girls are not the problem. Heather has met Dodger’s classmates before, students from her Gifted and Talented courses, child geniuses all too aware that everything they did was weighed and measured against the presumption of their brilliance. They are a predatory race by nature, these children of the golden mean, terrified of their edges being dulled by the world, measuring the love of their parents against the number of perfect scores they can achieve. Heather always tried to be kind to them, hoping they’d warm to her awkward, sensitive daughter, who approached her own brilliance more as a game than a calling. They might have been good for each other. But always and inevitably, Dodger was a better mathematician, or a worse abstract thinker, and would either be fled from as competition or discarded as deadweight. No; the predatory ones are not Heather’s concern.
It’s the boy.
Dodger is tall for a girl and he’s short for a boy; they present an almost matched set when standing side by side. His hair is brown, but his eyes are the same clear gray as hers, shading toward white around the pupils, until it seems he must be blind; no one with eyes that light can possibly be able to see.
Their builds are similar, with the necessary allowances for gender: his shoulders are broader, his hips narrower; her face is rounder, but the structure of the skull beneath is so alike that it makes Heather’s breath catch in her throat. And their faces . . .
Heather Cheswich has waited twenty years for the doorbell to ring and a red-haired woman with freckles on her nose to appear on her stoop, saying politely that she made a mistake, she wants her daughter back, and she hopes they’ll understand. She prepared herself for legal challenges, for teenage tantrums ending with shouts of “you’re not my real mother.” She got none of those things. She has almost stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop, and now here it is, in the form of a politely smiling young man who looks so much like her daughter that it physically hurts.
Do you even know how much he looks like you? she wonders, and forces herself to speak. “Hello,” she says, dusting her floury hand against her hip before she offers it in greeting. “I’m Heather, Dodger’s mother.”
“Erin,” says the first girl, taking the offered hand and shaking it with perfunctory quickness. “You have a lovely home.”
“Thank you,” says Heather.
“Smita,” says the second girl. “I appreciate the invitation. I didn’t want to sit alone.”
“Nonsense; it’s our pleasure,” says Heather. “The more the merrier.”
It’s the boy’s turn. He takes her hand, shakes, smiles. “I’m Roger,” he says. “I know I was a last-minute addition. I really appreciate your having me.”
He has a New England accent, thick as pancake batter, oozing over every word. Heather freezes again, this time in fear. It’s been years since Dodger was attacked, years since her recovery was complete, but the boy who hurt her was never found . . . and that boy spoke with a New England accent. (The papers reported it as Boston. That was easier. That was the simpler route.)
Roger looks at her with evident sympathy. It’s like he knows what she must be thinking, somehow understands the words she’s too frozen and afraid to say. Dodger’s smile is fading, slipping away by inches.
There are questions here, questions that should be asked, but Heather’s not going to be the one who ruins this day. She refuses. So she smiles again, more sincerely, and turns to her daughter as she says, “Daddy’s out back prepping the turkey, and I’ve got things under control in the kitchen. Why don’t you grab something to drink and take your friends out to the patio?”
“Okay, Mom,” says Dodger, relief flooding her features. She bounces over to kiss her mother’s cheek before turning to her friends and asking, “Coffee, lemonade, or root beer?”
“Root beer,” says Erin.
“Lemonade,” says Smita.
“Coffee,” says Roger, with the sort of reverence most people reserve for the names of celebrities, saints, or vacation destinations. This time, Heather’s smile is sincere. They’re so at ease with one another; there’s no way Roger had anything to do with what happened to her little girl.
There’s just no way.
The Cheswich home isn’t large enough to be considered palatial, but it’s huge, especially for a home presumably maintained on a professor’s salary. Roger looks at the living room with its cathedral ceiling and the hallway with its hardwood floors, and