Wyatt read aloud to Ava and, he guessed, Reid—who kept chewing the feet of his Batman action figure.

"Last time," said the oldest Glasser child. "Are you listening? Okay, tell me if you hear any mistakes."

He smoothed the letter against his bare mattress—Bonnie hadn't made the beds yet.

"Dear Mr. Blakely," he began. "I am writing this letter anonymously about the loan your bank is making to Rick Glasser. It is for a bar/trampoline place we do NOT think is a good idea. The family of question has ANOTHER loan you may not know about. They are also buying a lake house at Kormville Lake. Because the loans are going at the same time, you may not be aware of the lake loan. If they do both loans, I think they will be overextended. So you should call it off."

He folded the letter in thirds, finishing, "Sincerely, Anonymous."

Ava moved to open it again. Wyatt told her not to touch, then gripped her wrist, then—deciding to let her see—carefully unfolded the letter himself.

She looked at the middle. "What does 'overextended' mean?"

"Broke," he said. "I found it in the thesaurus."

Reid spit out Batman to say, "You forgot aftercare, you didn't say anything about aftercare!"

Wyatt and Ava looked at one another.

Reid continued, "Tell them! You have to tell them how much it sucks!"

Ava said, "You've never even been to aftercare. You don't go to Roosevelt."

"So what, I am this year and if Dad—"

"Shut up, it doesn't matter." Wyatt made a slashing gesture to his sister, who didn't understand how to deal with Reid. "The bank only cares if Mom and Dad can pay back the money. If we talk about aftercare, they might think we're kids."

His siblings looked back at him, a little scared.

Wyatt felt a little scared himself. Avoiding aftercare was the reason he'd given them for writing the letter, but he knew this didn't justify such a drastic action.

Aftercare was part of it. Dad being gone more, plus Tramp Bar, plus this talk he'd been hearing through the floor after bedtime about "initial rough patch" and "worst case scenarios"—it all felt like too much.

Mom and Dad always thought stuff could "work itself out." Like with Reid. (Who'd turned Batman around and was gnawing his head now.) They actually planned to send Reid to kindergarten next year, even though preschool sent home one of those Thought You Should Know! notes basically every day about something—shoving, not listening, taking meatballs off other kids' plates.

Mom said this was "noise, whatever." Dad said Roosevelt Elementary was used to dealing with "a broad spectrum of kids" in kindergarten.

Wyatt didn't know what any of that meant. But he knew he'd never stolen his friends' meatballs in preschool.

Ava asked when he planned to mail the letter.

"Today," Wyatt said. "Hopefully."

Reid volunteered, "I'll put it in the box! I know how to put the flag up."

He snatched for the letter.

Wyatt smacked him off. "No, we have to be careful. Dad can't see." He added, half to himself, "It can't be in the box too long. He might mail something himself."

Ava asked, "What time does the mailman come?"

"About three-forty-five. Most days."

"Okay, so..." Her mouth curled in a happy-devious grin. "At, like, three-thirty, you distract him, then I'll sneak the letter into the box."

"No, I put it in the box!" Reid roared.

Wyatt stood and glowered at his little brother—Bonnie or Dad could've easily heard this. He felt his whole face squeezing. Dad had told him he needed to stop telling his brother and sister to shut up.

He didn't say it now, but Reid shut up anyway.

"Good idea, Ava," Wyatt said. "I could ask Dad to watch my drills in the back. He knows I have to do my Riverdawgs conditioning."

Reid asked, "Could I do your conditioning with you?"

Reid had gone from angry to eager in about two seconds. The true answer was, no, you can't. A six-year-old doing a hundred pushups, two hundred dry swings, five minutes of power skipping and another five of burpees?

"Sure," Wyatt said. "You can absolutely help distract."

Now that was true.

The problem with getting the letter in the box actually wasn't Dad. The problem, which Wyatt didn't feel like going into with the littles, was Bonnie. Bonnie was cleaning until five o'clock today. Bonnie was awesome—that pumpkin-walnut bread of hers was Wyatt's third-favorite food on Earth—but she was also a wildcard.

Wyatt couldn't predict Bonnie the way he could his parents. Bonnie noticed stuff they didn't—like last spring when Wyatt had hidden a screw off his bike's front brake caliper.

His friend had just gotten a fat tire bike, those ones that could destroy sand and mud with their sweet, eel-looking tires. Wyatt knew from prior haggles that his parents wouldn't spring for one just because they looked cool at the cycling shop. If Wyatt's current bike was broken, though, and needed replacing anyhow...

So he'd found a tiny screwdriver in the toolbox, removed the part, and stashed it in his desk. Next time the family took a neighborhood bike tour, he swerved dramatically at the end, just missing the giant oak tree by their driveway.

Dad squatted at the front wheel. "I'm sorry, Bud. Coulda sworn I checked all the bikes in March. Maybe I'm remembering last year."

Wyatt felt bad at how Dad winced, obviously disappointed with himself.

Still, the screw stayed in his desk.

Bonnie cleaned the next day. As Dad pulled her vacuum in from the porch, he told her about Wyatt's close call and faulty brakes. He explained they might head out later to the cycling shop.

"No problem," Bonnie said, squinting outside at the bike—still strewn in the lawn. "If you're not back by the time I finish, I'll lock up."

Two hours later, they were dunking chicken nuggets into ranch dressing in the kitchen—the kids in socks and shoes, ready for the car—when Dad cried out.

"Hey—your screw, Bud!"

He raised the small, silver object, which he'd spotted beside the bin of cleaning supplies Bonnie kept on the island during her shift.

"How about that?" he marveled. "Wow, that's luck. That's a chunk of change we just saved."

Wyatt glanced over to find Bonnie gathering Ava's dolls from the floor in preparation to sweep, methodically, her mouth a perfect line.