She was tempted to tell him to take the woman out for dinner somewhere else, well away from the family home, but part of her thought it might be better to keep it close. At least then she’d be able to see what was going on. What did this woman want exactly?

She reached for a sheet she’d washed earlier and saw her dad frown.

“Why are you washing Molly’s bedding? Mrs. Cameron should be doing that.”

“Molly spilled her drink.” The lie emerged with an ease that probably should have worried her, but didn’t. She’d promised her sister that she wouldn’t tell anyone she’d wet the bed for the fourth night in a row. The only way to keep that promise was to launder the sheets herself.

Did her dad even know that Molly crawled into Izzy’s bed in the middle of the night when she’d wet her own, bringing with her a zoo of soft toys? It had started in those early weeks and then become a habit. Every night Izzy, drunk from lack of sleep, helped wash her sister and change her pajamas, then tucked her up in her own bed along with Dizzy the Giraffe. Molly would immediately fall asleep, but Izzy would lie there awake for hours, often drifting off only as the sun started to rise. She was tired at school and her grades were slipping. Twice she’d fallen asleep at her desk, and sometimes she walked into furniture.

Some of her friends had taken to calling her Dizzy Izzy. It didn’t do anything for her mood to be given the same name as her sister’s soft toy.

They had no idea what her life was like, and neither had her dad, and she had no intention of talking about it. She’d learned more about people since her mother died than in her entire life before that. She’d learned that people focused mostly on their own lives, not other people’s. And when they did think about other people, it was mostly in relation to themselves. Her friends didn’t think about her life, except when watching Molly meant that she had to say no to something they’d arranged. It wasn’t intentional or malicious. It was carelessness. Thoughtlessness. Those two human characteristics that caused more pain than the words suggested they should.

Was bringing a woman home thoughtlessness, too?

Izzy didn’t know much about anything, but she knew it wouldn’t be good for Molly to see another woman in the house. She didn’t feel great about it, either.

In that moment she missed her mother so badly she couldn’t breathe. She wanted to turn the clock back. There was so much she wished she’d said and done. No one had ever told her it was possible to feel angry and sad at the same time.