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tired to collect due bills, he got into trouble when he failed to pay his own.
    Only dour and wary young Hattie saw growing exhaustion beneath her father’s resolute cheer. One morning, she got out of bed when her father did—before daybreak—and went downstairs with him.
    â€œWhat about school?” he asked.
    â€œI can read and write,” she said, tying on an apron that went around her twice. “I can add and subtract. What else do I need?”
    Before long, he stopped thinking of her as a child. Even when Hattie was small, she had seemed older than Sadie. Now, plain-faced and flat-chested at thirteen, Hattie was everything her beautiful sister didn’t need to be: realistic, practical, good with numbers. Give that girl a ledger and she would follow a dime to hell.
    When the bakery ran out of flour one morning, Hattie set herselfto cleaning up the books. She was determined to figure out how much they owed the mill and why they’d gotten behind on paying for this essential.
    â€œIs this everything?” she asked, waving at the papers stacked in neat, grim piles on the desk. “No other bills? No money hidden somewhere?”
    â€œThat’s all of it,” her father said.
    She stared.
    â€œI swear!” he cried. “That’s everything!”
    â€œWell, we aren’t bankrupt yet but we’ll be lucky to make the mortgage payment this month, Papa.”
    â€œHattie, please! Don’t tell your mother. She don’t gotta know. There’s a man—he gonna buy the bakery. He gonna let me rent the apartment. Our name stays on the building. He gonna give me a salary.”
    â€œDon’t sell,” she said. “Not yet, anyway. I wish I’d known sooner, but now that I do . . .” She looked him in the eye. “You can’t spend anything without my permission, Papa. You can’t say yes just because Sadie pouts. And Nathan has to find work. He brings in money or he moves out.”
    â€œHe has a job! He works here.”
    â€œNow and then,” she admitted dryly. “Papa, he’s lazy and unreliable. He eats like a horse and drinks like a fish. Would you hire him if he weren’t your son?” His hesitation was her answer, and she nodded tightly. “You want to fire him or shall I?”
    â€œAll right!” Henry cried. “Do what you gotta do. Just—please!—don’t tell your mother.”
    NATHAN WAS GIVEN TWO DAYS before he’d be kicked out of the house. When he protested, Hattie told him, “You pay room and board or you move out. And if you go crying to Mutti, I’ll tell her about that shiksa you’re seeing.” Just to be sure Nate wasn’t holding out on the family, Hattie followed him to whatever odd jobs he got after that. “Iwill pick up his wages,” she informed the fools who were willing to hire her brother, and there was something so implacable about that skinny, hard-eyed girl that his bosses handed over the cash.
    Sadie moaned and complained about getting up early to help with the baking before school, but Hattie was not above using guilt as a bludgeon. “The Crash hurt the business. Papa can’t afford to pay assistants. You want him to die of apoplexy, he’s working so hard?”
    Give Sadie her due. She’d always been good in the kitchen and had a real flair for the fancier baking. No one who shopped at the Marcus bakery was giving lavish receptions anymore, but a plate of pretty petits fours and iced bonbons could make an afternoon tea more special. Sadie loved decorating the little cakes, but she really shone behind the counter after school, flirting shamelessly with the customers, bringing in mobs of moonstruck admirers. “I was thinking of you when I made these crullers,” she’d whisper to a goggle-eyed young man, who’d buy a dozen. Dark eyes flashing, she’d lean over the counter and offer a tiny sample of a torte