To my surprise, Victor sat beside me. I assumed he'd gotten his grandmother's cane and delivered it. His plate was invisible beneath a truly amazing array of food, very little of it involving vegetables, I noted. He had a can of Coke that he popped open with a defiant hiss.

"So, what you do, it's just weird, right?" was his opening conversational gambit.

"Yes, it is."

Maybe he'd meant to offend me. If so, my matter-of-fact reply took him off base. I was actually glad to get a dose of sincerity.

"So, you travel all the time?"

"Yeah."

"Cool."

"Sometimes. Sometimes I wish I had a nice house like this."

He glanced around him contemptuously. He could dismiss the value of a beautiful and cared-for home, since he'd never lacked it. "Yeah, it's okay. But no house is good when you're not happy."

An interesting and true observation—though in my experience, comfort never hurt whether you were depressed or whether you were cheerful.

"And you're not happy."

"Not much."

This was a pretty intense conversation to be having with someone I didn't know at all.

"Because of Tabitha's death?" Since we were being blunt.

"Yeah, and because no one here is happy."

"Now that she's been found and she can be buried, don't you think things will get better?"

He shook his head doubtfully. He was eating all the while we were having this incredibly doleful conversation. At least he shut his mouth when he chewed. Suddenly I realized I was closer in age to this boy than anyone else in the house, and I knew that was why he'd sought me out.

"Maybe," he said grudgingly. "But then we gotta get ready for the baby to come, and it'll cry all night. Tabitha did," he added, almost inaudibly.

"You really were fond of her," I said.

"Yeah, she was okay. She bugged me. But she was okay."

"The police gave you a hard time when she was taken."

"Oh, yeah. It was intense. They questioned me, Dad had to get me a lawyer." He was a little proud of that. "They couldn't get that I wouldn't have anywhere to put her. Why would I take her? Where would I take her? We fought, but even real brothers and sisters fight. You fight with your brother, right?"

"We grew up in the same house," I said, "but he's not really my brother. My mom married his dad." I was surprised at my own words. Sentences just kept coming out of my mouth.

"That would be freaking weird, living in the house with someone your own age you weren't even related to. Especially if you're not the same, you know, sex."