The worst male o ender? Grandpa. He goes down to Florida for Christmas to propose marriage to Mabel, who turns him down, so he drives all the way back to New York on Christmas Day in a hu , convinced the relationship is over. Four days later, December 29, and he’s driving back down to Florida, with a complete change of heart.

“Gonna work this thing out with Mabel,” Grandpa announced over breakfast to me and Langston. “I’m leaving in a few hours.” Even if I wasn’t thrilled by the idea of Grandpa and Mabel forming a more permanent union, I guessed I could get used to the union, if it made the old fell a happy. And from a practical point of view, removing Grandpa from our city would serve the added bonus of preventing him from asking where I was going all the time, just when things were starting to get interesting in the Lilyverse.

“How do you propose to work things out?” Langston asked. His face was still pale, his voice hoarse and nose runny, but my brother was eating his second scrambled egg and had already devoured a stack of toast with jam, clearly feeling much bet er.

“What was I thinking with that we-have-to-get-married business?” Grandpa said. “Outdated concept. I’m going to propose that Mabel and I just be exclusive to one another. No ring, no wedding, just … partnership. I’d be her only boyfriend.”

“Guess who has a boyfriend, Grandpa?” Langston asked menacingly. “Lily!”

“I do not!” I said, but in a quiet, not Shrilly-like tone.

Grandpa turned to me. “You’re not allowed to date for another twenty years, Lily bear. In fact, your mother still isn’t allowed to date, according to my recol ection. But somehow she slipped away anyway.”

At the mention of her name, I realized I missed Mom. Fiercely. I’d been too busy the last week with the notebook and other random misadventures to remember to miss my parents, but suddenly I wanted them home right now. I wanted to hear why they thought moving to Fiji was a good idea, I wanted to see their unfortunately tanned faces, and I wanted to hang out with them telling stories and laughing together. I wanted TO OPEN MY CHRISTMAS PRESENTS ALREADY.

I bet they were starting to miss me just as much. I bet they were feeling truly awful with missing me, and for abandoning me at Christmas, and for possibly making me move to a remote corner at the farthest end of the world when I’ve been perfectly content living right here in the center of the world that is the island of Manhat an.

(But maybe trying a new place could be interesting. Maybe.)

I held the truth to be self-evident: There was no way I wouldn’t be able to mine a puppy out of this situation. So much parental guilt, so much Lily need for a dog. And I believed I could make the case that I’d evolved as a human and as a personal dog owner rather than just walker. I could handle pet ownership this time around.

Merry Christmas, Lily.

Practically speaking, no way would I set le for a bunny.

I barely had time to search dog shelter sites in Fiji for an appropriate adoptable pooch when I received a text from my cousin Mark.

Lily Bear: My co-worker Marc needs to go upstate to tend to his mother, who’s been felled by eggnog poisoning. Do you have room in your client list for his dog, Boris? Needs to be fed and walked twice a day. Just for a day or two.

Sure, I texted back. Admit edly, part of me had been hoping Mark’s text would involve a Dash sighting, but a new dog job was adequate distraction.

Can you come by the store and pick up his keys?

Be there in a few.

The Strand was its usual mix of bustling people and laconic aisle readers. Mark wasn’t at the information desk when I arrived, so I decided to do a lit le browsing. First I went to the animals section, but I’d read almost every book there, and I could only look at puppy pictures so to do a lit le browsing. First I went to the animals section, but I’d read almost every book there, and I could only look at puppy pictures so many times without needing to pet one instead of just coo at its picture. I wandered and found myself in the basement, where a sign on a bookcase in the deepest trenches at the back announced SEX & SEXUALITY BEGINS ON LEFT SHELF. The sign made me think of The Joy of Gay Sex (third edition), which in turn, of course, made me blush, and then think of J. D. Salinger. I returned upstairs to Fiction and there found a most curious male depositing a familiar red notebook in between Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction.

“Boomer?” I said.

Startled, and looking guilty, as if he’d been caught shoplifting, Boomer clumsily grabbed the red notebook back from the shelves, causing several hardcover editions of Nine Stories to noisily tumble to the floor. Boomer clutched the red notebook to his chest as if it were a Bible.

“Lily! I didn’t expect to see you here. I mean, I kinda hoped to, but then I didn’t, so I got used to that, but then here you are, just when I’m thinking about not seeing you, and—”

I reached my hands out. “Is that notebook for me?” I asked. I wanted to snatch the notebook from Boomer and read it posthaste, but I tried to sound casual, like, Oh, yeah, that old thing. I’ll read it whenever I get to it. It might be a while. I’m super-busy, not thinking about Dash or the notebook or anything.

“Yes!” Boomer said. But he made no movement to hand it to me.

“Can I have it?” I asked.

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Because! You have to discover it on the shelves! When I’m not here!”

I hadn’t realized there was a rule book for the notebook exchange. “So how about if I leave, and you put the notebook back on the shelves and walk away, and then when you’re gone, I’ll return and pick it up?”