IT TAKES ANNA LESS THAN TEN MINUTES to move into my room at the station. While she puts her clothesinto a drawer and sets her hairbrush next to mine on the dresser, I go out to the kitchen where Paulie ischefing up dinner. The guys are all waiting for an explanation.

“She’s going to stay with me here for a while,” I say. “We’re working some things out.”

Caesar looks up from a magazine. “Is she gonna ride with us?”

I haven’t thought of this. Maybe it will take her mind off things, to feel like she’s an apprentice of sorts. “Youknow, she just might.”

Paulie turns around. He’s making fajitas tonight, beef. “Everything okay, Cap?”

“Yeah, Paulie, thanks for asking.”

“If there’s anyone upsetting her,” Red says, “they’ll have to go through all four of us now.”

The others nod. I wonder what they would think if I told them that the people upsetting Anna are Sara andme.

I leave the guys finishing up dinner preparations and go back to my room, where Anna sits on the secondtwin bed with her feet pretzeled beneath her. “Hey,” I say, but she doesn’t respond. It takes me a moment tosee that she’s wearing headphones, blasting God knows what into her ears.

She sees me and shuts off the music, pulling the phones to rest on her neck like a choker. “Hey.”

I sit down on the edge of the bed and look at her. “So. You, uh, want to do something?”

“Like what?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. Play cards?”

“You mean like poker?”

“Poker, Go Fish. Whatever.”

She looks at me carefully. “Go Fish?”

“Want to braid your hair?”

“Dad,” Anna asks, “are you feeling all right?”

I am more comfortable rushing into a building that is going to pieces around me than I am trying to make herfeel at ease. “I just—I want you to know you can do anything you want here.”

“Is it okay to leave a box of tampons in the bathroom?”

Immediately, my face goes red, and as if it’s catching, so does Anna’s. There is only one female firefighter, apart-timer, and the women’s room is on the lower level of the station. But still.

Anna’s hair swings over her face. “I didn’t mean…I can just keep them—”

“You can put them in the bathroom,” I announce. Then I add with authority, “If anyone complains, we’ll saythey’re mine.”

“I’m not sure they’ll believe you, Dad.”

I wrap an arm around her. “I may not do this right at first. I’ve never bunked with a thirteen-year-old girl.”

“I don’t shack up with forty-two-year-old guys too often, either.”

“Good, because I’d have to kill them.”

Her smile is a stamp against my neck. Maybe this will not be as hard as I think. Maybe I can convince myselfthat this move will ultimately keep my family together, even though the first step involves breaking it apart.

“Dad?”

“Hmm?”

“Just so you know: no one plays Go Fish after they’re potty-trained.”

She hugs me extra tight, the way she used to when she was small. I remember, in that instant, the last time Icarried Anna. We were hiking across a field, the five of us—and the cattails and wild daisies were taller thanher head. I swung her up into my arms, and together we parted a sea of reeds. But for the first time we bothnoticed how far down her legs dangled, how she was too big to sit on my hip, and before long she wasstruggling to get down and walk on her own.

Goldfish get big enough only for the bowl you put them in. Bonsai trees twist in miniature. I would havegiven anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.

It seems remarkable that while one of our daughters is leading us into a legal crisis, the other is in the throesof a medical one—but then again, we have known for quite some time that Kate’s at the end stages of renalfailure. It is Anna, this time, who’s thrown us for a loop. And yet—like always—you figure it out; youmanage to deal with both. The human capacity for burden is like bamboo—far more flexible than you’d everbelieve at first glance.

While Anna was packing up her things that afternoon, I went to the hospital. Kate was having her dialysisdone when I came into the room. She was asleep with her CD headphones on; Sara rose from a chair withone finger pressed to her lips, a warning.

She led me into the hallway. “How’s Kate?” I asked.

“About the same,” she answered. “How’s Anna?”

We traded the status of our children like baseball cards that we’d flash for a peek, but didn’t want to give upjust yet. I looked at Sara, wondering how I was supposed to tell her what I’d done.

“Where did you two run off to while I was fending off the judge?” she said.

Well. If you sit around and think about how hot the fire’s going to be, you’ll never get into the thick of it. “Itook Anna to the station.”

“Something going on at work?”

I took a deep breath and leaped off the cliff that my marriage had become. “No. Anna’s going to stay with methere for a few days. I think maybe she needs a little time by herself.”

Sara stared at me. “But Anna’s not going to be by herself. She’s going to be with you.”

The hallway seemed too bright and too wide all of a sudden. “Is that a bad thing?”

“Yes,” she said. “Do you really think that buying into Anna’s tantrum is going to help her any in the longrun?”

“I’m not buying into her tantrum; I’m giving her space to come to the right conclusions by herself. You’re notthe one who’s been sitting outside with her while you’re in the judge’s chambers. I’m worried about her.”

“Well, that’s where we’re different,” Sara argued. “I’m worried about both our daughters.”

I looked at her, and for just a splinter of a minute saw the woman she used to be—one who knew where tofind her smile, instead of having to rummage for it; one who always messed up punch lines and still got alaugh; one who could reel me in without even trying. I put my hands on her cheeks. Oh, there you are, Ithought, and I leaned down to kiss her on the forehead. “You know where to find us,” I said, and walkedaway.

Shortly after midnight we get an ambulance call. Anna blinks from her bed as the bells go off and lightautomatically floods the room. “You can stay,” I tell her, but she’s already up and putting on her shoes.

I’ve given her old turnout gear from our part-time female firefighter: a pair of boots, a hard hat. She shrugsinto the coat and climbs into the rear of the ambulance, strapping herself to the rear-facing seat behind Red,who’s driving.

We scream down the streets of Upper Darby to the Sunshine Gates Nursing Home, an anteroom for meetingSt. Peter. Red grabs the stretcher from the ambulance while I carry in the paramedic’s bag. A nurse meets usat the front doors. “She fell down and lost consciousness for a while. And she’s got a............