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‘Yes, well,warcraft gold, happy birthday, my dear Noelle!’ She kissed him on his cheek and then threw one arm around him
and kept it there. I could see he’d been working for her for years.
He pointed at her but looked at me to tell me this: ‘I love her!’
‘Yes, but, darling, you left your Diet Coke in the freezer and it exploded again.’ Sarah would not smile. Or
rather, she would not smile big.
I turned with Edward and Mary-Emma as we headed back to the kitchen. Edward was shaking his head. ‘He’s
always doing that with the Diet Cokes,’ he said.
I went to warm a muffin in the microwave for Mary-Emma, and Edward suddenly stopped my arm. ‘Look,cheap ragnarok zeny,’ he
said. ‘There’s a moth in there.’ Without putting the muffin in, he pressed On to see what the moth would do. This
penchant for torture, in the guise of curiosity, was the same sick experimentation of certain doctors, of bored
boys, of lunatics, and it was in Edward, too. The moth was not singed. Neither did it flutter and combust, as a
heartless data-seeker might have predicted. As I myself had predicted. Had I missed my own latent calling as
Mad Inept Scientist’ The moth did nothing at all, just stuck whole to the plastic wall of the oven. Probably the
poor creature had already been dead for some time. I cleaned it out with a paper towel,cheap rs money, then warmed Mary-
Emma’s snack.
‘Well, I wanted to see,’ said Edward.
Thoughts of Bonnie preoccupied me. I dreamed of her at night. She was always approaching to say something
but then said nothing. She floated. She zoomed. She burst forth from adjacent rooms. There were no doors and
then suddenly one would appear and swallow her. She would emerge through a wall. She was always empty-
handed. She was gaining weight. Her clothes were the pale gray of plastic copy machines and desktop printers.
She would not speak. I couldn’t get her ever to say a word.
At the Thornwood-Brinks’ the phone rang a lot, and when I answered it there was a long pause before the hang-
up. Then for a while the phone calls seemed to cease.
Worried that Bonnie had taken her own life, I googled Bonnie Jankling Crowe again, expecting to find, as
ever,Psu Meseta, nothing. I instead found a notice from a Georgia newspaper about someone named Bonnie J. Crowe who
had been found murdered in an apartment in Atlanta. No known suspect. No evidence of robbery. Investigation
pending. My heart leaped up. Of course! I thought. This would be exactly the sort thing that would happen to
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poor doomed Bonnie. Here I was worried she was suicidal when in fact getting herself murdered would be more
her style.
But how would she have had the money to get to Atlanta’ Might she have sold her new gold watch for which she
had traded a child and been ushered into a retirement from if not all happiness at least all things Mary’ I went on
eBay and discovered a gold watch for sale there by someone who went by bonniegreenbay. And how many

‘Oh, OK,’ I said. And so I entered a small conspiracy with him. I no longer knew anymore what I was consenting
to when I said whatever I found myself saying. Yet it didn’t seem to matter.
Edward now decided to close up the file. ‘Nobody’s perfect. Everyone has a relative or two that’s come down
with some crud or stuck a fork in someone’s eye or dynamited a perfectly good shed.’
This astounded me. ‘Absolutely,’ I said.
He stood and tucked it under his arm as if he were already regretting having shared it with me, and then he
walked across the lobby and got a drink of water. I watched his figure stooped over the bubbler’his longish hair
fell forward into his face. He was still wearing his coat, but it was open and dangled like collapsed cloth wings.
Turning, and sweeping his hair back with one hand, he came back to sit on the orange sofa but sat farther away
from me, turned to smile quickly and perfunctorily, then resumed a kind of staring out into the space of the room,
one elbow propped broodingly on the sofa arm, his hand positioned across his own mouth, as we waited for
Sarah to return. At one point he turned to me and said, ‘One shouldn’t buy babies,cheap rs money, of course. As a society we all
agree. And mothers shouldn’t sell them. But that is what we keep telling ourselves as these middlemen get richer
and richer and the birth mother continues to empty bedpans while wearing her new wristwatch.’ He paused.
‘They’re only allowed to receive tokens, like a watch. Nothing real, like a car. The nothing-but-a-watch law is
considered progressive, since babies must not be sold,cheap runescape money, or exchanged for cars. And so they are exchanged for
watches.’
‘It’s all morally confusing, isn’t it,’ I ventured.
‘It sure is,’ he said.
Sarah came out smiling, holding baby Mary,world of warcraft gold, who was now clutching her and snuffling back tears. Julie trailed
behind them. ‘They had to take blood from her foot for an AIDS test. She’s really too old for that not to hurt.’
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‘And she’s too young to have AIDS’unless the mother has it. Why don’t they test the mother?’ Edward was
suddenly into the various offenses involved in all these procedures.
Julie shrugged. ‘You can’t do it that way. State law.’
There were a lot of laws. We were not allowed to bring the medical records out of the hospital, so Edward
returned the file to the receptionist’s desk. We could not just leave with the baby. We had to leave with Julie, too,
and go back first to Adoption Option and sign papers. In the parking lot Julie said, ‘Wait a minute, let me get
something from my car,cheap flyff money,’ and while she trotted to her car Sarah said quietly to Edward, ‘Anything in the medical
records we should worry about?’
‘Not really,’ he replied.
‘Not really?’
‘No,’ he repeated with emphasis. ‘It’s no different really from anyone else’s history.’
‘No different really?’
‘Don’t pounce on my adverbs,’ said Edward. ‘No. Honestly.’

seven,ragnarok zeny, but by that time all sorts of weird things were happening. Perhaps he was really, completely on his own
until then, making stuff up and then immediately forgetting what he’d made up already. People were dying and
coming back and having babies and then not able to, so their handmaidens would instead. Then I slid into the nap
I knew the lunchtime milk shake would bring on if I just let it.
I awoke to a faint knocking on the door.
‘Tassie’ It’s Sarah. We’re going to go to the hospital for the baby’s checkup. Do you want to come?’
‘Yes, I’m coming,’ I said, then hurried to the door to open it, but it slammed into the brass slide lock
through which I peered, dazed, as if through bars, at a slim slice of Sarah.
My nap had not effectively rebooted me. Sarah was wearing her winter coat, but I could still see she was
shrugging beneath it. ‘The agency is switching foster families and they have an appointment this afternoon at the
hospital for our little girl.’ She was also wearing that hand-knitted hat with the ear flaps and pom-pom ties. Were
these back in style’ Had they ever been in style’
I had to close the door on her completely in order to undo the lock and open it again, this time wide. ‘Let me get
my shoes on,’ I said.
‘This was supposed to be the Presidential Suite,wow power leveling,’ she said, gazing into the room at the holes in the wall.
‘Well, even presidents get shot,’ I said.
‘I was just going to say that myself,’ she said, smiling. ‘But I didn’t want to scare you.’
I didn’t know whether this was interesting’that we were both thinking the same gruesome thing’or even whether
it was actually the case. Perhaps it was just rhetorical ESP: Kreskin’s Guide to Etiquette. But even if it was true,
that we were about to say the same thing, did this connect us in some deep, private way’ Or was it just a random
obviousness shared between strangers’ The deeper life between two people I had yet to read with confidence. It
seemed a kind of vaporous text that kept revising its very alphabet.An exfoliating narrative, my professors would
probably say. The paratext of the possible.
‘Sorry this is so beat up,’ she added.
‘It’s OK.’
‘Our bedspread is even more lurid than yours,cheap rs money,’ she confided. ‘Maybe hunters come here in hunting season.
We’re in the Packer Suite, which is green and gold with footballs on the wallpaper. I kept thinking they were
walnuts. The balls, I mean. Edward had to clarify.’
‘Ha! Well, at least the water pressure’s good!’
‘Yes, well, we’ll wait for you in the car out front,’ said Sarah, turning to go. Was she trying to keep some
irritation out of her voice’ Of course! Once again I realized I wasn’t really supposed to go with them to this,warcraft gold, but I
had forgotten and in my sleepiness had said yes.
In the car they made small talk about the carseat they had just purchased at Sears. It was next to me in the back,
still with some plastic around it. ‘It looks safe,’ I said blithely.
‘They make them better now,’ said Sarah. ‘The kids are more securely locked in. Kids used to be able to leap out
in no time.’
In the hospital lobby, a new transitional foster care person was carrying baby Mary, who was now sporting a hat
and had been bundled into a pale blue snowsuit that was perhaps institutionally owned and intended for boys.

‘Is there an echo in here?’ I said.
‘Well, tell us,’ said my mother. ‘Don’t just sass us to death.’
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‘It hasn’t really begun. It’s a babysitting job. But there isn’t a baby yet.’
‘Oh, yes, one of those,’ said my father, amused.
‘What do you mean, no baby yet?’ asked my mother, who looked puzzled. My father was grinning ear to ear, as
if to say,buy silkroad gold,Now here’s a how-de-do.
‘Therewill be one. Or should be. In January,’ I explained.
‘The mother’s pregnant?’
‘Well, the birth mother is pregnant, and the woman I’m working for is going to adopt the kid.’
There was silence all around, even from my dad,cheap rs money, as if this were a situation to be considered for all its various and
deep sadnesses.
‘It’s a good thing,’ I added. ‘This girl’she could never be a good mother. And the lady who’s hiring me’ She’s
kind of neat. She’s nice and pretty and she owns a fancy restaurant in town.’
‘That’s why she needs you,’ said my mother, concerned. ‘She’s too busy for a child.’
I was about to try to defend Sarah when my father asked with unfeigned interest,wow power leveling, ‘What restaurant?’
‘Le Petit Moulin,’ I said.
My mother turned and made a knowing face. ‘Afineschmecker running a place for other fineschmeckers.’
My father smiled broadly. ‘Oh, I remember her. Very nice woman.’ My mother turned her back to us, flipping
the flapjacks and throwing the latkes into hot oil, refusing to let go of her skepticism regarding the whole matter.
My father continued. ‘She would come and check out those potatoes as if they were diamonds. But she would
sometimes take the ones with a bit of rot in them anyway, knowing that once the rot part was cut out the rest of
the potato would be sweeter than most. Smart lady.’
‘Why can’t she have her own children?’ asked my mother,maple story mesos, continuing in her doubt.
‘Mom, I don’t know. I can’t ask. I hardly know her.’
‘What about her husband?’
‘Whatabout her husband?’
‘Who is he?’
It was a little surprising even to me that I knew so little about him. ‘I think he’s probably a professor of some
sort, but I’m not sure.’
‘Hmph,’ said my mother. ‘Academics.’ Now she was muttering. ‘They all shoot from the hip. And the hip is
always in the chair.’
‘What did you say?’ asked my father.
‘Nothing,’ said my mother. ‘Keeping a safe distance never keeps one from having an opinion, is all. Having no
dog in the race doesn’t keep people from having extremely large cats.’ Then she added, ‘Pull your seat up to the

table. The food is ready.’
My father had more of a sense of humor than my mother. ‘Just because I’m hard of hearing,’ he said to her now,
smiling, ‘doesn’t mean you’re not mumbling!’ Yet it was his sense of adventure she had had to sign on for long
ago, good-naturedly,buy final fantasy xi gil, and in reluctant love, and he had taken her on something of a journey, out here to the
country, to this farm. But she had been game. At least at first.
‘Oh,cheap rs money, well, someday maybeI’ll open a restaurant,’ she said now, sighing brightly, which seemed about as happy
as she got’a sigh with some light in it. She then added a remark that typified the sort that filled me with loathing
for her. ‘You know, with the new year approaching, I’ve come to realize I’ve done nothing these past decades
but devote my energies to the interests of others. So, soon’ I’m going to start focusing on myself.’
‘Well, before you get started, darling,’ said my father, ‘could you please pass the syrup?’
Once when I was a kid my father planted ten acres of corn and rye and then midsummer plowed just the rye,
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making a graphic ribbon effect through the rolling fields. ‘This would be best seen by air,’ said my dad. The
whole reason he had become a farmer is that he thought it would be fun. And so he hired a guy from Minneapolis
to take an aerial photo of it, and we stuck it up on the fridge with little spud magnets. It looked beautiful’the gold
of the mown rye striping the green corn and both undulating through like a performing pair of lovebird dolphins.
This, I pretended,ffxi gil, was a picture of my parents’ marriage. My mother had thought she was marrying a college
president’s son but got a hobby farmer instead, yet she’d followed him. She stayed with him wherever the hell it
was they were going. She was like a stickleback fish caught inland as the glacier retreated and the rivers’the only
access to the sea’disappeared. She would have to make do, in this landlocked lake of love. I knew, as she had
mentioned it, that she’d thought there’d be money’he’d grown up in a house with columns’but she hadn’t
realized there was none: the house was owned by the college. Even when she and my father came to Dellacrosse
and bought our old brick house, with its falling-apart shed and barn but its flowerbeds gorgeous with pansies and
impatiens, she didn’t understand that those particular flowers were annuals, and so she waited for them to return
the next year, feeling dashed and betrayed when they didn’t. Another mirage! But eventually she learned to plant
her own. And for a while she was a pro. Until she got too tired. That was when she installed mirrors in the
flowerbeds, slowly learning the art of mirage herself.
After our late breakfast the winds picked up, and soon there was a thunderstorm, the sky yellowish and the
clouds filled with the crunch and rip of lightning. The leafless trees looked frail and surprised. The sudden
downpour eliminated practically all the snow on the ground, and because the drainage on the county roads was
so poor,cheap lord of the rings gold, they filled like canals with water, just sitting there glistening, ready to turn to ice when the temperature
dipped later in the afternoon. Which it did.
Our actual Christmas ceremonies for the day, outside of breakfast, had been so painfully casual’no hamentashen,

‘Uh,cheap rs money, well, no, but my cousins were,’ said Sarah, as if this solved everything.
Letitia, nervous about the sticky parts of a deal, said cheerily, ‘The birth father is white. I did mention that to
you, didn’t I?’
Sarah said nothing, her face momentarily inscrutable. She picked up a lone cold french fry the waitress had yet to
clear and began to chew.
Letitia continued. ‘Tall and good-looking,world of warcraft gold, like Amber.’
Amber smiled happily. ‘We broke up,’ she said, shrugging.
‘Do you have a picture of him,cheap runescape gold, though’ To show Sarah?’ Letitia was selling the idea of the handsome white boy-
dad.
‘I don’t think I ever had a damn picture of him,’ said Amber, shaking her head. Now she looked at me, grinning.
‘Except in my mind. My mind’s a regular exhibition.’ The phrase was oddly reminiscent of the Mussorgsky we’d
just listened to in the car. And her mouth, with its few and crooked teeth, bits of shell awash on a reef of gum,wow power leveling,
seemed a curious home for her voice, which was slowly surprising, with its intelligence and humor. There was a
lull now. Amber suddenly leaned back, physically uncomfortable. ‘So, where’s your husband?’ she asked Sarah.
I examined Sarah’s face for the stiffened look of the accused. ‘He’s, oh, he’s at a meeting his lab is having with
the university. I run my own restaurant in town, so I can make up my own schedule as far as meetings go. But,
well, he’s at the beck and call of others’at least today he is.’
‘Do you think you really have time for a baby, owning a restaurant and all?’ Amber was not shy. If she had been
shy, not one of us would be at Perkins right now.
Sarah refused to be flustered. She’d heard remarks of this sort a dozen times. But before she could speak, Letitia
spoke for her. ‘That’s why Tassie is here. Tassie’s the backup. But Sarah will always be around. She’ll be the
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mom. And she can do a lot of her work right out of the house’isn’t that right, Sarah?’
What work could Sarah do from the house’ Yell at Meeska about the coulis’
‘Absolutely,’ Sarah said. ‘Oh, I forgot. I brought you a present, Amber.’ She took a CD from her purse. ‘It’s a
mixed CD of my favorite classical music.’
Amber took it and stashed it in her bag with the most fleeting of glances. Perhaps she’d had a slew of these
lunches as a means of collecting goodies, which she would later sell on eBay. ‘And I have a present for you, too,’
she said, and handed Sarah a foil-wrapped pat of butter she plucked from the bowl on the table. ‘It’s wrapped!’
Amber said, smiling wickedly. The CD hadn’t been. A scalding boldness gripped Amber’s face, then a kind of
guilt, then drifty blankness, like songs off a jukebox list, flipped through unchosen.
‘Thanks!’ said Sarah gamely. You had to hand it to her. She opened up the butter and applied it to her mouth like
lip gloss. ‘Prevents chapped lips.’
‘You’re welcome,’ said Amber.
When we all walked out to the parking lot, the probation officer followed. The American flag was flapping