Q: How many times had Suzi been warned?

A: Every time she turned around.

Every time she turned on the TV or opened up a newspaper there were stories about perverts who scooped up children, locked them in closets, tortured them, raped them, strangled them, and buried their bodies in crawl spaces. What was a crawl space? And those were just the stories she found on her own, trolling the Internet. She was also warned directly by her parents, by the plastico chick on the evening news, by an Officer Friendly visiting their school who wore a protective puffy suit so he looked like the Michelin man and encouraged the kids to attack him with fury. “If someone tries to grab you, yell fire and run! Kick and punch and poke. Even adults you know might have bad intentions. Teachers, scout leaders, ministers, even Father himself. If an adult makes you uncomfortable, get the hell out of there. Tell another adult, hopefully not another child molester. Don’t be fooled by the ploys: ‘Your mother sent me. Help me find my lost puppy! Want some magic dust? Come to my house and drink beer and watch a dirty movie! Want to sleep in my tent?’ Don’t walk to school, or wait for the bus alone. Don’t ride your bike alone. Never be alone.”

But who would’ve suspected that an old woman living in her own neighborhood, a woman who walked her corgi morning and night, who would’ve thought that this white-haired, slightly humpbacked old woman was the very person Suzi should’ve been on guard against?

Suzi had drawn the task of walking their mini poodle, Parson Brown, each morning before school and each evening after dinner, and her mother made her wear a whistle around her neck so she could blow it if someone tried to mess with her. Like a whistle would stop a maniac! Oh well, it showed that her mom cared about her at least a little. Suzi hadn’t blown the whistle in earnest yet, although she’d huffed on it a few times just for fun.

Her mother had also told her to cross the street when she walked past one particular house in their neighborhood, a house where a registered sexual offender in his thirties lived with his parents because he’d just gotten out of jail. But then she told Suzi that she’d done an Internet search and discovered that all the guy had actually done was drug a woman—probably at a bar—and then, you know, taken advantage of her, so he wasn’t a child predator, which was the kind they really had to worry about, but even so, be careful! Like drugging and raping anybody wasn’t that bad! The way adults could talk themselves into and out of feeling okay about something always amazed her.

As she walked Parson through Canterbury Hills, Suzi played out scenarios in her head—Ted Bundy Jr. creeping up behind her with a fake cast on his arm—she’d kick him in the nuts and run to the nearest house. A bus full of gangstas offering her a milk shake with date rape drugs in it—she’d throw it in their faces and run to the nearest house. A pimpled geek on a bike exposing himself—she’d blow her whistle right in his ugly face. But never once had she imagined an encounter like the one she was about to have, nor could she have imagined the consequences of it.

It was too bad, really, that everyone tried to scare the crap out of kids about hanging out in their own neighborhoods, because if she didn’t always have to be “on guard,” these walks with Parson would’ve been her favorite part of the day.

On the morning she met the old lady she turned right at the top of her driveway so she could walk past her favorite house—the neighborhood’s original plantation, a two-story white clapboard house built in the 1800s. In their side yard there was a bronze tortoise, which the homeowner had ordered online, as big as a VW Bug. As Suzi and Parson walked past, she surveyed the plantation house and the tortoise and the front porch lined with rocking chairs as if it were her own house, just waiting for her to move in.

Their next-door neighbor John Kane, setting out in his Ford Ranger for his insurance business downtown, gave her a wave and a smile. Suzi waved back, deciding not to attribute his friendliness to a sick and twisted plan. From somewhere in the trees above her came a pileated woodpecker’s nutty laugh. She tried to imitate it and strike up a conversation, but the bird must not have been fooled, because it flew away, a shadow fluttering off through the live oak limbs. Its mother had probably warned it about people posing as woodpeckers.

She turned the corner, and she and Parson went down a small hill, passing a group of middle-aged women who walked together every morning, blabbing and hogging the whole road, then she started down Nun’s Drive, staying under the shaded canopy. She stopped beneath the line of confederate jasmine bushes to inhale their sweet smell, and this was when the old lady and her dog cornered her.

She’d seen this particular woman, in various spots around the neighborhood, a number of times on her walks (Suzi didn’t walk the same way every time, per instruction), and she didn’t pay much attention to her (old ladies are interchangeable), but her dog was cute. Parson thought so, too, and always whined and lunged toward the corgi, desperate for contact. Suzi always managed to pull Parson away and keep walking, but that morning in May, when the two dogs were lunging at each other, the old lady spoke up and said something more than the usual “Isn’t it a lovely day?”

“How about we let them get acquainted?” she said in a twangy Southern accent, an accent Suzi’s friends referred to as “country.”

“Buster here’s been awful bored with just me for company.”

Suzi—who’d been daydreaming about a certain boy in middle school to whom she was sending carefully plotted mixed signals, Dylan B. (there were four Dylans in middle school) with his shaggy red hair and deliciously round freckled face, calculating how much time she had to spare to placate this old woman before she was late getting home and would be late to school and unable to walk by Dylan’s locker and pointedly pretend not to notice him—decided it would be easier to go along than to be rude, which was, unfortunately, a decision Suzi often made.

The two dogs did their doggy sniffing thing, Parson Brown gradually becoming less interested, turning her head, then her body away, and the corgi, Buster, became more and more frantic trying to get her attention. Note to self, thought Suzi. Here was proof, straight from the animal kingdom. She was always trying to instruct Ava, her clueless older sister, not to seem so interested in a boy she liked, but would Ava listen?

“What’s her name?” the lady asked. She wore a straw hat; khaki pants; white long-sleeved shirt; and hideous, puffy white walking shoes. Typical old person. Even though it was May, and in the eighties, we have to keep every inch of our flesh covered! It looked like the old lady had no breasts at all under her shirt.

Suzi wore a denim skirt, flip-flops, and a tank shirt, and she felt suddenly like the sleazy little tramp her mother often suggested she looked like without ever actually coming out and saying it. “Are you going to wear that to school?”

The old lady’s blue eyes, in her pale face, were wide and intense. “Your dog’s name?” she said.

Suzi explained the origin of Parson’s name. Christmas, five years ago, they brought the poodle home and they were listening to that song all the time, and it was her favorite, “Winter Wonderland,” the Johnny Mathis version, and she noticed that their new little poodle, sitting on her hind legs, looked just like the snowman they built in the meadow, hence, Parson Brown, even though the poodle was a girl. She tried to tell this in an animated way, even though she was sick to death of the story. They ought to just rename the damn dog.

“Well, isn’t that cute!” said the old lady, and then, with hardly a pause, “Where do you live?”

Suzi told her, thinking that this woman surely knew already, because she’d seen the woman watching from afar when she and Parson ran down their driveway, but maybe the old woman was just being polite.

“I live on Reeve’s Court,” the old lady volunteered, “down at the dead end, white house with blue shutters.”

Suzi made a polite sound, thinking of her soccer uniform and how she hadn’t assembled the parts yet and how angry it made her mother when she didn’t do it the night before, which she never did because she liked to live dangerously, and, okay, it was entertaining, she had to admit, watching her mother getting angrier and angrier while trying not to, so predictable, but she had to make sure her mother didn’t get too angry, or it would quickly stop being funny and start being scary. Whew. It was hard work being thirteen.

“You have a brother, am I right?” said the old lady.

The two dogs were sniffing each other’s faces now, so Suzi decided to give Parson another few seconds. Buster was so cute, with that long sausage body and little flap ears. If she ever was allowed to get another dog, she wanted a corgi.

“How old is he?” the woman asked her, leaning forward slightly. “Your brother?”

Suzi thought it was a rather peculiar question, but what else to do but answer? She told her about Otis, sixteen, and Ava, who was eighteen, and added that she was thirteen.

“I live alone now,” the old lady volunteered. “I moved here a few months ago when my son got a job teaching at the FSU medical school, but then he lost his job—long story—and they moved to Houston and here I still am! I reckon I ought to follow them, but I just bought the house and I like Tallahassee.” She stretched her lips out in a sort-of smile.

The old kook must be as lonely as her dog, telling her whole life story to some random kid. And Suzi could’ve sworn she’d seen the woman for years in their neighborhood, but maybe not. “Oh,” said Suzi.

“Mrs. Archer’s my name,” said the woman. “Nancy Archer. My friends call me Nance.”

Nance? What kind of nickname was that for an old lady? Suzi—full name Suzannah—when she turned eleven, had toyed with the idea of making people call her Zan just to piss them off, but decided it wasn’t worth it.

“Who else lives in your house with you and your brother and sister and doggie?” Nance asked her. Buster was busily sniffing a mailbox and Parson was watching him, looking a little forlorn. This was another abnormal question, but Suzi answered it. Mom, Dad, Granddad. And now she really had to go, she said, or she’d be late for school. Nice meeting you!

“Oh, yes. I’ve seen your granddad. Working in the yard.”

Wait. So Nance already knew where she lived and that she had a granddad. But old people did get confused. Maybe she was just asking to make sure.

Nance suddenly reached out and grasped her wrist. “What’s his name?”

“Granddad’s?”

Nance nodded briskly. Her eyes, shaded by the hat, stared up at Suzi unblinkingly. Why was Nance holding her wrist this way? Should she blow her whistle?

But Suzi was way taller and stronger than Nance. She backed up, and Nance let go. For a second she couldn’t remember his name. He was Granddad. “Umm. Wilson. Wilson Spriggs.”

“That’s what I thought.” Nance let out a hissing little breath.

Wait another minute. What was all this about? Did she have a crush on Granddad? Was that it? Suzi couldn’t wait to tell her friend Mykaila. A crazy old woman had a crush on Gramps! She was stalking Granddad! All adults were insane!

“And your grandmother?”

Suzi didn’t get why Nance kept asking about her family, but she couldn’t think of a good reason not to answer, so she did. “My step-grandmother. She died two years ago.” Suzi didn’t like thinking about that—the hot day of the funeral, sitting under that blue tent in folding chairs and watching her mother crying and hugging people. Suzi’s mother had never known her real mother, but she always told people that she’d loved Verna Tommy like a mother. Suzi’d held somebody’s baby, called Dee Dee, four months old, and gazed into Dee Dee’s face whenever she felt like crying, ’cause who could feel sad when they looked at a baby’s face? Would Dee Dee even remember that day and how Suzi held her?

Nance was staring off down the street, like she was spacing out, not like she was actually looking at something, and she didn’t say sorry about your grandmother, like people usually did, but oh well.

Suzi said again that she had to go, nice meeting you, blah, blah, blah, and Nance suddenly turned to her. “Every time I see you, I think, there goes a smart, beautiful girl with a great future ahead of her. You’ve just got that air about you.”

“Wow. Thanks!” Suzi was used to old people remarking that she was smart and beautiful—and she never minded hearing it again—but she especially liked the bright future part. She planned on becoming a famous soccer goalie, and thought about telling Nance that she was going to statewide Olympic Development Program soccer camp in July, but, for God’s sake, she really had to go.

She said good-bye and ran all the way home, as fast as she could run in flip-flops, and by the time she got home, where her mother was out in the yard, hands on hips, waiting for her, she’d mostly forgotten about Nance, but she was in a good mood the rest of the day.

* * *

Suzi’s life went by in a blur of soccer practice; soccer games; school; homework; texting Mykaila and Sienna and Sierra and ignoring texts from Davis; pretending to ignore Dylan B.; fighting with her sister, Ava; and the dog-walking thing, of course, took up just a tiny fraction of her day, and it was the most boring part, something she protested about having to do, but mostly on principle. It was a relief being alone, watching Parson sniff the same bushes with the same intensity, not taking her cell phone with her even though her mother wanted her to, not having anyone expecting great things from her, or even little things. And she found she looked forward to meeting Nance, the dog lady, whom she ran into now nearly every time she walked Parson, and who always asked her questions and seemed so pleased with the most mundane information.

Nance wanted to know all about her family, so Suzi told Nance that her father worked at Florida Testing and Assessment, and her mother, right now anyway, was a stay-at-home mom; and Nance nodded approvingly. For some reason Suzi kept talking, revealing things she’d never tell most people, had told only Mykaila before, that both Ava and Otis had what is called Asperger’s syndrome, which was bad enough in itself, but what made it worse was that Ava took up all her mother’s time. Got more pity than anyone ever had in the history of time. Their mother was always taking Ava to counseling and different therapies, trying to turn her into a normal person who was going to go off to college and get a job and get married, which was never going to happen in a million years but her mother refused to admit it.

“I see,” said Nance, and nodded as if she did see. She didn’t ask what Asperger’s syndrome was, thank God, because it was nearly impossible to describe. “What about your brother?”

And Suzi told her how Otis was a science geek who did experiments in his shed out in the backyard and nobody ever paid any attention to him except Granddad, who gave him advice and things to read about science.

Granddad seemed to be the one Nance was really interested in.

Nance asked how long Granddad had been living with them—two years—and where he’d lived before that—Iowa, until his wife, Suzi’s stepgrandma, died.

Oh, Nance seemed puzzled, knocked off balance. Where did he live before Iowa?

Memphis, Suzi said, wondering why she cared.

“Oh,” Nance said, now in a totally different way. “Memphis!” She seemed thrilled, and then revealed why. “I lived in Memphis for a long time myself.” She looked at Suzi expectantly. “I’d love to meet your granddad and talk about Memphis sometime.”

“You should stop by. He’s always home.” Suzi wanted to howl with laughter. The poor woman had a crush on Granddad! It was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. Should she tell Nance that Granddad was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s? Three people in her house had some kind of official label, given to them by doctors, but Suzi could label the others, too. Her mother was a helicopter parent, hovering around Ava. Her father had turned into a workaholic; and when he was home, all he did was watch for hurricanes on the Internet. He was also a soccerholic. He went to all Suzi’s games and gave her advice on how to be a good goalie, and most embarrassing of all he coached her from the sidelines. Like he knew anything about soccer. Sometimes it seemed like he cared more about Suzi being a soccer star than she cared herself. Everyone expected her to be the perfect one, the one with no problems, the athletic one, since Otis and Ava were so uncoordinated they couldn’t tie their own shoes.

Suddenly Suzi realized—oh my God—they were standing on the corner of Squire’s Drive and Cook’s Circle right in front of the sexual predator’s house—a boxlike brick ranch house with a boring flat yard. His white van wasn’t there, but Parson was sitting in the perv’s yard, next to the perv’s fire ants. She gave Parson’s leash a little jerk and pulled her into the street, where she sat down next to a tuft of Spanish moss, which was probably full of chiggers and ticks, but oh, well. Suzi’d never actually seen the pervert, but she’d seen his picture on the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Web site, and he was just a normal-looking dark-haired dude—didn’t have squinty eyes or tattoos or a cauliflower ear like the bad guys in the old Nancy Drew books that Suzi read and reread. But it gave Suzi a thrill to stare at his house, where the shades were always drawn, and give it the stink eye.

Just then, on the road behind them, a black SUV—whew, not the white van—came roaring down the hill on Squire’s Drive and then slammed on the brakes like the stop sign had jumped out in front of it, and then peeled out like the driver was pissed off about having to stop for two seconds. What was the big fricking hurry?

“That’s my neighbor. Reverend Coffey. They call him Buff,” Nance said, waving at the person in the SUV, who was already long gone. “He’s a minister, but he drives like the devil!”

Suzi smiled politely. She pulled Parson across the street from the stop sign and the perv’s house, and stood back underneath the McPhersons’s live oak tree, out of the late afternoon sun. Nance and Buster followed. It was almost dinnertime. She could hear the McPherson kids in their backyard pool, yelling, splashing. It smelled like they were having a cookout. Suzi’s family hadn’t had a cookout in ages.

Suzi hadn’t changed out of her soccer shorts and stinky shirt but was wearing her favorite flip-flops, and her feet felt wonderfully unencumbered. The dogs had already sniffed hello. Parson had plopped down on her stomach in some weeds, and she was gazing up at Suzi like, Can’t we get going already? No, Suzi silently told her, we’re going to take our time. Buster leaned forward on his squat little front legs, soft white belly pouching out, and watched some squirrels racing about in the tree like they were on speed.

“When?” Nance asked her. “When should I stop by to meet your family?”

Didn’t the woman know that Suzi was just being polite? She was about ready to say anytime, but remembering her menopausal mother, she thought better of it. On her mother’s recent birthday she’d stayed in bed all day and could barely get up the energy to blow out her birthday candles—a group of four and a group of eight carefully arranged by Suzi, who’d had to carry the cake—one she’d made herself—to her mother’s bedside. Suzi’d had to pitch in and help her mother blow out the candles, which caused Ava—Miss Letter of the Law—to cry because they weren’t following proper birthday-candle blowing-out procedure. Otis leaped forward as soon as the flames went out and yanked the candles out of the cake so that he could be the one to lick the bottoms. Then he and Ava begin to fight over the candles, dropping a few of them on the bedspread, while her father yelled at them to stop. Happy birthday, dear Mommy! All Suzi’s efforts to please her mother were wasted.

“I’ll check and see when you can come by,” Suzi told Nance. Suddenly she felt deflated, but she didn’t really know why.

“What else interests you, besides soccer?” Nance asked her.

“I used to be in drama,” Suzi said. “I love being in plays, but I don’t have time now. I really want to travel, go to Europe. Italy.” I just want to rest, is what she really felt, but didn’t know how to say it. I don’t want to have to work so hard at being perfect. But nobody would admit that out loud because it would sound like bragging. And there were perks that went with being thought of as perfect. She had to fend off the girls who wanted to be her best friend and boys, too, except Dylan B., who looked right through her.

“Italy,” Nance said, nodding. “I’ve always wanted to go there, too. Rent a villa in Tuscany. Sleep late every morning. Walk into a village for bread and fresh vegetables and gorgeous leather shoes. Tour the little churches. How does that sound?”

It sounded great, even the church part. “I go to Faith Presbyterian. My dad’s an atheist and my mom hates having to be nice to people.”

Nance didn’t respond to this revelation. “You and I should go to Tuscany together,” Nance said. “Have a true vacation. No soccer allowed.”

As if, Suzi thought, but she smiled. “Read all day,” she said. “That’s what I’d really like to do.” It was curious that she and Nance barely knew each other and were already talking about going on an overseas vacation together. Okay, curious didn’t even begin to describe it. But, she realized, she liked the idea of going to Italy, even with an old lady she barely knew. Especially with an old lady she barely knew. Her age and her lack of connection to Suzi might make her the ideal traveling companion. She could suddenly see it, the two of them, herself and Nance, reclining on lounge chairs in a lovely courtyard with flowers and a fountain, Nance wearing her usual white shirt and khakis and her funny hat, reading a book, and herself reading one big fat Scottish romance after another. No cell phones or soccer dads or people with Asperger’s talking about Elvis or nuclear bombs. Maybe a couple of good-looking guys standing by the fountain. Young good-looking guys, trying to get up the nerve to speak to her.

“Here’s my phone number,” Nance said, suddenly reaching into her pants pocket and pulling out a little white card. She’d already had the card prepared—she’d written the number in ink. Suzi took the card.

“Ask your mother if it would be all right,” she said.

“If we go to Italy?” Suzi felt a little confused, dazed from the Italian sunlight in the courtyard.

“Let’s start with me coming by for a visit!” Nance said. “First things first. I’d love to talk about Memphis with your granddad.”

Granddad again. Suzi put the card into the pocket of her soccer shorts. She’d throw it away when she got home.

“I had a daughter,” Nance said in a low voice, looking off somewhere down the street, as if she could see her daughter standing in somebody’s front yard.

“What’s her name?” Suzi said, because she didn’t know what else to say, pretending that the daughter was alive, when she could tell by how Nance had said it that she wasn’t.

“Helen,” Nance said. “She died when she was eight years old. You remind me of her. She was a beautiful girl.”

“I’m sorry,” Suzi said. She wanted to ask what had happened—how would an eight-year-old girl up and die—but it wasn’t polite, and did she really want to know, so that she could obsess about it night and day? Maybe a sexual predator got her.

“Her hair wasn’t curly like yours,” Nance said. “Hers was blond. Straight and blond.” Nance reached out her wrinkled hand as if she were going to touch Suzi’s hair, but then she dropped it down by her side again.

“At least you have your son,” Suzi said, proud that she’d remembered Nance’s doctor son, but as soon as she said it, she knew it was a stupid thing to say.

Nance smiled at her, even though it was a mournful little smile. “I do have my son,” Nance said. “That’s right. But I miss my daughter every day.”

Suzi thought about how she could embellish the story when she told Mykaila. She sees her dead daughter, Helen, walking the streets of Canterbury Hills! She thinks I’m Helen reincarnated!

But really, Suzi felt bad for Nance who seemed to be a nice but melancholy woman who wanted to take Suzi to Tuscany. Suzi didn’t throw the card away after all, but she didn’t take it out of her soccer shorts pocket, and these were the lucky shorts she never washed. She left the card there in the pocket like a talisman to remind her that a strange old woman found her interesting enough to invite to Tuscany.

* * *

Fast-forward a few days.

During dinner one night, Suzi gave in to her dark impulses and started tormenting Ava, just a little light torment, even though she knew she shouldn’t, and even though she knew she was doing it because she was tired and pissed at herself for letting Elana, the girl who bragged about her thong underwear, get one past her at soccer practice and her middle finger on her right hand felt sprained, and her knee hurt but she couldn’t complain because her father would overreact, and she’d gotten an isolated lunch at school for answering some twerp’s questions during study time, and, okay, she just needed a little fun.

Suzi made her eyes big and wide, leaned forward, and said, mimicking Ava’s deep voice, “I love Elvis even though he wore thong underwear.”

Ava did not overreact, the word her parents use for Ava’s wild, physical outbursts. She turned red but kept eating her well-salted chicken Alfredo. She reminded Suzi of a long-necked goose.

Otis lay down his fork and grinned in anticipation of a rollicking good sister fight. He came to the table with greasy hair and dirty fingernails, but Mom and Dad had stopped caring.

“Would you look at that tree,” said Granddad, who still had half his dinner left. He sat next to Suzi, looking out the window and eating so slowly he made her feel like a greedy pig. He was talking about the live oak right beside the deck, a tree with long curving branches as thick as most tree’s trunks. Every time he sat down to eat, it was like he’d never seen that tree before. “Isn’t that the most beautiful tree you’ve ever seen?”

“Yes, Dad, it’s the most beautiful tree in the whole wide world,” Suzi’s mom said.

Ava smiled at Granddad, ignoring Suzi, so Suzi kept talking, saying whatever came into her head, because it didn’t matter: whatever she said would do the trick. “Elvis loved black people. Even loved geese. I declare, he’s a saint.”

Suzi’s parents, at opposite ends of the long trestle table, glanced up at each other, their faces sagging with tiredness, and Suzi knew she should keep her mouth shut, and probably would have, but her mother said, “You can’t let us have one dinner in peace.”

“What?” Suzi said. “She always talks about Elvis. Why can’t I?”

Ava couldn’t stand it any longer. “You don’t like Elvis because he’s part Native American! And part Jewish. You’re prejudiced.”

“No,” said Suzi, “I don’t like him because he sings like he has a stick up his butt.”

“I like him,” their father said, a little too heartily.

“I don’t dislike him,” Suzi said. “I just think he has a stick up his butt.”

“Eat. Your. Supper.” Mom’s hair was frizzed out around her face from the humidity in the kitchen, and she slumped over the table like she was 110 years old.

“Don’t you just love trees?” Granddad said, and took a sip of his water. “I think that tree has to be the most beautiful one ever.”

“Yes, it is, Granddad,” Ava said. Miss Suck Up.

“I wonder,” Suzi asked, “did Elvis have a syndrome, too? Like Asperger’s? Ass stickers?”

Otis barked out, “Shut up. Freakazoid foundling.” He meant that Suzi must have been adopted because she didn’t have Asperger’s and had kinky, curly hair.

“Don’t say ‘shut up,’ ” Mom told Otis, then threatened Suzi with lack of phone privileges.

For a moment there was only chewing and swallowing. Parson Brown wound between their legs under the table, snuffling for crumbs. Outside, the evening sky was turning a pale yellowish color.

“This is very good,” Dad told Mom, indicating the chicken Alfredo, which was one of the four dishes she cooked because everyone would eat them. Mom didn’t even look up.

“Yes, it is, honey,” said Granddad, and took an actual bite.

Mom said thanks like she didn’t mean it.

“Tropical storm Alfredo’s headed right for the Panhandle,” Dad went on and said, “St. Marks, maybe.”

“Who cares. It’s not a hurricane,” Otis said. Elbows on the table, he went back to his chicken, bent low and shoveling it into his mouth. He chewed with his mouth gaping open. Both he and Ava had terrible table manners, and Suzi was sick and tired of having to watch them eat, but she decided to practice self-control and refrain from imitating them or saying anything about how gross they were.

“It might turn into a hurricane,” Dad said.

“It’s Alberto, not Alfredo,” Ava corrected Dad, who smiled. He’d been testing them.

Suzi felt stupid that she hadn’t caught Dad’s error, so she tried out another angle on Ava, saying something that could, if she had the right attorney, be construed as an innocent remark in a court of law. “Will you tell your roommate at college that you have a syndrome?” she asked Ava.

Ava couldn’t help rising to the bait. “I don’t have it anymore. I’ve outgrown it.”

“Isn’t that just the most beautiful tree ever?”

“Yes, Dad. The most. Beautiful. Ever.”

When Granddad first came to live with them, all three kids had cut back on their fighting, at least in front of Granddad, but after Suzi noticed that Mom and Dad seemed to be fighting more than ever, she went back to her wicked old ways, and so did the other two. “You don’t outgrow Asperger’s,” Suzi announced primly. “You and Otis will have it your entire lives.” Facts were facts, after all.

Ava’s face scrunched up. The moment had come. What would Ava do? Would she throw herself across the table and try to strangle Suzi? Would she pick up her glass of milk and toss it onto Suzi’s head? Would she scream about how much she hated Suzi’s guts?

Suzi tensed up, waiting for Ava to emit the high-pitched yell she usually gave before she attacked, but this time the yell never came.

Ava thrust her chair back and left the table. Had Ava finally developed self-control? At first Suzi was disappointed, but on her way past Suzi, Ava reached out and gave Suzi’s hair a good hard yank.

“Ava!” Dad said. “No bodily contact.”

Granddad was studying his tree with a pensive expression on his whiskery face, probably wishing he lived in a nursing home.

“I didn’t do anything!” Ava yelled from the hallway. “I just accidentally bumped into her.”

“Liar!” Suzi, relieved to be the one wronged, howled, held her scalp, and burst into tears.

Mom told Suzi that she had provoked Ava and so she was grounded until further notice. “We all see what you’re doing,” Mom told Suzi, “and we all know why you’re doing it.” She looked at Suzi like she hated her.

“How do you know? You can’t read my mind.” Suzi bawled harder and ran from the room and down the hall. She slammed her door shut and threw herself on her bed. Her wailing, now muffled, continued. She’d started the whole thing, it was true, and she’d been mean and even disgusting, picking on poor defenseless Ava, but she felt like she’d exposed some deep truth that they all needed to face, and there was some relief in that.

This was the truth: her own mother didn’t like her.

From Ava’s room, Elvis sang with bold abandon: “Ta-reet me like a fool, / Ta-reet me mean and cruel, / But love me.”

I’m not a bad person, she wanted to tell her mother, and she didn’t think she was, really, only why did she feel compelled to pick on Ava? Sometimes she really didn’t blame her mother for hating her. She promised herself she’d never pick on Ava again. But couldn’t Ava listen to something else once in a while? Even someone else old and embarrassing, like Frank Sinatra?

And her mother had actually encouraged Ava’s obsession with Elvis by taking her to Memphis to see Graceland over Christmas break. Only Ava was allowed to go, and since then, Ava’d been even more fixated on the King, and her mother had come back talking about her own mother, who had left her when she was a little baby, not even a year old. Her mother had started asking Granddad lots of questions about her mother, but Granddad didn’t have answers and her mother cried awhile about that, saying that when she was in Memphis she kept thinking about her mother and feeling down.

Well, hello! Suzi wanted to yell at her mother. How do you think I feel! You’ve never loved me like you do Ava. But she felt bad for her mother, too, because she knew what it felt like to miss your mother’s love.

After a while she started fishing around in her shorts pocket for some Kleenex, but instead she found the card with Nance’s phone number. She held it and looked at it a minute, and then, without even thinking about it, got up and walked back into the kitchen, where her parents were sitting, glaring at each other and then at Suzi. Granddad and Otis had disappeared.

She handed the card to her mother and explained how she’d met this nice old lady out walking her dog and that she was from Memphis and really cool and she really liked Suzi and thought Suzi was special. “She invited me to go to Italy with her,” Suzi explained. “We’re going to stay in a villa in Tuscany. At the end of the summer. Can I go?”

“And miss soccer camp?” said her father, acting like the trip was a joke.

But she wouldn’t let him. It wasn’t a joke, not to her. “I said at the end of summer. August.”

Her mother was looking at the card, and she glanced up at Suzi. “Why would she want to take you?”

“That’s real nice,” Suzi said, hurt, of course, but grimly gratified to have more evidence.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” said her mother. “What I meant was, she doesn’t even know you. It’s kind of strange, don’t you think?”

“No,” Suzi said, even though strange was exactly the word for it.

“She can tell you’re fun to hang out with, I guess!” her mother said, smiling like it hurt her face.

“I guess.”

Her mother sighed, can’t do anything right, and studied the card again. “Nancy Archer. Wonderful name.”

“It sounds made up,” Dad said, but nobody ever listened to him.