We stayed home from school that Monday. Pop watched us, even though Sam barely left his room. When I went into mine that afternoon, Drumlin’s crib was gone. I didn’t know where Pop had put it, but my desk was still pushed up against the window to make room and I didn’t put it back. I couldn’t.

Anika called late in the day—I heard Pop murmuring gentle words into the phone, and then he was waving at me to go and get Sam.

“Your mom’s on the phone,” I said.

I watched Sam adjust his glasses, use his sleeve to wipe his nose, and shuffle out of his room to take the phone from Pop. When he had it pressed to his ear Anika started talking right away, and Sam started shaking. Pop went over and put a big hand on one of his bony shoulders as it shook from crying.

“When are you coming home?” Sam asked.

As they said their goodbyes I put my hand out, sure that either Anika or Luca would talk to me next.

But then Sam was hanging up and turning toward Pop and accepting his big arms coming around him in a hug.

I clasped my hands behind my back, leaned against the wall, and tucked my chin into my chest, not wanting to look up.

“Sam’s asleep,” Pop said later, when it was just him and me in the living room.

I watched him gently lower himself onto the sofa, then put his head back as he closed his eyes.

“What will they do with him?” I asked. “Drumlin, I mean.”

He seemed to wince before he said, “I don’t really know, Fred—I’m sure they’ll take care of it, but maybe best not to think . . .”

“You know, the Earth only spins because there’s nothing stopping it.”

“What?”

I shrugged. “Mr. Khouri told us—he said because there’s no restrictive force trying to slow the Earth down, it just never does. The Earth keeps spinning because it always has.”

“I . . . I did not know that.”

“What do you think it’d take to stop the spinning?”

Pop rubbed his eyes again. “I don’t know, Fred, but it’s getting late.”

He didn’t understand. And suddenly Pop looked so tired to me, sitting there rubbing his face and looking older than I’d ever seen him. Older than he’d looked when Mom died, the day I came home and found him crying.

I said I was going to bed, but I only stayed in my room until I heard the screen door slide shut and then I counted to one hundred, guessing how long it’d take Pop to go down the garden path to his apartment.