“I know.”
“Then you can't be her dad.”
June took a slow breath. “Sometimes a person has the people who raised them and other people who were there when they were born.”
“I'm not stupid.”
“I didn't think you were.”
Maisie looked at Arthur.
He had bent the corner of the envelope without noticing. His face had gone so pale that for one peculiar moment she was afraid he might be the person who needed lunch.
“You can't just say that to somebody.”
“You're right,” he said.
“Especially a kid.”
“Yes.”
“Especially when she's trying to sell something.”
Arthur shut his eyes briefly.
“I'm sorry.”
She wanted an explanation big enough to hold the sentence he had dropped into her morning. Instead he looked like a man who had knocked over a glass and discovered it contained an ocean.
June crouched beside the scattered papers and put them into the envelope. She did not read them while doing it. Maisie noticed that.
“Do you have a phone?” June asked.
“An old one.”
“Would you like to call your mother yourself?”
Maisie hesitated.
Nora thought she was at the library finishing a history project. Technically, she had been near the library. It stood on the far side of the square. Maisie had planned to go inside if the bicycle sold quickly and bring home groceries as if she had thought of them on the way.
Her mother would ask where the money came from.
She had not solved that part.
“She's resting.”
“Then you can decide whether to wake her,” June said. “But you don't need to carry this conversation home alone.”
Maisie looked at her more closely.
“You read the book about the dog.”
June blinked.
“At school. When the librarian was sick. You did the voices.”
A small smile appeared.
“Yes. I remember that class.”
“You made the principal be the squirrel.”
“He was surprisingly good.”
Maisie had laughed that day. She remembered being embarrassed because she was in sixth grade and too old to laugh at a squirrel voice, then laughing harder when the principal looked offended.
It did not make June safe simply because she knew a book.
It made her a person who existed somewhere besides the stranger's story.
Maisie took out her phone.
The screen was cracked across one corner. Her father had called it a lightning bolt and said it made the phone faster. She still called it the lightning phone in her head.
Nora answered on the fourth ring.
“Hey, bug. Find what you needed?”
Maisie's throat tightened.
“Mom.”
The voice changed immediately.
“What happened?”
“Nothing. I mean, something. I'm okay.”
“Where are you?”
“The square.”
“What square?”
“The one by the library. I'm with Mrs. Harlow. You know, the reading lady.”
June did not correct the title.
“Why?” Nora asked.
Maisie looked at Arthur. He had moved to the far end of the bench, giving her distance.
“There's a man here.”
Nora was silent for half a second.
“Maisie. Come home.”
“He says he knows Grandma.”
“Come home now.”
“He has papers.”
“Please listen to me.”
Maisie squeezed the handlebar grip.
“He said he might be your real dad.”
The word real hurt as soon as she said it. She knew Grandpa Daniel had been real. His hands had smelled like peppermint because he kept candies in his pockets. He had carried her on his shoulders. People did not become less real because somebody else arrived with an envelope.
Nora said, very quietly, “Put Mrs. Harlow on.”
Maisie did.
June stood, keeping her voice low but not so low that Maisie couldn't hear.
“Nora, it's June. Yes. She's all right. We're in the square, by the oak. No, nobody has touched her. I'm sorry this happened in front of her before I could speak to you.”
Arthur looked at the ground.
June listened.
“The name is Arthur Whitcomb. He has private family papers. We haven't verified a relationship. I want to be very clear about that.”
She paused.
“No, don't rush over if you're unwell. We can come to the library office. Or we can end this now and arrange another time.”
Maisie heard her mother's voice rise through the speaker.
June nodded.
“All right. We'll wait inside. She's staying with me.”
She returned the phone.
Nora said, “Do not go anywhere else.”
“I won't.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“And Maisie?”
“Yes?”
“Whatever he says, you don't owe him anything.”
Maisie looked at Arthur.
“I know.”