She’s already at the door, Polaroid camera slung around her neck, and my pulse speeds up. It’s too sudden, too quick a change in direction, and I feel myself lose the grip on my thoughts. I’m turning to my notebook when I feel a hand on my arm, and I look down to see the girl, her face calm, staring at me behind cat-eye glasses that are taped in the middle.

“I can take pictures with my camera so you won’t forget, okay? If you have to write everything down, it will be too late. I talk a lot—that’s what Ms. Kiko says—so I can keep you remembering all the way there. Okay, Ms. Claire?”

Her sweetness eases the tension in my forehead.

“We’re going to see the reindeer,” she says with such earnestness I want to touch the dimple on her chin.

Reindeer, reindeer, reindeer. A mantra I repeat. So we’re going outside. I frown when I look at her thin long-sleeved shirt. “Do you have a coat?” From a hook by the door, I grab a sweatshirt. “You can wear this; it looks cold out.”

Reindeer, reindeer, reindeer. I start to walk down the hallway, hesitate. Tate and I always took carrots to them. I hurry to the fridge, pleased to find that I have a couple in the crisper, and hurry back to join the girl in the hallway, who’s wearing one of my sweatshirts, and it’s so big on her small frame that the cuffs brush the floor, giving her the look of a little monkey.

“We’re going to see the reindeer, Ms. Claire.”

“Okay, um—”

She looks down, frowns, unzips the sweatshirt, and pulls a silver piece of duct tape off her shirt, reaffixes it to the outside of the sweatshirt. “There; I’m Maree, in case you already forgot.” She says this with so much earnestness in her upturned face it gives me a pang.

“Thank you, Maree. Now I won’t forget!”

Her lips quirk up at the edges. “So my idea with the pictures was good and stuff, huh?”

“What pictures?”

She laughs so hard her glasses come off. “Holy crap, you’re so funny, Ms. Claire.” She pulls on my sleeve and rushes us to the elevator, pushes the down button repeatedly. “Hurry; let’s go before your memory wears off!”

I chuckle, enjoying the girl’s antics, opting not to correct her language. Her frankness is startling and charming and mostly unexpected. I love it.

Outside, the sun has nearly set, turning the light into moody shades of gray with clouds that hang over the mountains, skirting over bald peaks and rocky crevasses. Wind whips off the water, frigid and stinging. The reindeer pen sits across from BTI, so we don’t have far to go.