Gently, he touched each card with his finger. He didn’t hide them as he’d done before. “Bright times. Bright, bright, urh, bright times.”

“For me?”

“They say you’re going to be okay.” For a single moment, he looked me straight in the eye. Shy and uncertain. “You’re going to be okay. Now.”

Carl plucked up the cards and tucked them away in a pocket. Then he stood up, turned his massive back to me, continued digging through the mound of trash. He found a can and shook it into his palm. Something plopped into his hand and he put it in his mouth. I stood there, waiting.

“Thanks,” I said, but he didn’t answer. “Carl?” He kept picking through the garbage. I don’t think he heard me. “Bye, Carl. Goodbye.”

I turned around and walked through the woods toward Gran. All I could think about was Carl’s last word. Now. It might have meant absolutely nothing, or it might have meant that somewhere deep inside of him, he knew me.

I lowered my head. That was all I wanted, really. The same thing as most everyone else. To be out in the open. To be regarded. To be seen.

MAISY

“She’s still claiming some legal right,” Gran told Dr. Westerly. “I don’t think I have a choice.”

I was waiting outside Dr. Westerly’s office, but the door was open just a bit. I visited her two times every week. Susan called Gran before I started school and told Gran it was a good idea. The first couple of visits I didn’t like it, but Dr. Westerly already taught me some things. I learned how to “read my middle.” That way I knew when I was getting upset, and I could do things to calm down. She also made me talk to “the girl from Pinchkiss Circle.” At first I thought it was dumb, but the more I talked to that girl, the more I talked back. It was a big surprise when I told myself I was scared all the time. I got even more scared when it was just me and Gloria, and Rowan was gone and Telly was gone. Then I was scared every single second. Dr. Westerly said being afraid made my heart go fast and my head go sparkly. “But now that we know, Maisy, we can figure out ways to make things better.”

“Well,” she said to Gran. “The only approach we can take right now is to try and prepare her.”

“How do you prepare a small child to visit jail?”

Jail?

“If we can help her understand what to expect—”

“How on earth could we do that?”

“Go through the process. Discuss different scenar—”

“Listen. My daughter’s not a good woman, Dr. Westerly. I’ve tried and tried to figure it out, but I haven’t the faintest clue why. I don’t know where I went wrong.”

“Mrs.—”