I sat down in a chair that put my back to the wall. Sadie-Grace sat down with her back to the door. Behind her, I could see a fraction of the hallway. To my left, I could see the rest of the kitchen, where Ellen was pouring lemonade out of a white plastic pitcher. The appliances looked old and none of the colors matched, but everything in that kitchen was spotless.

Ellen plunked a mason jar down in front of each of us. “Drink.”

I drank the lemonade. So did Sadie-Grace. And then I circled back to what I’d said before. “Twenty years ago, Ana Gutierrez got pregnant. The baby was a summer baby—or very early fall. Ana came here to give birth.”

I wasn’t sure if I meant here as in Two Arrows or here as in Ellen’s house. I was fishing, and the old woman who sat down in the chair between Sadie-Grace and me was smart enough to know it.

“You tell my sister you met me?” she asked after a moment.

When I’d first moved in with Lillian, I’d viewed my exchanges with her as a form of bartering: I’d answer one of her questions in hopes of her answering mine. We’d progressed past that, these last few months, but Ellen seemed like the type to respect an even trade.

Or better yet, a trade that favored Ellen. Answer the question. Answer any question she asks you.

“I told Lillian about my last visit,” I confirmed. “I told her that I met you.” Then I volunteered the answer to her next question before she could weigh the costs and benefits of asking it. “She said that I shouldn’t come back.”

“Smart girl.” Ellen took a long drink from a mason glass that very clearly did not contain lemonade. “Lil,” she clarified. “Not you.”

I probably should have heard some kind of threat or warning in those words—the implication that not coming back would have been smart—but I couldn’t get past the idea of someone, anyone, referring to the great Lillian Taft, grande dame of society, as a girl.

“You’re going to catch flies with that mouth if you keep gaping at me,” Ellen said mildly.

Nothing about this woman is mild. I had to remind myself of that, and then I circled back around to the point.

“Lillian doesn’t know that I came here today. She doesn’t know that Ana gave birth in Two Arrows.” I waited a fraction of a second to see if that would get me a reaction. It didn’t. “Lillian doesn’t know that you’re the one who arranged for Ana’s baby’s adoption.”

Adoption, a voice in my mind whispered, or sale.