The playground was rollicking. Noisy children dashed and darted.
"Thane!" And he was gone.
Barengaria and Yardena sat in a corner of sunlight on the steps of the school. When Yardena saw Julian wandering along the fence at the edge of the playground, eddying with the wind toward the horizontal ladder at the back, she got up and went to him.
Barengaria was alone. She realized that sometimes she preferred to be alone. She opened her book bag and took out her French notebook. France was where they were to go. It seemed so impossible now. No loving aunt Connie. No uncle Jackson Blades. She riffled the pages, past vocabulary lists and verb declensions, until she came to a blank page. And then she surprised herself. She started to write a poem in French. It was about loss.
"Found you," Julia
