“Of course.” Quinn sets her down and spreads the toothpaste on her daughter’s toothbrush and her own. They both brush, and Quinn makes a face at her with the toothpaste’s foam around her mouth, and they both laugh.

Maddie changes out of her clothes and into her pajamas, and Quinn settles her in with the stuffed peregrine falcon that the social worker found for her.

“Read to me?” says Maddie. She’s mostly read herself to sleep since she was four.

“A treat!” Quinn says, picking up the book on Maddie’s nightstand and opening to the page she’s folded over.

“Lie down with me?” says Maddie.

“Of course.” Quinn pulls back the blanket and settles in next to her daughter. “Close your eyes, my girl.”

Quinn slips out of Maddie’s bed and back into the living room, flipping through the channels on low volume, scrolling through her phone. She hates this time: Maddie fast asleep and so much night left. She thinks of walking to the Hudson, or going back into Maddie’s room to watch her sleep. She scrolls slowly through her mother’s mostly dormant Facebook page. Mary posts pictures of the sky sometimes, of her and her friend Susan, at a church function three weeks ago, all dressed up. Quinn checks her ex-boyfriend’s Instagram. He was the first boyfriend she’d had since she got Maddie back. He yelled at her sometimes when she made him angry, his face close to her face and his words loud and hard. Quinn had liked the weight of him next to her at night when she came home from work and after Maddie was in bed. Not enough, though, not more than she liked Maddie talking during dinner, not more than she liked having her daughter mostly to herself. Still, the quiet, this time of night, makes her feel crazy; the urge to get free of her own skin is hard to fight.