“Which of this do you like?” Hanne said in her low English voice. “The ducks or … what one this called?”

“Ants!” one of the boys said.

“The ants? You choose the ants book?”

“No, the ducks,” the little girl said. The boys didn’t argue.

Hanne read to them about the ducks, then the ants. Then a story about a little boy in the city who collected animals on the roof without his parents knowing.

“I have a barn. Here. With lots of animals,” the girl said when that story was finished. “Do you want to have a look?”

“Yes, I do,” Hanne said.

“Here, here it is!” a boy said.

“I want to show her!”

“Here, look at the big fat cow!”

“I want to show her!” The little voice broke.

“You show to me, Muffin.” Muffin? Was that really her name? “I close my eyes and you take me.”

Close your eyes, Hanne used to say to her, I need to show you something special. How many times had she led a blind Oda or a blind Fritz by the hand into another room or across a playground? Like we were horses, Oda thought now.

“Okay, this way, this way,” the little girl cooed. “Okay, turn in here.” Their voices dwindled in the far room and Oda went back downstairs.

Hanne would have children someday. She would have her own family and these future people were the ones she would give her heart and her affection to. Oda would be the old lady they were forced to see on holidays then laugh about in the car on the way home. This right now was probably the closest they would ever be.

Oda tried to sit in her chair, but it wasn’t like when Hanne went riding. She could hear footsteps, chatter, laughter. She could distinguish Hanne’s deeper, slower voice from the children’s, though she could not understand what they were saying. At the little girl’s age, Hanne had loved cinnamon toast.

She went downstairs. Breakfast was over, the kitchen cleaned up. The innkeeper was gone, perhaps off on his bike. She cut four slices of her own bread, toasted and buttered them. In a cupboard over the stove she found cinnamon and mixed it with a few packets of sugar from a table in the dining room and shook the mixture onto the toast. She brought the slices on a plate up to the third floor.

“These smell good,” Hanne said.

It was an apartment up here, with a living room and two bedrooms and light coming through many large windows. Hanne led her into a little galley kitchen. If she and Hanne ever came back here, this was the place to rent. But of course they would never come back.

“Yummy!” the older boy said. “Thank you for such a splendid treat.” It was hard to believe this was the miscreant at the breakfast table each morning.