Back on that very first day of school he’d said he hoped the words would remind us that it’s okay to follow your curiosity, even if you don’t know exactly where it will lead—and that the point of life was not to have all the answers, but to never stop asking questions.

And then during the school holidays the prime minister said he’d bring the refugees to Australia. Just like that.

The newspaper Luca left on the kitchen bench one morning had a photo of John Howard on the front page and a caption saying he’d told a bunch of journalists that an affluent country like Australia needed to be seen to be generous. And I wondered if that was the same as “we’ve boundless plains to share.”

He said they’d start arriving the following month, in May. But he didn’t say where they’d stay. It seemed like good things were finally happening, but Pop’s old words came back again—when the good was here, it meant the bad was still coming. . . .

“Fred—are you still going to the movies?”

Sam was at his dad’s on the other side of the city. Luca was working most days, as usual. But the houses that Anika cleaned had people in them for the holidays, so she was home—and getting rounder every day.

“Freddo?”

Anika knocked on the bathroom door. “Fred, honey—are you okay?”

I was supposed to be meeting Keira and a couple of other sixth grade girls at the Athenaeum on Ocean Beach Road. We were going to go see this film, 10 Things I Hate about You.

“Fred, are you okay in there?”

But something had happened, and I couldn’t go.

“I’m going to open the door, okay?”

Anika’s tummy came first and then she poked her head in too.

“What are you . . . ?” Anika seemed to take everything in—me standing at the sink and crying, wearing my new white peasant top, but with a towel wrapped around my middle like a sarong, and my denim shorts in a heap on the floor. With a giant bloodstain on the crotch of them.

“Hold on a second, babe.”

When Anika came back in, she closed the door gently behind her and took a seat on the closed toilet lid. She was holding a square bit of plastic.

“You’re probably my one opportunity to do this, so I want to get it right,” Anika said, and I looked over to see her eyes were shiny and she was smiling. I didn’t know what she meant until she rubbed a hand over her stomach. She meant that Sam and Drumlin were boys, so she wouldn’t get to do this kind of stuff with them.

“They’re lucky,” I huffed.

“Yeah, it can be a pretty lousy deal.”