1982 MY MOTHER SAYS we’re going to have an adventure. Where are we going? I want to know. It is a Saturday morning in the middle of March. The cherry blossoms have started to bloom, and I hope that we are going down to the Mall to see them. This is something we do every spring. The cherry blossoms are so beautiful that it surprises me every year. So delicate, so auspiciously pink. No, not to the Mall, my mother says. We are going to be detectives. Like Harriet the Spy? I like Harriet the Spy so much that for two months when I was eight, I would eat nothing but tomato sandwiches. Or Miss Marple, says my mother. She puts on her trench coat—in which she looks like a spy, or a glamorous Hollywood version of a spy—and fastens Pip’s leash. Her hair is tied up in a striped scarf. She hands me my yellow windbreaker—it is unseasonably chilly and damp—and we set out from the house.
