim’s going to pull Petersville out of your ear?” I tugged on Zoe’s earlobe.

Sometimes making Zoe laugh makes me feel better, like that time we got stuck in an elevator, and I pretended I thought it was really funny even though I was scared nobody would figure out we were in there, and I’d have to climb out the top and up the cables like they do in movies. Just a tip: if you ever get stuck in an elevator, look for an emergency phone before you think about pulling a Mission Impossible. We’d been in there for an hour before I saw the button.

“Uncle Philippe doesn’t make the penny disappear, nuddy,” Jeanine said. “He’s hiding it between his fingers.”

Mom spun around in her seat. “Jeanine, what did I say about calling her ‘nuddy’?”

Nuddy’s short for nudnik, which means stupid in a language my great-grandparents spoke and pretty much nobody speaks anymore. Mom uses it sometimes, but we’re not allowed. Don’t ask how come she can use it and we can’t. It’s another one of those rules that doesn’t make any sense, and we basically ignore it.

“Is that true, Mommy?”

“I think we just need to wait and see what happens at the meeting,” Mom said.

“No, about Uncle Philippe and the penny?”

“Oh, um, I don’t know.”

“She knows,” Jeanine whispered.

“Jeanine!” Dad gave her his squinty “Watch it” look in the rearview mirror.

Jeanine shot a “What?” look back. “If I ever have kids, I’m going to tell them the truth about everything from the beginning.”

“Good luck with that,” Mom said.

“Maybe you guys misheard Jim,” Dad said, taking a hand off the steering wheel and putting it over Mom’s.

“I don’t think so, honey.” She was still staring at her window.

“I’m just saying, it’s possible,” he said. “Like remember when I thought the school nurse said Zo Zo had a bee up her nose, and it turned out it was a bead.”

“But weren’t you on your cell?” I said. “We were right there in the room with Jim. Besides, what else could he have been saying?”