Chapter 6

“Aunt Lena, what’s New York like?”

“It’s like Jakarta, kiddo—only with potable drinking water courtesy of the Croton Reservoir and an infrastructure that actually lets you get around town, even on foot.”

“Of course, though the cities are about the same size, New York has ten times the murder rate,” Chandler chimed in, fiddling at the dinner table with his iPhone, iPad, iSomething. Chandler had a big job with the multinational company that Quinnie’s mother worked for and was now a consultant. That was all Quinnie knew or cared to.

Aunt Lena, however, was not one to be overawed. She looked hard at Quinnie’s “father”—she often pronounced the word with an exaggerated emphasis that made his mother blanch—and said, “Whenever people say anything about New York, I like to remind them that on a very bad day, when we saw the worst of humanity, New York showed the very best. New Yorkers acted with courage, purpose, and without self-pity.”