Immediately I can see how this will play out. If I demand she come down, she’ll respond exactly the way she did when Mr. Rochester insisted she put on a jacket and pants. If I go get Mr. Rochester, he might drag her down—but ten feet off the ground, I’m not even sure he could retrieve her safely if she’s fighting him.

I take off my jacket and wrap it around the kitten so she’s safe on the ground. Then I begin to climb. This kind of tree doesn’t grow back in Houston where I lived before. I don’t even know what it’s called. Pine? Fir? It’s some kind of giant Christmas tree, basically. There’s a very small protruding branch about five feet off the ground. It probably supported Paige, no problem. It cracks ominously under my weight. The trunk of the tree leaves a gash on my forearm and sticks something sharp into my ankle, but I manage to make it onto the branch opposite her.

“What are you doing?” she asks, her voice watery.

“Sitting with you.”

“Don’t you want me to come down?”

“Well, yes. It is cold. And I care about you. I didn’t think you’d want to come down right away, though, and if you’re going to be out here, then I’ll keep you company.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

“Try me.”

“You’re just like him. You want me to eat broccoli and do my homework and be a good girl, but what does it even matter? Huh? It means nothing. He gets to walk around outside at night, but I have to be trapped in that house.”

“You’re right,” I say, my voice softer and shivering—whether it’s the cold or the starkness of the emotions, I’m a mess right now. “I do want you to eat broccoli and do your homework. One day those things will be important to you, too, but not right now. I get that.”

“No, you don’t.”

“It feels like nothing matters now that your parents are gone. It feels like there’s no reason for living. Or worse—like maybe if you’d just been better while they were alive, if you’d brushed your teeth without them having to ask you, if you’d gotten a better grade at school, maybe they’d still be alive. But they wouldn’t. They wouldn’t. And it feels like it will never be okay again.”

There’s more crying. “Yes. Yes.”

Something shifts in the trees beyond us, and I realize that Mr. Rochester has found us. He’s letting me talk to her, though, and I’m grateful for that.