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“Why?” Charlie asked, stepping on every crack in the sidewalk as they made their way home.

“You know how I’ve been talking about us taking a break from the city? Out in the country. Maybe upstate?”

“Yeah?”

“I found a place. Well, Fin did.”

“Are there buildings there?”

“Are therebuildings?”

Charlie nodded.

“Of course there are buildings. And we’d be living in a big house. Probably bigger than our house here.”

“But you said it was in the country. I didn’t think there were buildings in the country.”

“You’ve been in the country before. Like when we went to Cape Cod.”

He looked at her like she was short a few marbles. “That was Cape Cod. Not the country.”

“Okay, thecountryis just something people say when we mean out of the city. There arebuildingsin thecountry. They’re just spaced out more, and they’re not twenty or thirty or seventy stories tall like buildings here.”

“I like it here. My friends are here.”

“Maybe you can make new friends there for the summer.”

“I thought you said the buildings are all far apart. How would I meet anybody?”

Before she could come up with an answer for that, he proposed a solution. “I could get a bike.”

“A bike?”

Another nod.

“You don’t know how to ride a bike.”

Even before what happened to John, the idea of a bicycle for Charlie had always been out of the question. Riding a bike in the city was to take your life in your hands no matter what your age, but for a little kid? Okay, maybe some parents were fearless—or reckless, depending on one’s point of view—when it came to this issue, but Annie was not one of them.

But, yeah, having a bike in the country was a possibility and was something that might close the deal with an as-yet-unconvinced Charlie. Except, who’d teach him to ride it? Annie’d never had a bike, but she recalled John saying he’d had one as a kid. He could have taught Charlie. Yet one more thing to make Annie feel she wasn’t up to the task. But she’d have to do her best.

“Yes, you could have a bike.” He raised two small fists in victory. “But I can’t promise that we’d bring it back to the city.”

Charlie shrugged, figuring that was a battle for another day. He’d won the first round. “When are we going?”

Annie felt a small tingle run up her spine. She couldn’t recall the last time she had felt anything close to excitement.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

Annie could barely get to sleep that night, she was so wound up. She’d helped Charlie pack, and very early on gave up trying to get him to be selective about which toys he wanted to bring and decided to let him toss into his bags whatever he wanted. Annie did a sweep of the medicine cabinets and packed everything she might need for both of them. In the morning, with Charlie in tow, she would go to the garage and pick up the car, then bring it around and prayshe could get a spot on the street near the front door. Sometimes miracles did happen.

She slipped into bed after eleven, and when she couldn’t at first get to sleep, she turned the light back on and reached for one of several copies ofTheNew Yorkerthat littered the top of the bedside table, taunting her because she could never get to them. She was halfway through a movie review when she felt herself nodding off.

Annie killed the light and put her head down onto the pillow.

At some point, she felt a stirring beside her. A familiar feeling. One she had not experienced in several months.

She turned over in bed and opened her eyes. It was dark, but the streetlamps’ glow filtering through the blinds allowed her to see.