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among boxes in our “new” kitchen, with its ugly dark wood cupboards and an orange linoleum tile floor, eating lasagna that a friend of my grandmother’s brought over. The air was cold and stale when we arrived this afternoon, because the house had been sitting empty for two months. But now the oil furnace is on and the wood stove in the living room is lit. Add to that the smell of baked lasagna, and even I have to admit it’s not awful in here. Jack and Ethan take seconds and thirds like they haven’t eaten in a week.
    I go upstairs to my new bedroom and shut the door behind me. It’s at the back north corner of the house. Ethan’s and Joyce’s bedrooms will be the two at the front of the house and the small extra room is going to be Joyce’s office. Jack’s claimed the bedroom above the garage. I was tempted, but it’s only attached to the house by a covered walkway about six feet wide, so you have to go outside to get from your bedroom to the rest of the house. Forget it.
    I check out my bedroom window, the sill littered with a dozen or so dead cluster flies. It’s dark out back, but I can see a faint light coming from Jack’s window above the garage. Beyond the garage, about thirty feet back, is the beginning of the fenced field, with a small barn and a paddock on one side. It’s the whole reason we’ve moved: for Joyce’s two horses. Granddad died of a heart attack long before I was born, and after that, Joyce lived alone on a horse farm in Wellington County. She only sold it and moved in with us in Owen Sound when Mom got too sick, back when I was twelve. Ever since, she’s been boarding her two horses, Marley and Ponyboy, at the riding stables where she works. But she missed her old life,so basically we’re here in the middle of nowhere because she wants to live with her horses again. I’ve never been into horses myself. Maybe because when I think of horses, I think of Joyce.
    I turn on my computer. We aren’t set up for Internet yet but I need to see the desktop picture. Good, it’s still the same. Somehow, I’d been afraid it wouldn’t be. Me and Matthew, smiling for the camera. It’s from last year’s math class, a picture Morgan took and e-mailed to me. Without taking my eyes from the photo, I sit on my bed, dead tired and miserable. I think about my mother and start crying, as quietly as I can. She seems gone for good. Like she’s decided she’s not going to worry about me anymore. I feel like I’ve fallen down a well and no one even notices I’ve gone missing.
    After a while I dig out my cellphone, even though I try not to use it often because it’s expensive. I pull a torn piece of paper from my wallet. I’ve been carrying it around for weeks. I didn’t know why before, but now I do. I dial the number scribbled on it, my heart pounding.
    A guy answers on the third ring. “Hello?” He sounds almost my age. That catches me off guard.
    “Hello. Is … uh, Mr. Morris Dyson there, please?”
    “Yup, he is. Hang on.” I can tell he’s put a loose hand over the mouthpiece because I hear his muffled yell: “Dad, phone.” No answer. Louder, “Dad? Phone!”
    I wait, my anxiety growing. Is this a mistake? I hear someone else asking something and the guy answers, “Some girl … too young.”
How rude
, I’m thinking. Then I hear Mr. Dyson clear his throat as he takes the receiver.
    “Hello? Morris Dyson speaking.”
    “Mr. Dyson? It’s Amelia Mackenzie.”
    “Amelia? Yes. Hello.”

    I hear the hint of surprise in his tired, gravelly voice.
    “I’ve decided I’d like to meet you after all. I was thinking after school tomorrow. Around four?”
    “Yes. Of course. We could talk at my house, if that’s okay?”
    I think about it. “Well, okay. But, Mr. Dyson? Only because you knew my mother. That’s the only reason.”
    “I understand, Amelia, and I appreciate it. I’m at 87 3rd Avenue West. White frame two-storey. Tomorrow, four p.m. I’ll be here.”
    What have I