people admitted. But saying no to taking Henry’s new
friend—a girl who’d been fretting over what happened
to him on the bus, a girl about whom people said, a little goes a long way—she would not say no to that. “Of course I’ll take her. I’m sure Henry won’t mind.”
“Thank goodness.” Claudine dug out a tiny notebook
from her purse, wrote down her address and ripped out
the page. “I knew I was going to like you. I liked you
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before I met you. Honestly, I think I might be Roxie’s
biggest fan!”
Lane smiled and tucked the paper in her pocket. For
a moment she considered telling Claudine she was wrong
about her, that the person she liked lived only on the
page. But she didn’t bother. Like everyone else, Claudine
would soon find out for herself.
As Lane walked toward her car, she heard Claudine
call out, “Roxie rules!” So she raised her hand, gave a
backward wave, and hurried on her way.
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lane’s conversation with Henry did not go the way
she expected. For one thing, he wasn’t mad at anyone.
Not at Francesca for telling her mom, not at Claudine
for telling Lane, not even at Silas who, it turned out,
had confided to Francesca that the reason he’d yanked
Henry’s hair was to stop Henry from giving him the
silent treatment.
“She sounds like a real peacemaker,” Lane told Henry
after he recounted the details of his friend’s classroom
mediation. First Francesca told Silas not to take Henry’s
silence personally, because he gave everyone the silent
treatment except for her. Then she told Henry that Silas
terrorized people on the bus because he was mad that
no one would sit next to him. The reason for that—
Francesca again—was he smelled like his dog. According
to Francesca, Silas had a very large and slobbery dog.
“I never smelled dog on Silas,” Henry admitted to
Lane. “But I should have sat next him on the bus. And
I shouldn’t have told Francesca what happened. I didn’t
know it would make her upset.”
This was not the takeaway Lane wanted. “You did
everything exactly right. You were brave with Silas and
you were brave to tell Francesca.” She waited a moment.
“How come you didn’t tell me?”
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“Silas made me promise not to. And a promise has
to stick or else. Do we have anything special for snack?”
Sometimes Lane saw bits of herself in Henry that she
liked and sometimes she saw bits of herself that she didn’t.
This was a bit that she didn’t. At six, Henry was already
an expert at changing the subject.
h h
h h
They were running ten minutes late when Lane pulled
up across the street from Francesca’s house. She parked
quickly, at a slant that gave the car an abandoned look.
Henry stayed in the car while she ran across the street
and up the steps. She rang the bell and while she waited,
went through a list of possible apologies for why they
were late. Halfway through the list she stopped; did she
need to apologize? They weren’t that late. Or were they?
Lane wasn’t sure what a normal amount of late was. Roxie
would know. What would Roxie say?
Roxie said, Stop worrying. Lane shook off the worry and rang the bell again. Okay. No one was home. They
were very late. So late, Francesca called her mother and
told her the lady never came. So late, Claudine called
another mother, a more reliable mother, who’d quickly
snatched up Francesca and zoomed off to book group.
This was no way to win friends.
Okay. Not everyone needed friends.
The front door opened a crack, revealing a sliver of a
woman’s face, one anxious eye, half an anxious mouth.
The mouth stayed firmly shut.
“Hi. I’m here to pick up Francesca for book group.”
The sliver turned around so that now Lane was looking
at a shaft of dark-brown hair and a piece of an off-kilter 180
Rules for Moving
tortoiseshell barrette. “Francesca?” the woman called. She closed the door but Lane could still hear her. “Francesca.”
She sounded angry.
A minute passed, then two. How many minutes was
a person supposed to wait? Ringing again would defi-
nitely be ringing too much. Maybe she should knock.
She knocked. Should she go in?
She flashed back to the Roxie letter about the big, unfriendly dad who never came in the house when he
picked up his daughter. The man who stood outside on
the front steps looking threatening. There was certainly
nothing threatening about Lane. She was more like a bird
than a bear. But unfriendly? She had no problem imagin-
ing people thinking that. She considered what a normal
person would do. A normal, friendly person. Probably
they would check to see if the door was unlocked. She
tried the knob. Bad luck, it turned. Should she open the
door and walk inside? That might be what was expected,
that she open the door and go inside and wait there. She
really had no idea.
This was what her readers didn’t understand. In print
Roxie always knew exactly the right thing to do. In real
life Lane was flummoxed by the most elemental codes
of conduct.
The door swung open. Francesca smiled. “I’m here!”
She slammed the door behind her, put her skinny arms
around Lane and gave her a tight hug.
“Aw thank you,” Lane said. Francesca looked up and
smiled but didn’t let go. “Did you say goodbye to—”
“My aunt.” Francesca peeled herself off and rolled her
eyes. “She’s mean. I have two aunts. A nice aunt and a
mean aunt. Where’s Henry?”
Lane pointed to the car.
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Francesca let out a high-pitched scream. When she
was done she said, “That means I’m excited.” She skipped
down the steps and raced to the sidewalk. Lane raced after her to keep up. When they reached the curb Francesca
practically toppled into the street and then, regaining
her balance, started to dart across, oblivious to the car
that had just turned the corner and was now heading
toward her.
Lane sprinted, caught Francesca her by the arm and
pulled her back, just in time. Francesca tried to squirm
out of her grip but Lane held her tight.
The car passed, slowly, the driver, a heavyset woman
wearing thick glasses that made her eyes look huge, glared.
“Sorry,” Lane called to the woman as the car drove
off. “Francesca sweetie,” Lane said. “You need to hold
my hand when we cross the street, okay? And we always
have to look both ways.”
“Okay.” Francesca held Lane’s hand and looked both
ways, many times, back and forth, with every step they
walked, until they reached the curb. When she stepped
onto
the sidewalk, she looked up at Lane and beamed.
“Good job,” Lane said.
Francesca’s smile widened. “Thanks.” She tried to yank
the back door open and when she couldn’t, she banged
on it and screamed. She turned to Lane and calmly said,
“It’s locked.”
“I know. Hold on.”
A dance of bad timing followed, Francesca pulling
on the handle a second before and then, again, a second
after, Lane clicked the electronic key.
“Let me in,” Francesca yelled.
Lane stayed calm. “Wait for the click, Francesca. Not
yet.” And finally, “Freeze.”
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The girl froze. Lane double-clicked. Francesca yanked
the handle. When she opened the door she shrieked again,
then stopped. “That means I’m happy.” She slid in, gave
Henry a hug and buckled up.
As Lane got in the car she saw Henry moving his hands
away from his ears. Francesca’s hands were now neatly
folded in her lap. She had a big voice but tiny hands. A
child’s hands. Lane thought of Claudine’s words, A little Francesca goes a long way. She winced at the thought that someone would say such a thing about a child.
As soon as Lane pulled away, Francesca settled down
and began chatting with Henry, completely unfazed by
his refusal to hold up his side of the conversation. When
Lane next glanced in the rearview mirror, what she saw
in the back seat was a bubbly, high-spirited girl entertaining a totally silent boy.
h h
h h
The mothers were in the living room when they arrived.
Lane quickly took in the scene: the stack of closed pizza
boxes on the dining room table. The pile of paper plates.
The roll of paper towels. Two short towers of plastic cups.
The book group had waited for them to arrive before eat-
ing. A large Brita water pitcher sat beside five bottles of white wine. Two bottles of wine were empty. The book
group hadn’t waited for them to arrive before drinking.
Next to the boxes of pizza were half a dozen plates
covered by mounds of aluminum foil. Cookies, Lane
guessed. Claudine hadn’t told her anything about bring-
ing dessert and she hadn’t thought to ask.
The host mother guided them into the living room.
The rest of the mothers got up and gathered round to
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welcome them. Children were called up from the base-
ment. Pizza was doled out. More drinks were poured.
Henry’s classmates conducted a conversation in animal
voices for reasons not apparent to Lane, which didn’t seem to bother Henry.
Quacking, braying, clucking and mooing children
wolfed down their slices, while Henry ate and watched
the barnyard cacophony play out, as if he were in the
audience.
Among the women, the conversation seemed stuck on
the topic of the unseasonably warm weather. There was no
way for Lane to know if this was the usual pre-book-talk
chitchat but her suspicion was, it was not. Instead it had the feel of something one might choose to discuss in
front of a newcomer who was not yet—and might never
be—one of us.
As Claudine predicted, discussion of the book didn’t
last long. The children were succinct in expressing their
strongly felt opinions. I didn’t like it. I didn’t read it. My mom forgot to get it. The host mother tried various methods of imposing order and extending the discussion but once
it was clear she failed in both regards, she quickly moved on to the business of picking the book they’d read next.
Luckily for Henry the voting process was thumbs up,
thumbs down.
Francesca complained this wasn’t fair. “My thumbs
don’t work right.”
Across the room Lane noticed a woman roll her eyes.
“What about if Francesca votes with her toes?” Lane
suggested.
The room got quiet. A mother whose name Lane had
already forgotten asked Francesca to explain what she
meant by that, her thumbs not working right.
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Francesca replied by rolling her tongue. “I can roll
my tongue.” She rolled it again. “Can you? Not everyone
can. Same thing with thumbs.”
This prompted the children to investigate first, whether
or not they could roll their tongues and then, whether
or not their thumbs worked right. To move things along
the host mother announced, “Okay. My house. My rules.
Francesca can vote however she wants. Toes instead of
thumbs is fine.”
A boy piped up to say this wasn’t fair; he wanted to
vote with his toes too. The rest of the children immedi-
ately echoed his objection.
“Okay,” the host mother said. “Toe votes for all.”
The room filled with the sound of Velcro and pleas
for help with laces and stubborn socks. One boy, who
had been the first to remove his shoes, misunderstood the
delay and asked for help in getting his shoes back on. The vote was delayed further by a communal fascination with
how some second toes were longer than the big toe. An
earnest discussion ensued about whether in those cases,
the second toe should be called the big toe. This was all to say, book group, which started late, ended later.
h h
h h
What Lane was thinking as she turned onto Francesca’s
street was whether or not she should call Dana to re-
port that this morning, when she took a shower, the
pipes had whined so loudly it sounded like they were
about to burst. The reason for her hesitation was that
on whether anything new had gone wrong and Lane
did not want to encourage the habit. She also did not
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want any pipes to burst. Francesca’s voice broke through
her debate.
“What’s happening?”
The scene in front of her snapped into focus. Through
the disorienting flash of emergency vehicle lights, she
counted the police cruisers—one in a driveway, two in
front of a house. “I’m not sure.” As she got closer she saw what she feared: the driveway was Francesca’s. Lights
were on in every room of Francesca’s house. A crowd
was assembled on her lawn.
“Did someone die?” Henry whispered in a voice so
quiet at first Lane thought she had imagined it.
“Your dad died,” Francesca reminded him. She looked
out her open window. “Why is there a police car in my
driveway?”
At the sound of her voice a man on the lawn turned
and started yelling. It was gibberish, guttural, tinged with fury. He sounded unhinged. Was that why the police were
here? Because a madman was on the loose? The madman
met Lane’s eyes and raced toward her car.
“Don’t worry,” she said as she raised the windows and
locked the doors. “He can’t get in.”
Despite the old man’s age and girth, he moved quickly.
He was now so close, Lane could see comb
marks on his
slicked-back hair. He pounded on the door, startling her,
and bellowed nonsense, his voice a growl. She made out
words—“get you,” “get her”—as he pulled on the handle.
Francesca screamed.
Lane kept her voice steady as she reminded Francesca
that the doors were locked. “You’re safe. He can’t get in.”
She turned toward the wild man now banging his fist on
the window and yelled, “It’s locked. You’re not getting
in. Do you hear me? Go away.”
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“She locked the door,” the old man shouted.
“You bet I did,” Lane snapped back.
The man tugged on the handle again, this time with
so much force he fell over backward when he let go. A
policeman ran over. Finally.
Lane turned to the children. “You’re safe. The police-
man’s here. He’ll take the man away. The man will get
the help he needs.”
But the policeman wasn’t taking him away. He was
helping him up, gently, even though now the man hissed—
Lane could hear him through the closed window—“She’s
a devil.”
“Miss Fiske is here,” Francesca said.
Lane turned and saw the teacher. Why was their
teacher here?
The man was back at the window. Spit was coming
out of his mouth. His eyes were filled with fury.
Lane yelled to the policeman, “Please get him to stop.”
“Why is he crying?” Francesca wailed.
The old man yelled back, “Get out, Francesca! Unlock
the door and get out.”
Lane was struggling to understand what was happen-
ing when she heard a knock on her window. Startled, she
turned to see a policeman motioning for her to lower it.
He looked exactly like the policeman who’d come to her
apartment to tell her Aaron died. She felt her stomach
drop and for a brief moment she wondered if she had
fallen through a portal into a time warp, if the policeman from back then had come here now to tell her she’d been
right all along. That it wasn’t Aaron who died. That the
person who died had stolen Aaron’s car. To her surprise,
when she imagined this, she felt relief.
“Ma’am?” He was knocking harder now.
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She was in shock. Of course he was not the same
policeman. He didn’t look anything like that policeman.
Of course Aaron was not alive. She’d identified his body
and buried him. She pressed the button and her window