“I’ve been saving up my allowance.”

He closed the door after her and made a comic shooing motion through the glass.

She waited on the sidewalk, watching the passersby. It was hard to resist getting caught up in the spirit of things. Everyone carried shopping bags and brightly wrapped parcels. From Rick-Rack’s Café, next door, the cheering smells of bacon and hot pancakes drifted into the frosty air. When Noah rejoined her, hugging his own bag, she said, “How about I buy you a soda at Rick-Rack’s?”

He hesitated. “You going to put it in the book?” he asked.

He meant the little notebook Mr. Miller had given her. She was supposed to keep a record of reimbursable expenses, and Noah always worried she might shortchange herself. (He viewed her as someone less fortunate, which she found both amusing and slightly humiliating.) “Today it’s my treat,” she told him firmly, and even as he opened his mouth to protest, she was nudging him toward the café.

Rick waved a spatula in their direction; he was busy at the grill. Teensy, though, made a big fuss. “It’s Delia! And Mr. Miller’s boy. Look, Pop!” she chirped, turning to an old man seated at the counter. “This is Delia Grinstead! She used to live across the street! My father, Mr. Bragg,” she told Delia. “He’s come to stay with us awhile.”

Teensy’s father, Delia seemed to recall, was a snarky man who had not behaved very graciously toward his son-in-law; so she was unprepared for his timid, meek expression and wilted posture. He sat up close to his breakfast like a child. When she said, “Hello,” he had to work his mouth a minute before the words formed.

“I’m having cocoa,” was what he finally said.

“How nice!”

Her voice came out sounding as false as Teensy’s had.

“That your boy?” he asked.

“This is… Noah,” she told him, not bothering with a full explanation.

“Come sit here, boy.”

“Oh, we’d better take a booth, with all we’re carrying.” Delia gestured toward Noah’s shopping bag. The handles of his grandfather’s grabber extended from it a good two feet.

In the rear corner booth, Mr. Lamb sat hanging his head over a bowl of cereal. Two teenage girls had a window table-Underwood students, Delia assumed, judging by how they perked up at the sight of Noah. (Already she had turned several away from the house, briskly thanking them for their plates of homemade fudge and pretending not to notice how they gazed beyond her for Joel.) One of them sang out, “Hey there, Noah!” Noah rolled his eyes at Delia.

“What can I get you?” Teensy asked, standing over their table.

“Coffee, please,” Noah said.

“Coffee!”

“Can’t I?” He was addressing Delia. “Dad lets me have it, sometimes on special occasions.”

“Well, all right. Make that two,” Delia told Teensy.

“Sure thing,” Teensy said. Then she bent so close that Delia could smell her starched-fabric scent, and she whispered, “When you leave here, could you say goodbye real loud to Rick, so Pop can hear you?”

“Of course,” Delia said.

“Pop can act so hurtful to him sometimes.”

“I’d have said goodbye anyhow, you know that.”

“I know, but…” Teensy flapped a hand toward her father. He still appeared harmless, the X of his suspenders curving with the hunch of his back.

Noah was one of those people who like gloating over their purchases even before they get them home. He was rustling through his bag, first pulling out the screwdriver, then burrowing to the bottom for a furtive look at something there and shooting a tucked, sly glance at Delia. When she craned across the table, pretending to be angling for a peek, he laughed delightedly and crumpled the bag shut again. His two front teeth were still new enough to seem too big for his mouth.

And see how his hair fell over his eyes-the bouncy thickness of it, the soft sheen that made her want to press it with her palm. And the tilt at the tip of his nose, the knobby cluster of little-boy warts that showed on the bend of his index finger when he gripped the mug Teensy brought him. One point of his jacket collar stuck up crookedly. The knit shirt beneath it bore scratches of ballpoint-pen ink. His jeans, she knew, were ripped at the knees, and his sneakers were those elaborate, puffy high-tops that could have been designed for walking on the moon.

He was telling her a dream he’d had-something boring and impossible to follow. His teacher changed into a dog, the dog came to visit at Noah’s house, which was somehow the school auditorium too, if Delia knew what he meant…

Delia nodded, smiling, smiling, and folded her hands tightly so as not to reach across to him. When they left, she told Rick goodbye with such feeling that her voice broke.

Belle claimed the cat had developed an eating disorder. She brought him over in a Grape-Nuts carton late Monday morning, so he could adjust to the house while Delia was the only one home. Still in the carton, he was borne directly to Delia’s room and set on the floor. “It’s like he’s bulimic,” Belle was saying. She sank onto the edge of the bed to watch him nose his way out of the carton. “The minute his bowl is half empty he starts nagging me for more; I swear I never knew a cat could plan ahead that way. And if, God forbid, he should finish every bit of it, we have this heartrending melodrama the second I walk in from work. Great yowling and wringing of paws, and as soon as I fill the bowl he staggers over all weak-kneed to eat and makes these disgusting gobbling sounds and then darned if he doesn’t throw up in a corner not ten minutes after he’s done.”

“Oh, George, did I do this to you?” Delia asked him. He was investigating the room now, sniffing daintily at the luggage stand.

“About six times a day he goes to the cupboard and looks up at his sack of kibble, checking to make sure I’m keeping enough in stock.”

“All my life,” Delia said, “I’ve been the ideal cat-owner. I lived in one place; I had a routine. I was motionless, in fact. Now I’m flitting about like a… He must feel so insecure!”

She bent to stroke the black M on his forehead, while Belle gazed around her. “This room is awfully small, isn’t it?” she asked. “Your old one was a whole lot bigger.”

“It’s okay.” Delia was trying to lure George into the bathroom now. “See? Your litter box,” she told him. “Store-bought; not just cardboard.”

“What’re you doing for Christmas, Dee?” Belle called after her.

“Oh, staying here.”

“Christmas with strangers?”

“They’ll be gone, at least for the day.”

“That’s even worse,” Belle told her.

“I’m sort of looking forward to it.”

George stepped into the litter box and then out again, as if demonstrating that he knew what it was.

“Come along with me to my folks’,” Belle told her. “They’d be thrilled to have you.”

“No, really, thanks.”

“Or get Vanessa to invite you to her grandma’s.”

“She already did, but I said no.”

“Well, granted it’s kind of hectic there,” Belle said. “I’m a little peeved at Vanessa these days.”

“Oh? How come?”

“You know what she had the nerve to ask me?” Belle stood up to follow Delia into the hall; they were heading for the bowl of cat food in the kitchen. George wafted after them in a shadowy, indecisive way. “I was complaining about my love life,” Belle said. “Can’t find a man to save my soul, I told her, and she asked why I’d never thought of Mr. Lamb.”

“Mr. Lamb!”

“Can you imagine? That dreary, gloomy man, that… Eeyore! I said, ‘Vanessa, just what sort of idea do you have of me? Do you honestly believe I would date a man who’s spent his entire adulthood in rented bedrooms?’ I mean, think about it: no one even calls him by his first name, have you noticed? Quick: what’s Mr. Lamb’s first name?”

“Um…”

“Horace,” Belle said grimly. She plunked herself at the kitchen table. “I may be single, but I’m not suicidal. What’s that I see on the fridge?”