Inside, Joni and Max had disappeared up to the mezzanine level. I asked a nice-seeming woman if she’d watch the boys while I ran upstairs to use the bathroom.

Truth be told, I didn’t need the bathroom. I needed to see my former students, and more important, I needed them to see me.

Upstairs, maybe ten or twelve of Montague’s best and brightest had pushed several tables together, making one giant study area. Backpacks were slung over chairs, textbooks cracked open, laptops powered up.

“Hey, guys,” I said, feigning surprise upon seeing them.

The kids were polite, but there was something restrained about their response, something guarded. In order to cut through this weird tension, I introduced myself to the one student I didn’t know. “I’m Mr. Welch.”

“Yes, I know,” the new student said.

Oh, I thought. He’s heard of me.

He extended his cold, damp hand for me to shake and said, “I’m Dr. Thorne.”

I did my best to hide my reaction, but a jolt shot through my body as if I’d stepped on a live wire and been subjected to a thousand volts. There he was. Dr. Prince Thorne. The youthful, strapping, lightly freckled, redheaded wunderkind who was my replacement.

Rumor had it that when Dr. Millicent Vandeventer first introduced Dr. Prince Thorne to the student body of the Montague Academy, and after reading his lengthy educational pedigree (Yale, Princeton, Harvard), the honors, the accolades, and after holding up the galley for his first novel, entitled Planet Stasis, she said the following: “I want to be perfectly clear—I got him to commit for one year. Now it’s up to you to convince him to stay forever.”

On your best day, you think you’re irreplaceable. You think no one can do what you do better than you do, especially when you’re doing it in the way that only you can. (Diagram that sentence, Dr. Thorne!) But then one day you realize you were wrong.

In those brief moments as I stood before them, it was clear: These students all revered him, and they didn’t miss me.

I excused myself by saying, “Sorry, I hear one of my boys calling.”

Of course no one was calling. But it got me out of there.

So I was at sea, lost, and in a foul mood when I clacked the large iron knocker at the Ashworth/Brody house. When a frazzled Anna Brody answered the door, she smiled nervously and called out to a crying Sophie, “Honey, they’re here!”

From far off, Sophie let fly with a wail like a World War II air-raid warning.

Anna sighed and said, “I’m sorry, it’s just been one of those days.”

Clearly. Some pudding or jelly had spilled on Anna’s cashmere sweater. Her left cheek was bright red, as if it had been pinched. I mentioned we could come back at a better time.