“My sweet girl,” he said. Bay had said Dice was the father of the intentional family, but he was better than any father I knew. When I was young, my mother always struggled to explain what had happened to my father. Instead, I grew up into the loss, like the turtle I’d seen in a litter awareness campaign that, as a baby, had gotten a plastic ring stuck around its middle, so that when it grew, its shell and midsection became distorted, squashed flat in the middle.

On the way back we stopped at a Dairy Queen, even though I’d refused the milk shake. Dice ordered a tall cone of paint-white ice cream. The enormous server, pillow-soft as an ice cream herself, elegantly dipped the cone into a vat of chocolate coating. I watched the chocolate freeze. Dice paid with cash, and the bills looked soft and floppy, like third-world currency.

I knew that money probably came from another family member’s bank account. Dice had told me people tended to donate all they had when they arrived. I didn’t like his using that money on ice cream. We were all supposed to say no to treats.

“Well, I’ll have a try,” I said.

“You stick to your word.”

He had ice cream on his lip. I reached for his cone, licked the chocolate coat. The sugar burned at the sockets of my teeth. Dice let me without protest, which surprised me, and then when I handed the cone back, he dropped it and pressed the whole thing into the floor with his moccasin. The look on his face was placid but the gesture was so violent, so wrathful, that I felt sweat rise on my back, my shoulders, my face.

“Sir,” said the server. He ignored her, so I did too.

* * *

All the long way home in the truck, Dice let me stew in my own juices. The longer I was silent, the more I felt I couldn’t speak—a paralyzed feeling from my past, like waiting to tell my mother about the college acceptance letter I did not want. I’d ruined our whole excursion. Maybe I’d ruined my chance at attending the next direct action.

But as we pulled into the courtyard, where the three guard dogs wrestled below the enormous hickory, I felt better again. The healthiest foods, I knew, were the ones that stewed in their isolation, like sauerkraut. In isolation, there’s no way for disease to grow.

I followed Dice to prepare the worms for the little owl. I sat on his floor and clamped the nightcrawlers down with clothespins. The owl snapped one up in his beak, then hunkered down in his box again.