When she went back downstairs, she draped the damp clothes over the top of the door and took out the little beaver statue that Robert had given her. She placed it by the statue of Ganesh. She did not realize the symbolism of having done so. She did not realize that the beaver was telling her that it, and she, had found home. Instead, she thought of Robert and all the other people at the car lot. She wondered whether they were OK or not. She wondered if they had all found some other place to stay. She reminded herself that the meaningfulness of her relationship to them might be entirely one-sided. Still, Aria made the decision that she would go back to the car lot the next day, when Omkar was at school. There was some closure she needed, even if it was to stand before the empty lot and to realize that she might never see any of them again.

Aria turned the lights off and lifted back the top sheets of the bed to crawl between them. Her body felt the shock of there being no plastic between herself and the mattress. Every time she had stayed in a new house like this, it had been in a foster placement or a group home. They always put plastic on the beds to prevent damage from potential bed-wetting. The noise and feel of the plastic always made Aria feel bad, as if they expected her to be like a stray dog that wasn’t potty-trained. “This is how other people feel,” she thought to herself.

She felt grief for the pain of her childhood as much as she was celebrating how good it felt to be trusted and welcomed enough that Jarminder had put the sheets directly on the unprotected mattress. The feeling of that trust that was placed in her put as much pressure on her as it took away. Pressure to stay in their favor. Pressure to earn her keep. Pressure to make them never regret it.