"Which one is it this year, Mama?" said the boy holding her hand. His name was Salvatore Ellsworth. He was five, exactly, as of October. He had his grandfather's nose and his father's solemn gray-green eyes and his mother's absolute inability to leave a thing alone.
"A spaceship," said Gina. "That turns into a robot. Or a robot that turns into a spaceship. I'm not clear on it."
"Who's it for?"
"We don't know yet," said Graham. "That's the rule. We win it first."
"And then we figure out who needs it," said Sal, with the weary patience of a child reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
Dot was not on the floor anymore. She had retired in 1988, with her pension, to a condo in Sarasota, and every year she sent them a Christmas card with a flamingo in a Santa hat on the front and the same message inside, in Palmer-method script: Still holding on, sweater boy? And every year Graham wrote back, Still holding on.
They found the robot spaceship at the end of aisle six. There was one left on the top shelf.
Gina saw it first. Of course she did. She felt it, the old electric jolt, the hunt in her blood — she was already moving, her shoulder already turning, the words already rising in her throat, excuse me, coming through — when she saw the other hand reaching for it from the far end of the aisle.