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walked off in the other direction, I tried to laugh at myself.
    Outside Blue Moon, the boutique for teenage girls, I paused to remember all the times I’d taken Iris here over the years, when my role was to stand at the cash register and remind her that I couldn’t buy all the clothes she’d chosen. She’d sulk and negotiate, and in the end she usually wore me down and brought home more than I knew Joe would have allowed if he’d been there. I went in and moved some hangers, pretending I was shopping for a daughter, and couldn’t help eavesdropping on a conversation between two girls who didn’t even look old enough to be in high school. “I wish I had it in me to break his heart again,” one of them said to the other, and I smiled to myself.
    Then, looking up, I froze as I saw Emmett Furth through the display window. He stood with two of his friends, watching the girls inside browsing the racks. It struck me as creepy, since Emmett was twenty-one now and the girls just teenagers. But he had always been immature. Remembering how he’d scared Abby and me during our walk less than an hour before, I wondered if he’d followed me to the mall, before I realized that it was just a coincidence; even Emmett Furth had better things to do than that.
    I tried to escape the store without his noticing, but then I saw one of his friends pop him on the shoulder and point at me. In a voice loud enough for everyone around us to hear, the friend seemed to enjoy himself as he drew out the chant that was all too familiar: “Lizzie Borden took an axe… gave her mother forty whacks.”
    Emmett looked over. When he saw it was me, he locked us in a gaze so tight I was afraid I might sink to my knees. My tongue went sour and I coughed. He turned his back and resumed joking with his friends, but not before I thought I saw him flick two fingers from his forehead in my direction, a signal of some kind.
    A signal of what? I couldn’t be sure. I tried to convince myself it was a greeting, but that wouldn’t be like him. And it felt more ominous than that.
    For a panicked moment I lost my vision, and then it came back alternating between blurry and black. Feeling a cry in my throat that I knew better than to let out, I rushed to the nearest mall exit, which was not the closest to where I’d parked. As I stumbled across the lot toward my car, I could feel my head pounding. The plastic bag with the baseball bat banged against my knees. Just get home, just get home , I told myself, using the words as a mantra to focus my attention through the pulsing ache. Pulling up to my house, I felt the heat of relief spread through me, both because I’d arrived safely and because there were no reporters confronting me as I went inside. Even though I knew it wasn’t good for her I let Abby have a piece of leftover pizza from the fridge, because I knew she’d love it, and love me for it, and I felt like being loved just then. Then I sat down at the kitchen table, drawing deep breaths and pressing my fingers into my temples.
    The only time I’d ever had an actual conversation with Emmett Furth was fifteen years earlier, when he and Dawn were in first grade. I was working at the medical office part time back then, and once a week I went into the school as a parent volunteer. Though at the time I liked to believe that my motivation for visiting her classroom was a pure desire to contribute, to do my share, I understand now that I was also trying to figure out what made my daughter different from her sister and other kids, even at the age of six, aside from the lazy eye. What caused the other kids, including sometimes her own sister, to call her—in addition to all the other nicknames—Ding-Dong Dawn.
    When I went in that day she was sitting by herself on the padded window seat, her knees drawn up to her chest as she looked out at the empty playground. I wanted to go over and ask why she wasn’t working in her book, like everyone else, but the teacher