“I’ll call you every day, Tess.”

“Okay,” Tess said.

“Don’t forget to call your mother.”

“I won’t.”

Dutiful, and undistracted by the blank video panel, Tess said good-bye, then whispered “Mom” at the phone. There was an interlude of insect sounds, then her mother picked up.

“Daddy says you have to come get me.”

“He does, huh? Well — are you at his place?”

Tess liked the sound of her mother’s voice even over the phone. If her father’s voice was distant thunder, her mother’s was summer rain — soothing, even when it was sad.

“He’s working late,” Tess explained.

“According to the agreement he’s supposed to bring you. I have work of my own to finish up.”

“I guess I can walk,” Tess said, though she made no effort to conceal her disappointment. It would take her a good half hour to walk to her mom’s place, past the coffee shop and the teenagers who gathered there and who had taken to calling her Spaz because of the way she jerked her head to avoid their eyes.

“No,” her mother said, “it’s getting late… Just have your stuff together. I’ll be there in, oh, I guess twenty minutes or so. ‘Kay?”

“Okay.”

“Maybe we’ll get takeout on the way home.”

“Great.”

After she deposited the phone back in her schoolbag, Tess made sure she had all the things she needed to bring to Mom’s: her notebooks and texts, of course, but also her favorite shirts and blouses, her plush monkey, her plug-in library, her personal night-light. That didn’t take long. Then, restless, she put her stuff in the foyer and went out back to watch the sunset.

The nice thing about her Dad’s place was the view from the yard. It wasn’t a spectacular view, no mountains or valleys or anything as dramatic as that, but it looked out over a long stretch of undeveloped meadowland sloping toward the road into Constance. The sky seemed immensely large from here, free of any borders except the fence that encircled Blind Lake. Birds lived in the high grass beyond the neatly trimmed lawn, and sometimes they rose up into the huge clean sky in flocks. Tess didn’t know what kind of birds they were — she didn’t have a name for them. They were many and small and brown, and when they folded their wings they flew like darts.