The only aspect everyone could agree on was they had never heard so many sirens or seen so many flashing lights. “That’s the good part of it,” Tess Windsor said, already clinging to the bright side. “You call 911 in the Heights, say a child has been hurt, and they send the world.”

Indeed, two fire trucks, two EMS wagons, an ambulance from Long Island College Hospital, and another ambulance from Kings County Hospital all had arrived within minutes. My favorite person that night was Claudia. Normally a gossip artist of the first rate, she told those gathered, “We don’t know. Nobody knows. And until somebody knows, maybe we should, I don’t know, just shut up and pray.”

Prayer works, or so it seemed. Four stitches under the chin. The kind that dissolved. A battery of tests given by the best of St. Vincent’s Hospital. The diagnosis? A much earned headache that was treated with over-the-counter children’s Tylenol. A two-night stay “just for observation” in the Frederick J. Ashworth Pediatric Wing.

News that good didn’t stop people from talking. Rumor had it that Philip Ashworth was out of town. But rumor also had it that he’d beaten the ambulance to the hospital. Rumor had it that Philip had insisted on the barrage of tests that, according to rumor, may have been his way to alleviate any guilt for having been with his mistress/lover when Sophie fell.

Before questioning the ethics of what I was about to do, consider how, prior to the eighteenth century, children were personas non grata in nearly every culture. Keep in mind how the Aztecs would sacrifice children to ensure a good harvest, and how in London during the late nineteenth century, the lucky children slaved away in factories while the orphans begged and stole in the city streets. Contemplate the various cultures where infanticide was commonplace, or even old China, where girls’ feet were bound, and contemporarily, consider those young Indonesian children who use their small fingers to sew the seams of Nike soccer balls. This was not the coal mines of Kentucky, nor were live grenades about to be taped into my boys’ hands before they were sent into enemy Vietnamese territory, nor would my boys be pierced by hooks and hung by their nipples on their twelfth birthday like the Sioux Indians of South Dakota. The truth was that in the history of children, few children had ever had it as good as Teddy and Sam Welch. This made it possible for me to dial the phone and force Teddy to speak into the receiver.

Teddy said in a shy voice, “Can . . . uhm.”

“Say, ‘This is Teddy. May I speak with Sophie, please?’ ”

Teddy said, “Hold on, my dad’s yelling at me.”

“I’m not yelling . . .”

Teddy dropped the receiver and ran out of the kitchen. I sheepishly picked up the phone and forced a laugh. “Hello?”

“Yes, who is it?”