Nola rose and looked down at the only family member who had cared. She bent to kiss the parched skin on the forehead. “Thank you for saving me,” she whispered, thinking of her Steinway, of the music lessons, of the food in his refrigerator, of his continuous presence. “I love you.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “What would have happened to me if you weren’t here?”

The left eye blinked.

The woods stood leafless, brown and desolate. Nola didn’t cross them to her former home, but laid out their picnic lunch on a blanket twenty feet away from the cliff. She fed Jenna's imagination with her own memories of laughter and music and guests who loved to stay forever. And some fabrications. “Mommy and Daddy used to picnic with us out here,” she said.

The early winter day was warm enough for them to sit outside with their jackets zipped up. Patches of snow clung to shaded spots by the trees. The Sound was quiet, its gray-blue surface shimmering like an oil spill. Swans curled into themselves, and gulls squawked from above. Jenna read a new story she had written, in which, as always, her characters suffered macabre deaths.

“Let’s act it,” she said when she finished reading.

Nola went along with the game. “How about if instead of falling into a well, the princess finds a bird with a broken wing and nurses it back to health?”

“Yeah! Turns out the bird is a cursed prince, and he turns back into his princely form and they fall in love,” Jenna said, delight in her voice. She proceeded to act it out.

Nola clapped. “Keep thinking of good endings. Happy endings.” She

inserted a cassette into the portable recorder she had bought Jenna. “Want to hear The New Kids on the Block?”

The two of them sang along with the tape. Once Jenna lived with her, Nola thought, she could always be this happy child.

In Nola's limousine on the way to Mini-Nazi’s house, Jenna began to whimper. By the time they arrived, her crying had turned to screaming. In the front yard, she threw herself on the ground, thrashing and kicking. “I hate you! Don’t leave! I hate you!”

“I’ll be back.” Nola tried to gather Jenna's flailing limbs. Her mouth was parched and her brain felt as if it were stuffed with cotton. “I’ll be back next week.”

Jenna bawled and kicked and pummeled Nola's chest. “Don’t leave me!” she cried. “Please, please, please.”

“Shhhhhhhh,” Nola whispered. “Remember to tell yourself that I love you. After the hearing you’ll live with me. Forever. I promise.”

The following week, though, while Nola was rehearsing in Cleveland, the principal called. Jenna had been caught with a cigarette lighter in the cafeteria line, attempting to set a girl’s hair on fire.