The Children by Ann Leary Page A

Should we just start without him?” I asked, putting the plates on the table.
    Joan had come back into the kitchen, freshly showered, wearing shorts and a T-shirt—her gardening clothes.
    â€œJust toast for me,” she said. “I only ever have toast for breakfast. Sometimes a banana.”
    â€œWhat’d Spin tell you about us?” Sally asked, poking at her eggs with her fork.
    â€œWell, not a whole lot. Not half as much as that old hunchback guy at the filling station I stopped at yesterday.”
    â€œHunchback guy?” Sally asked, amused. Laurel was talking about old Anson Bergstrom. He did have a bit of a hunched-up posture; we just hadn’t really thought about it before.
    â€œThat’s old Anson. Yes, he’s like a little old lady with all the town gossip,” Sally said.
    â€œI’m sure he’s very nice. I just got a weird feeling. I tried to pump my gas, and he came running out and practically wrestled the hose out of my hand. ‘This here’s a full-service shop,’ he said. ‘If you wanna pump it yourself, you’re gonna wanna go on up to Route 209. People who wanna get their gas a little cheaper go on up there, but yer gonna hafta pump it yerself.’”
    She did an uncanny impersonation of Anson Bergstrom.
    â€œAnd he kept trying to give me directions everywhere. I told him I have GPS, that I just wanted the name of a place to eat. ‘Now, what yer gonna wanna do is turn right out the driveway and then go, oh, I don’t know, maybe about half a mile, then you’ll come to a stop sign. Then after, oh, I dunno, another quarter mile…’”
    â€œYeah, well, Anson’s an old family friend. He was just trying to be nice,” Sally said, sounding less amused. I shared Sally’s defensiveness. Yes, Anson Bergstrom is a weird guy. But he’s our weird guy. Laurel needed to shut it.
    â€œI guess that’s how he knew I was Spin’s fiancée,” Laurel said. “Oh, by the way, Spin owes you thirty-five dollars, Joan.”
    Joan had her back to us. She was standing at the counter, slathering her toast with jam. She paused for a moment when she heard what Laurel had said. When she turned and carried her plate to the table, I noticed there was a little hitch in her step, a slight limp, as if she had strained something.
    â€œThirty-five dollars?” she said, smiling at Laurel. “Whatever for?”
    â€œMy credit card was blocked. It happens all the time when I travel—security fraud protection or something. I have to remember to call the bank, tell them my card’s not stolen. I didn’t have any cash at the station, so the guy said that you have a house account and I should put Spin’s gas on your account and then he can just pay you back.”
    â€œOh,” Joan said. She forced another little smile at Laurel. “That’ll be fine.”
    â€œSpin doesn’t have an account there,” Laurel said. “I asked, but the guy said he always pays cash.”
    We heard Everett’s truck drive off, and a moment later, Spin pushed open the screen door.
    â€œPhilip, toast with your eggs?” Laurel asked.
    Joan, Sally, and I looked at one another. Philip?
    Philip is Spin’s real name. We had just never heard anybody use it. He was supposed to be named George, but his mom, Marissa, scrawled the name Philip on his birth certificate a few moments after he was born. She casually informed her errant husband of the name change when he held his son the following day. Whit always hated the name Philip. It had been the name of a very unattractive and awkward classmate from his boarding-school days. Marissa knew that, and he took her insistence upon the new name as a parting blow.
    Now Spin was sitting at the table, devouring his breakfast. “I have dorm duty tonight and again on Thursday. We still have a few international students on campus.”
    â€œYou