Mr. Albright cast a glance down the hall—I presumed he was looking for Laura. Seeing that the coast was clear, he lowered his voice, too. “Agatha doesn’t like or dislike anything, I’m afraid. Her reactions are reflexive. The doctors know this. Laura knows it, too. Only . . . she hasn’t been able to admit it to herself quite yet.”

Now he seemed sad. I wondered what it was like to be expected to show up happy every day to a place like this, a house with so much sadness hanging over it.

And if it was hard for him, what must it be like for Laura?

A daily grind of misery. I certainly knew how that felt.

Maybe I did belong here.

“Why don’t you give it a chance?” he said. “A couple of days. In the meantime, I’ll speak with your caseworker about finding you a place to go if you still want to leave.”

Of course I would still want to leave. But for the moment, what else could I do? “Okay.”

“You’ll do great,” he said. “Wait and see.”

“I’d better get back up to Agatha,” I said. I was already feeling bad about leaving her, and worried about what Laura would say if she found me out here.

I had no idea what to expect when I returned to the nursery. Would Agatha have done something to my clothes?

No. She sat at the window, meek as a kitten.

“I’m sorry,” I said to her back. “I tried to go away, but there’s nowhere for me to go to.”

No answer. Of course not. She didn’t care either way.

I just had to keep telling myself that until I believed it.

CHAPTER

6

“DOES THE FOOD taste all right?” Laura asked, her eyes roving over my plate.

“It’s great,” I said. It wasn’t a lie—our dinner was simple but delicious, a Caesar salad topped with grilled salmon, a side of garlic bread, and a glass of some kind of fancy sparkling water, which I’d never really liked before but went well with the meal.

We were eating in what Laura called the breakfast room, a narrow space off the side of the kitchen with blue floral wallpaper, blue floral curtains on the bay window, and matching cushions on the chairs around the eight-person table. A vase of fresh daisies sat in the center of the table, which Laura apologized for—adding that daisies weren’t “dinner” flowers.

“Okay, I won’t eat them,” I said, and for a moment, she looked mystified.

Then she brightened. “A joke,” she said, laughing approvingly, as if the idea of a joke was the funny part.