“You’re going to a dude ranch for vacation this summer,” Jillian reminded him. “That’s new. That’s, like, amazing.”

He shrugged as if it wasn’t that big a deal, but his expression betrayed him. “In Montana. For a week. Just me and my mom . . . and her cell phone,” he said, glum again.

“Maybe you could bribe a horse to step on it.”

“I’ll bring extra carrots.”

“There’s always college.”

“What?”

“You could go away to college,” she said, but it was a lame suggestion. College was years away. An endless stretch of time.

“What about you?”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Jillian said.

“What if terrorists attack Washington? What if there are dirty bombs and smallpox spores? You’d go then,” Mark said.

“That’s not going to happen.”

“The countryside would be safer.”

“We’re safe,” Jillian said, and in that moment, she felt as though they were.

“Instead of knocking down trees, I should have made bomb threats,” Mark said.

“That was you?”

“Your uncle too. We ran into each other a couple of times. He’s cool.”

“Uncle Terrance?” The idea of the two of them in the park, pulling up trees, made Jillian laugh. “Why?”

“Something my mother said.”

“What?”

He shrugged. “Never mind.”

“What?”

“How the trees were half the charm, and we’d have to move if people cut them down.”

“So you thought you’d yank them all up? That’s so stupid.”

He shrugged. “Yeah. I guess.”

She swatted him with her sketch pad. “It’s not so bad here.”

“Some things are okay,” he said, swatting her back, and Jillian had a feeling that one of those things might just be her.

TED SAT ON THE PORCH, LOOKING UP FROM HIS BOOK NOW AND THEN to see the progression of the Coxes’ yard sale. Ed Zyck loaded an easy chair into his trunk. Margaret Chen admired a TV. He’d imagined this scenario when the Davenport-Gardners’ house was demolished on New Year’s Day, and here it was, really happening.

He turned the page of the book on his lap, Trees of North America. He was in his element. He ought to have become a botanist or a historian, some kind of a researcher, instead of a hack writer who churned out stories about Foggy Bottom University bores. Then the thought struck him: he was finally going to write a class note for the alumni magazine. He had a new position in town and he was proud of it.