Manfred exchanged glances with Fiji and Olivia. That was a lot of glances. He could tell that like him, they didn’t know what to make of this. “Are you supposed to do anything in exchange for this safe place to live?” Manfred asked, finally.

“They haven’t told us nothing yet.” Tommy was completely unsurprised by the question. “Except to act happy if we got asked any questions. If we’re supposed to do something, it must not be anything urgent. We’re bored. We got nothing to do. So the reason I came down here was, what’s up with the kid?”

Diederik came out in his new clothes, denim shorts and a striped T-shirt, and waited shyly for them to notice him.

“You look great!” said Fiji. “I’ll have to run out this afternoon to get you some more in case you grow again.”

The boy, who was less of a boy every day, smiled back at her. “You are most kind,” he said in his odd accent. “I will be glad to repay you with work.”

“I’ll be sure to save all my odd jobs for you, young man,” she said. “In fact, tell the Rev I’ve asked you over to work for me and to have lunch with me.”

His olive face lit up with pleasure, and the boy hurried out of the shop and over to the chapel.

“Weird,” said Tommy, shaking his head. “He’s the opposite of a dwarf, huh?”

“We don’t know what’s up with the kid,” Manfred said. “But we figure no one else needs to be concerned about it.”

“I gotcha. So this is one of those things the Whitefields don’t need to know about?”

“They don’t know . . .” Olivia’s voice trailed off.

“They don’t know we ain’t genuine old people waiting for a nursing home with a loving family and some money?”

“Right.”

“I don’t think so. Mamie, she told the woman—Lenore—she told her, ‘You got us for the duration, sweetie,’ and Mrs. Whitefield, she says, ‘Just until you get a bed in Whispering Creek, Miss Mamie.’ But we ain’t got no one going to pay for us to live at Whispering Creek, which from the brochures in the lobby is one of those really high-end nursing homes. Like a spa.”

“So how do you feel about that?” Fiji said.