Five-year old Joe didn't know what to make of the girl who lived in the house his family used to live in. She was always streaked with dirt, and her knees were always skinned, and her hair was a mess in the back, but she wasn't a kid raised by wolves. She had a mother and a father, although Joe only saw her father lately, and even him not very often. 

Her mother hadn't been around in a while, but to five-year old Joe, that wasn't a concern; time, when you were this young, wasn't linear, so he wouldn't have been able to assign any significance to her prolonged absence. He was confident she would be back, and however long it took it would be soon enough. What also put him at ease about it was that the girl never seemed overly distraught her mother was gone. She held Mrs. Anderson's hand as confidently as she would her own mother's, and the older woman, a great friend of the family, seemed to dote on her as a mother would, so he knew the girl would be all right.

He watched her as he sat in Mrs. Anderson's garden while Dad worked, nailing together pieces of driftwood he'd found on the shore of the river; Joe sometimes went with Dad on these scavenging trips, and he was fascinated by what they found washing up sometimes: an old boot, a bicycle wheel, a length of chain. 

The girl held a basket while Mrs. Anderson picked vegetables. She munched on a carrot without even washing it first. This was just too much. His mother washed everything as soon as she brought it into the house. He had to warn her she was endangering her health by eating dirt.

He strolled over to her and said, "You should wash that."

She looked up at him and continued munching. "Why?" she asked with a full mouth.

"It's dirty."

She shrugged. "I rubbed off most of it on my shirt."

Mrs. Anderson looked up at him and brightened. "Giuseppe, you remember Rachel, don't you? You're going to go to Kindergarten together soon, won't that be fun?"

Joe looked at Rachel, which was her name, apparently. He didn't remember her. Or did he? At this age memory was still hazy.

Rachel said, "Juice-ep-ee?"

"Call me Joe, it's easier. My name's just Italian for Joseph anyway."

Her brow furrowed. "What's Italian?"

"It's the language Joe's family spoke when they used to live in Italy, and still speak now at home and with other Italians," Mrs. Anderson said.

Rachel looked at him and said, "Can you speak Italian?"

"Sure."

"Can you say something in Italian?"

"Mi chiamo Giuseppe."

"What does that mean?"

Joe shrugged. "My name is Joe."

"Oh. So, if I say mi chiamo Rachel, that'd be me talking Italian."

"Sure. But your name in Italian would be Rachelle."

"Rah-kay-lay?"

"Close, but good enough."

Rachel smiled. "Wanna play?"

"Sure!" He turned back to Dad. "Hey, Dad, can I play with Rachel?"

Dad nodded and waved him away. Rachel left the basket with Mrs. Anderson and they walked off together. "Come back here when you're done, Rachel," Mrs. Anderson said. "Your dad won't be home until later, so I need to know where you are."

"Okay!" Rachel called back.

They emerged onto Lawrence Street, and eventually found themselves jumping the ditch. As Queensborough was at sea level, drainage ditches were needed to prevent flooding. There was one between the street and Mrs. Anderson's house, running the length of the street, and it was just wide enough for five-year old Joe to jump with a little running start. He and Rachel laughed as they flew back and forth across the ditch, and laughed even harder when Rachel shot short and landed on the downslope and rolled to the bottom, which was mercifully dry in the summer. Joe slid in to join her, and they marched down the length of the ditch until they noticed another boy their age playing in front of his house.

"Hello!" Rachel called.

"What are you doing down there?" asked the boy.

"Exploring!"

"Can I explore too?"

Rachel looked to Joe for his thoughts. Joe shrugged and nodded. "Come on in!" she said.

The boy slid himself into the ditch and smiled at them. He had brown skin and a big smile. Joe had seen him before from across the street, but hadn't had a chance to play with him yet.

"I'm Sunny," the boy said. "What's your name?"

Joe and Rachel introduced themselves. "Do you speak Italian too, Sunny?" Rachel asked, unaware that Italian wasn't the only other culture.

Sunny frowned. "What's Italian?"

"A language I can speak," Joe said. "No, you probably speak Hindu, my mom says."

"Hindu is a religion, Hindi is the language," Sunny said. "I'm not Hindu, I'm Sikh, and I speak Punjabi."

"You're sick?" Rachel asked. "I'm sorry, are you gonna be okay?"

Sunny chuckled. "No. Sikhism is my religion. I'm fine."

"My family's Catholic," Joe said.

Sunny turned to Rachel. "What's your religion?"

Rachel's face fell. "I don't know what that is."

"I'm going to be a big brother soon," Sunny said, completely changing course as little kids did, not feeling the need to explain the concept of religion to his new friend.

"I have a big brother, named Johnny," Joe said.

"I don't have any brothers or sisters," Rachel said. "My mom went away too."

Joe and Sunny stared at her, astounded at the fact that she didn't have a mom at home.

"Let's keep exploring!" Rachel said, cheerfully undisturbed by her predicament, and they kept walking the foxhole.

"I think there's another boy at the house at the end of the street," Sunny said. "I only saw him once or twice, though."

They reached the end of the ditch and climbed out where the last house on the block was, behind a screen of trees. "This house?" Joe asked.

Sunny nodded. "Do you wanna see if he wants to come out and play?"

Joe and Rachel shrugged and followed Sunny to the front door. Sunny pressed the doorbell, and immediately a flurry of loud barks erupted, scaring all three of them and making them scurry for the cover of the trees.

After a few seconds, the door opened, and a small brunette woman stepped out onto the landing, looking around for the caller. Rachel peered around her tree and waved sheepishly. "Sorry," she called. "We got scared of the barking."

The woman brightened when she saw her. "Oh, hello! Do you live on the street?"

"Yes, ma'am. I'm Rachel. This is Joe and Sunny." She gestured to her new friends. "We heard you had a boy our age."

The woman smiled broadly and nodded. "Alistair, yes, he's about your age. Why don't I get him and introduce you?"

She didn't wait for their answer, but shut her door, and a few seconds later emerged with a small boy with brown hair, clinging to his mother's pant leg, thumb in his mouth.

"Alistair," his mother said, "look, there are children who want to play with you! Why don't you say hello?"

Alistair pulled his thumb out of his mouth and said a weak, "Hi."

Rachel was first to emerge from the trees. "Hi, Alistair. I'm Rachel. That's Giuseppe but he goes by Joe," she said, pointing to Joe. Then she pointed to Sunny. "And that's Sunny there."

"My Indian name is Sunil," Sunny clarified, "but I like Sunny when I'm with non-Indian kids."

Alistair considered their words for a moment before saying, "I like Al. You can call me Al. I thought Indians were the guys with the feathers in their hair and the tomahawks."

Sunny shrugged. "I don't know. I just know people from India are called Indians."

This seemed a reasonable concept to all of them, and they nodded. "Wanna play?" Rachel asked.

"Okay," Al said. "What are you doing?"

"Playing in the ditch," Joe said.

Suddenly there was a commotion from behind them, shouts and calls. Joe turned and saw Dad, Mrs. Anderson, and what must have been Sunny's mom, dressed in a colourful wraparound dress of some kind, bearing a big belly.

"Giuseppe, you go too far away," Dad said sternly. "Me and Signora get worried when we no find you."

"Rachel, I know you were with another child, but when we didn't see you come back from playing we got frantic," Mrs. Anderson said.

"But we weren't done playing," Rachel said, clearly confused by all the fuss. "We made more friends."

"I can see that," Mrs. Anderson said, smiling. She turned to Sunny's mom. "I know Sunil, of course, but you, little sir, I haven't been acquainted with." She said this last to Al.

"This is Alistair, but he goes by Al," Rachel said, and all the adults chuckled at her forthrightness, taking the job of introduction from his mom.

"How lovely," Mrs. Anderson said. "Three new friends on the same day, Rachel! And will you all be going to Queen Elizabeth in the Fall?"

Joe and Sunny shrugged. Al looked horrified at the concept of going to school, of being separated from his mom.

"Look, I have a big yard here," Al's mom said. "If the children want to play here, I'll be happy to keep an eye on them for a while."

This seemed to please the other adults. "Rachel, I'll come get you and Joe when it's time to come in," Mrs. Anderson said. "I'm going to give you your first piano lesson today," 

"Can I play with the dolls after?" Rachel asked.

"No, Rachel, those dolls are not toys, I've told you before."

"Aw," she whined, but it was only half-hearted. She turned to her new friends and said, "Let's play hide and seek! There are enough of us now."

"I don't want to be seeker," Al said. "I don't like not knowing where anyone is."

"I'll seek, it's okay," Joe said.

"Okay, Giuseppe, take it easy on you new friends, eh?" Dad said. "You bigger than them. And look after la ragazza for Signora, okay?"

"Okay, Dad."

As the adults left the kids in Al's mom's supervision, Rachel turned to Joe and said, "What did your dad say? I think some of that was Italian."

"He wants me to look after you. He thinks you need protecting."

"Why? You guys won't do anything to me, will you?"

The three boys shook their heads.

"Good," Rachel said. "Let's start." And just like that, in the dreamlike way kids had of forming new relationships with absolutely no effort, they began playing hide and seek as if they'd known each other all their lives.

Joe put his hands over his eyes and started counting, unable to see his friends hiding now, much less see a future in which he would fail to look after Rachel eight years from now, or nearly die protecting her forty years from now, but he never forgot his father's admonition, and resolved to do his best to abide by it even when a new girl entered his life and stole his heart.

If you've read the first two novels of this series, you'll know that my flashback scenes always began with the day Lauren met the other four friends over the dead dog. This time I wanted to explore when Joe first met Rachel, Sunny and Al, because Joe's relationship with Rachel in particular is going to be explored in this novel, as subsequent events will show. If you liked what you just read, hit "Vote" and leave a comment. Click on "Continue reading" to see how Al and Rachel are doing being new parents to two teenage foster children.