Passing Through Paradise by Susan Wiggs

friend’s house, wondering if she should have called first. Too late now. Shouldering a voluminous totebag, Sandra got out of the car. Despite the tract-home uniformity of the suburban neigh-borhood, the Dawson house stood out—a huge, half-finished monument to mediocrity. But there was nothing mediocre about the woman who lived here.
    Stepping over a curb fringed by beaten-down weeds, Sandra made her way up a concrete path littered with a Big Wheel, a laser scooter, two soccer balls and a scrawled warning in rain-smeared chalk:
No Girls Alloud.
A minivan dusted with a cat’s footprints sat in the side driveway.
    When Sandra rang the bell, a chorus of “I’ll get it” sounded, followed by the drum of running feet. The door opened wide, banging the much-abused wall of the foyer. Four identical pairs of brown eyes focused on her. Four grubby mouths, the degree of toothlessness varying with age, smiled in greeting.
    “Hello, Aaron, Bart, Caleb and David,” she said, naming them in order of height. “Can I come in, even though I’m a girl?”
    “Yup.” They shuffled aside to let her pass. She stepped into the colorful clutter of the Dawson house. Marred by the scuffs and smudges of the resident tribe, the house smelled of equal parts baking cookies and hamster cage. Aaron shouted, “Mo-om! Sandy’s here!”
    “Well, for heaven’s sake.” Propping a large, brown-eyed toddler with a runny nose on her hip, Barb walked into the foyer. “C’mon in, girlfriend.”
    “Can we go out now, Mom?” asked Bart. “It stopped raining, and we need to finish digging the foxhole.”
    His mother waved a weary hand in surrender. “I always dreamed of having trench wars in my backyard.”
    Emitting spontaneous machine-gun noises, the herd charged toward the rear of the house.
    Barb stepped aside to let them pass. “Don’t slam— “
    The door banged shut.
    “—the door.”
    Squawking in protest, baby Ethan squirmed free of his mother and waddled after his brothers, setting up a roar of protest until Barb hauled him in front of the TV, gave him a handful of dry Cheerios and turned on
Rugrats.
    “Just call me Mother of the Year,” she said with a grin.
    “Hello, Mother of the Year,” Sandra said. “Is this a good time?”
    “Let’s see. Ralph’s off in the wilderness on paintball maneuvers with his buddies, Ethan has an ear infection, I just cheated on my diet with half a bag of Doritos and my sons are destroying the neighborhood with entrenching tools. So, yeah. It’s a perfect time.” As cheerful and openly friendly as her boys, she clasped Sandra in a brief hug. “I’m glad you stopped by. I phoned after hearing the ruling, but you didn’t answer. Let’s make coffee.”
    Sandra took a seat at the boardinghouse-sized kitchen table while Barb bustled around. Creator of the wildly popular
Jessica and Stephanie
series of paperbacks for girls, she was one of the best-selling authors in the country. In her jeans, Keds and a sweatshirt smeared with jelly, she was as unpretentious as the mug of Sanka she made with instant hot tap water. Never mind that the mug had been imprinted to commemorate her first
New York Times
best-seller; it had a chipped rim, and the gold leaf lettering was flaking off.
    The two had met at a meeting of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, which convened four times a year at Newport’s Redwood Library. On the surface, they had nothing in common—Sandra the quiet loner and Barb the soccer mom—but they shared one consuming passion that forged a sturdy bond: writing books for children. A few years ago, they’d begun reading each other’s first drafts and talking shop. Barb was a consummate professional, and a godsend in the confusing and unpredictable world of publishing. Barb’s life of yelling kids and madcap chaos contrasted wildly with Sandra’s too-quiet existence.
    She set her totebag on the table, a tacit indication that they would talk business. Although