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  “I doubt it,” he said. “She rarely gets sick.”

  “Is she upset about GG?” I asked.

  My dad has one of those fancy swivel desk chairs. Now he rolled his shoulders and leaned back in it. “Of course she is,” he said. “It has been a busy time and a sad one. But GG had made her peace with life, and your mom knows that. GG was ready for whatever comes next.”

  “I miss her,” I said. “Even though we didn’t see her every day, just knowing she’s not there anymore . . . I miss her. But I haven’t cried. Is that weird?”

  Dad shrugged. “People are sad in different ways, Emma. You will cry on your own schedule. Now, may I have that kiss? I’ve got a couple more things to read here before I go up to bed.”

  My dad’s cheek was scratchy like always. I knew when he said a couple more things that he’d be in his office for hours. I hoped my mom was okay.

  * * *

  A sound woke me in the middle of the night, but it was familiar, not scary. Someone was tapping on my door.

  “You can come in,” I said softly.

  The doorknob turned, the door opened, and my little brother padded across the rug. “Em? Do you think GG can see us?” he asked.

  “Of course not,” I said. “Go back to bed.”

  “Oh,” Ben said. “Okay.”

  “Wait,” I said. “I don’t know if she can or not. I never thought of it before.”

  “If she can, then maybe she can protect us,” he said.

  “I guess,” I said. “Do we need protecting especially?”

  “Everybody needs protecting,” Benjamin said, “like from bigger kids.”

  I had been lying on my back. Now I rolled over and propped myself up on an elbow. I wished it weren’t the middle of the night. I wished I weren’t so sleepy. “Are bigger kids bothering you, Ben?”

  “They might,” he said. “We had a bullying unit.”

  “Everyone had a bullying unit,” I said, and then I had a funny thought. “In the bullying unit, did they mention asking ghosts for protection?”

  “Not exactly,” Ben said. “Do you think GG is a ghost now?”

  “I guess so,” I said. “But they’re kind of fuzzy on that part in Hebrew school.”

  “If she is, she can haunt the big kids,” said Ben.

  “GG wasn’t very scary,” I said. “Grandma would be better at haunting.”

  “She isn’t going to die too—is she?” Ben asked.

  “Probably not yet,” I said. “She goes to yoga and to spin class. Aren’t you getting sleepy by now?”

  “If she needed to help me out, GG would haunt the big kids. I’m pretty sure,” said Benjamin.

  “I’m pretty sure too,” I said.

  “Good night, Em,” Ben said.

  “Good night.”

  * * *

  It was the next day—Tuesday—that I started to worry for real about my mom. She stayed home from work. And she stayed home from Ben’s hockey scrimmage, too.

  Last hockey season, my brother was puny and didn’t play much. This year he’s still puny but he’s fast. Grandma says he inherited all the coordination in the family, which, if you think about it, is another way to say that I inherited no coordination. Either way, my parents and I almost always go to see his team play.

  I don’t admit this to Ben, but it’s fun. Sports on TV are boring, but when your own brother is playing and you know the other kids, too, it’s exciting to see them do well and awful to see them mess up.

  Late that afternoon Dad went to the game by himself, and I stayed home in case Mom needed anything. I was doing geometry in my room when my phone signaled I had a text. I expected it to be from either my friend Caitlin or else Kayden, the third-grader I tutor after school. Instead it was from Grace Xi—one of my bunkmates from summer camp.

  Grace: Cookies coming soon! How R U?

  Me: Oh, tx! K but my GG died.

  Grace: What is GG?

  Me: Great-grandmother.

  Grace: Flour power not enough.

  Wait—flower power, what? I thought about this for a second, then realized she was saying death could not be fixed by flour power, also known as cookies.

  Emma: True. Even cookies have limits. How R U?

  Grace: Big fight w/ Shoshi.

  Emma: Ruh-roh!

  Grace: OK now. Did your GG ever make cookies?

  Emma: Not really.

  Grace: 2 bad. GG’s fav food?

  Emma:

  Grace: Ooo—lucky! K—gotta go.

  Emma: Lucky?

  Grace: BFN!

  This exchange was so puzzling that I couldn’t go back to triangles. What did Grace mean that strawberries are lucky? Why had she asked about GG and food?

  Then there was the fight with Shoshi, who I remembered was her best school friend. I tried to think what I knew about Shoshi. She was smart. She was bossy. She was Jewish, like me. Before she and Grace became best friends, they had been worst enemies. I wondered what their fight was about anyway.

  If Secret Cookie Club operations were on schedule, Lucy should have sent cookies to Grace by this time. And wait—hadn’t Hannah’s letter said that she’d sent cookies to Grace, too?

  Maybe flour power had fixed the fight with Shoshi. It would be nice to think that was what happened.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Emma

  Benjamin’s scrimmage was down in Delaware, more than an hour away. At 6:16, my dad texted that the Junior Flyers had won 4–2, and he and Ben were about to get on the road to come home.

  Woot! I texted back. See you soon!

  I went to my door and looked down the hall. My parents’ room is at the other end—beyond Ben’s and Nathan’s. I already mentioned Nathan—my brother who died before I was born. He was eight and got an infection. The doctors at the hospital couldn’t stop it. There is no secret about this in my family, but it doesn’t come up every day. Anyway, my parents’ door was still closed, but I thought my mom would want to know about the Flyers. Maybe it would cheer her up.

  “Mom?” I knocked softly. “Can I come in? Mom?”

  The only answer was a little unh sound that I chose to translate as, Sure, Emma! Come on in!

  I opened the door. My mom was sitting up in bed with a pile of pillows behind her. A little light came in from the window. The drapes were open, but it was dusk outside.

  “Do you want me to turn on a light?” I asked.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed. “You don’t look that fine. I could fix your hair if you want. Or you could come downstairs, and I could make you an egg. It isn’t good to be up here all by yourself all day. You’re practically in the dark! You would never let me or Ben get away with it.”

  This was not what I had intended to say. I had intended to deliver good news. But I was a tiny bit shocked by how crazy my mom’s gray hair looked all splayed out on the pillow and by how pale her skin was. My mom may not have fashion sense, but she is always tidy.

  “Don’t boss me, Emma. I’m a grown woman. I will get up when I feel like it,” Mom said.

  “I’m not bossing you,” I said.

  “Yes, you are. Do you think it was the hair dye that killed her? It’s not healthy. There are studies.”

  It was a second before I realized she was talking about GG, whose hair had been an unnatural shade of red ever since I could remember. I guessed it must’ve been dyed, but I had never thought about it.

  “She was old, Mom. I think old was more the problem,” I said.

  “There was that woman on the news who was a hundred and ran a marathon,” my mom said. “I bet she didn’t dye her hair.”

  “Mom, are you okay?” I asked. “I don’t think you’re making sense.”

  “Remember how I said I’d be sad later?” she said. “Well, later has arrived, and I am too sad to make sense. Now, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll rest a little more.”

  “Okay.” I stood up. “Uh . . . Ben won his scrimmage. That�
��s what I came in to tell you. He and Dad are on their way home.”

  Mom closed her eyes. “Good.”

  “Are you coming down to eat with us?” I asked. “They’ll be back in an hour or so, Dad said. I guess he’s bringing dinner. Or should I heat up some soup?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Mom said.

  “Are you going to work tomorrow?” I asked.

  Mom opened her eyes. “Emma?”

  “Sorry, Mom,” I said. “I love you.”

  “I love you too,” she said faintly.

  When I went out, I closed the door without making any sound.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Emma

  The next day Mom stayed home from work again. Just before seventh period, I got a text that my grandmother would pick me up. She drives a blue BMW with white leather seats that are so perfect I’m afraid to sit in them.

  “Is Mom feeling better?” I asked as soon as I pulled the passenger door closed. “She never stays home from work.”

  My grandmother didn’t answer immediately. She was busy maneuvering her big car in my school’s small, busy parking lot. At last, she succeeded in turning left onto the street. “Hard to tell about your mom,” she said. “What do you think, Emma? Has she been working especially hard?”

  “I think she’s sad about GG,” I said.

  “We are all sad about GG—about my mother,” said Grandma. “I will always miss her, and I know you and your brother will as well. But, darling, the world keeps spinning, and there are things to do. We can’t allow ourselves to fall apart.”

  “Now you sound like Mom,” I said. “When something goes wrong, she encourages me to get past it.”

  We were stopped at a light. My grandma looked over and smiled. “Like mother, like daughter, I guess,” she said.

  “Do you think so?” I was surprised. My grandmother is thin with perfectly arched eyebrows. My mother is round and won’t even wear lip gloss.

  The light changed. “Both your mother and I have strong opinions,” said my grandmother. “Not that they’re usually the same opinions. And both of us have confidence in ourselves. So yes, Emma”—she shrugged—“I’d say we are alike.”

  When there is no traffic, it’s a twenty-minute ride from school to my house in Gladwyne. On the expressway Grandma and I talked about my classes and about Kayden, who is getting better at reading out loud even though he complains I make him work too hard. I gave her updates on my best friends, Caitlin and Julia.

  But even while we were talking about other things, some part of my brain kept thinking of my mom. That’s why, as we exited onto River Road, I said, “Grandma? Maybe you can figure out what’s wrong with her—if you’re so much alike, I mean. If it was you acting the way my mom is now, what would that mean was wrong with you?”

  “Hang on.” My grandmother watched a line of traffic pass, made a left turn, and checked her rearview mirror. “That’s a hard one, Emma,” she finally said. “That is going to require some thinking.”

  When we got home, my grandmother announced she would stick around and fix dinner. She knows my parents usually grab pizza or a chicken or Chinese food from the supermarket. She thought a homemade meal would be a treat.

  “Sure,” I said, “but uh . . . what are you going to make, do you think? You probably know that Ben’s kind of picky.”

  “It will be delicious,” my grandmother said.

  I checked on my mom, who seemed to be napping. Then I did my homework in my room. From the kitchen, I heard bumping and clanging. I smelled onions cooking with garlic and something suspiciously green. I hoped Ben would like it. I hoped if he didn’t he wouldn’t say anything bad. When my grandmother’s offended, she gets frosty.

  After my homework was done, I decided to e-mail Hannah. Usually my mom would have to bug me for a week to send a thank-you, but this time I guessed I was on my own.

  Hey, Hannah, hi! How are you?

  The lemon cookies were extremely delicious. Thank you! My little brother and my grandmother like them, and both of them are picky eaters.

  I am sorry (I think?) about Jack. Is your heart broken? I can’t tell from what you wrote. Someday I guess I will have a boyfriend, but I have never had one yet, and it seems to me like boys are a lot of trouble. For example, I think Vivek, not meaning to, caused trouble between Lucy and Grace. Like maybe Grace is jealous? But Lucy is her friend so she doesn’t want to be jealous, and anyway Vivek and Grace broke up—right?—so Grace isn’t really even allowed to be jealous.

  I’m not sure that Lucy knows Vivek likes her. It is hard to tell with Lucy.

  Do you think you and Jack will get back together? Are you going to text Lance?

  You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.

  In my life everything is okay except my great-grandmother died and my mom got sick. It is hard to tell if those two things are connected. I am a little worried about my mom, if you want to know the whole truth. Everyone misses GG, but my mom is the only one who won’t come out of her room.

  Thank you again very much for the cookies.

  Your very favorite camper (ha-ha!), Emma

  It was a little before six when I pressed send. At about the same time I heard my grandmother on the stairs. “Emma?” She appeared in my doorway. “Your dinner is all ready on the stove. You just have to warm it up, depending on when your dad and brother get home, I mean.”

  “Ben’ll be dropped off soon. Dad won’t be home till about seven,” I said. “But where are you going?”

  “Home,” she said. “I’m not going to intrude on your evening.”

  “You can’t intrude. You’re family,” I said.

  “Thank you, honey, but we all have our weeknight routines. Oh, and I thought about what you asked before—what would be wrong with me if I were your mom?”

  “So what do you think?” I asked.

  Grandma smiled. “What I think is I need to think harder,” she said. Her teeth are perfect too. “Up till now, I’ve always counted on GG for wisdom. Even if she was forgetful the last few years, she was still wise. I need to think about what she would have said, and maybe then it will come to me. Now come here and give me a hug.”

  Grandma’s dinner turned out to be chicken with peas and potatoes. On the chicken were green specks, which Ben eyed suspiciously at first. Later he asked for seconds. For dessert, we ate lemon cookies.

  Mom stayed upstairs, which—weirdly—was starting to seem normal. Dad, Ben, and I talked about all the usual stuff. We did not talk about Mom. It was like none of us wanted to say out loud that anything might be really wrong.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Emma

  Mom stayed in her room the rest of that week. My grandmother picked Ben and me up at school, made sure we got to hockey and tutoring and Hebrew school, organized dinner, and fed Ike.

  On Friday afternoon, Ben finally broke the silence on Mom.

  “Grandma, what’s the matter with her?” he asked. We were sitting at the kitchen table. Grandma was making pasta sauce. She was in a hurry to get to some friends’ house for Shabbat, the weekly dinner to welcome the Sabbath.

  Grandma put a spoon in the sauce, tasted it, frowned, opened a cupboard, and got out the salt. “Your mother is sad and she can’t get over it,” she said. “Simple as that. She’ll have to eventually, though. I, for one, am growing impatient.”

  Now I felt annoyed. My brother shouldn’t have asked that question. My grandmother shouldn’t have answered the way she did.

  “Maybe she can’t help it,” I said. “Sometimes sadness becomes a disease called depression. We learned about it in health.”

  “I know all that,” Grandma said. “I don’t live in the Dark Ages, and I didn’t say she could help it. I just said I’m impatient. Now”—Grandma spun around, checked her watch, and looked at me—“would you mind washing what’s in the sink? It shouldn’t go in the dishwasher. And, Benjamin, you set the table.”

  “I’m doing homework,” I argued. “And
how come Ben gets the easy job?”

  Grandma’s answer was to raise her eyebrows.

  I didn’t say anything. I got up to do the dishes. But I was growing impatient too. Having my grandmother in charge was a lot different from what I was used to. Kitchen cleanup is Benjamin’s and my job, but my parents don’t do much real cooking, so cleanup happens after dinner and fast.

  Also, our parents are not nearly as bossy as my grandmother.

  When the doorbell rang a few minutes later, I was scrubbing a pan. Benjamin—whose super-easy chore had taken about ten seconds—answered the door and brought back a package.

  “I signed for it,” he said.

  “But it’s my name on the label,” I said.

  “Will I get arrested?” Ben asked. “Maybe that would be okay. No more school, and I bet there’s TV in jail.”

  Grandma frowned. “Bite your tongue, young man.”

  “Why?” Ben asked. “That would hurt.”

  “She means you shouldn’t say you want to go to jail,” I said. “Now, can I have my box, please?” The dishes by this time were done, and I had dried my hands. “Is it from Massachusetts? I think it’s probably cookies.”

  “More cookies!” Grandma shook her head. “Now, Emma, not to be critical, but think before you eat too many.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just a word to the wise,” my grandmother said. “You know what studies say about sugar, not to mention gluten.”

  “There’s glue in cookies?” Ben said.

  “Glu-ten,” I said. “No one knows what it is and everyone’s afraid of it. I watched a video on YouTube.”

  “Gluten is a long-chain protein molecule found in grains like wheat,” Grandma said. “It makes bread and other things chewy, and it’s hard for some people to digest.”

  “Whoa, Grandma!” I was impressed.

  “I told you I don’t live in the Dark Ages,” she said. “And I’ve got to be going, or I’ll be late. Your dad should be here any minute. I love you two. You know that, right?”

  “I know,” Ben said.