“Kate, good, it’s you.”

I turned to find Frida Fabritz walking toward me, a forced smile on her face. “Sorry to grab you like this, but, please, I need a favor.”

I tried to beg off her request, but Frida said, “I’ve got a prospective buyer with all sorts of questions about the neighborhood, and I thought, Who better—”

“You don’t want me to talk to them,” I said. “Not with the mood I’m in.”

Behind her fake smile, fear was in her eyes. Perhaps for the first time, I was catching a glimpse of the real Frida Fabritz. In recent years, several large realty companies had moved into the Heights, and Frida had begun to feel the pinch. In that moment she appeared desperate, and I have a soft spot for desperate people. Besides, my thinking went, a Realtor in the Heights who owed me might one day be a good thing. So I pulled the boys back in the direction we’d come.

Once, during a job interview, I was asked if there had been anything in my past I regretted. At the time I couldn’t think of a thing, not one single thing I wished I’d done differently, so I said lamely, “Sure, I’ve made mistakes, yes, but I don’t regret them because of what I’ve learned and I’ve been bettered from having made them.” And while the person interviewing me was unimpressed, I knew my answer to be, if vague, sincere. Funny, now, what I remember thinking as I trailed after Frida—you see, she was already smiling again, which made me wonder if I’d been duped—and that was when I said under my breath: “This may be my first real regret.” Frida turned back toward me and asked what I’d said. “Nothing,” I replied. She paused before saying with cheeriness, “Great idea, by the way. The sled.” Then she laughed nervously, a mixture of panic and glee. I’d never seen her behave this strangely, and then I saw why.

The woman stood just outside the doorway of Heights Realty, facing the other way, so I noticed her posture first. She had the long neck of a dancer. And when she slowly turned in my direction, she smiled as if she’d been expecting me. I may have gasped, because she was, quite simply, the most striking woman I’d ever seen.

“Kate, I’d like you to meet . . .”

The woman extended her hand. The leather of her glove felt warm and expensive; my gloveless hand was numb from the cold. She said in a whisper, “I’m Anna. Anna Brody.”

“Anna’s thinking of moving here,” Frida said. “So I thought who better to tell her what it’s like in the Heights?”

I don’t remember what all I said, but when I finally stopped talking, Frida joked that I secretly worked for Heights Realty. “I don’t work,” I started to explain when Anna Brody smiled. “No, you don’t work. You’re just a mother.” She said this with surprising affection and irony, and without saying it, she seemed to hint that we were the same.