“It was unfair of us not to tell you about Agatha before you came,” she said in a rush. “I think . . . we were so happy at the idea that someone might come and . . . and like her. I know that sounds ludicrous, because to someone who never knew her before, it probably doesn’t seem as if there’s anything there to like. But beneath it all, she’s still a person. And she still gets lonely, I’m sure of it. But that’s selfish, and it wasn’t fair not to give you a choice—a real choice.”

So great was my surprise at the conversation going in this direction that I forgot all about hiding my face. I looked straight at her, at her sad, sheepish expression.

“No, it’s all right,” I said. “I swear. It’s fine. I mean, it’s not what I expected . . . but when do you ever really get what you expect?”

A tiny light seemed to flicker behind her eyes. “That’s very generous. But I don’t want you to suffer in silence. We want you to want to be here.”

“I do want to be here,” I said. Did I? Whoops, too late to take it back.

She smiled. “Are you going to sleep now?”

I reached over and tapped my phone to see the clock. It was barely past eight. But what else was I going to do? It seemed too soon to start roaming the house, even just to go down and find a book in the library. I wondered what Laura did at night. Did she watch TV? If so, she would invite me to watch with her, right? I tried to imagine her kicking back on a comfy sofa and putting her feet up—her feet in their silky white slippers. Or in an overstuffed reclining armchair, like Mom used to do, snoring in her reading glasses and fuzzy socks. But I could only picture Laura sitting straight up, perched on the front edge of a sofa, sipping tea.

“Probably,” I said. “I’m pretty tired.”

“I understand. I’ve gotten into the habit of going to bed when Agatha does. Isn’t that awful? It makes me sound about a hundred years old.” She smiled ruefully. “Sometimes I feel a hundred years old.”

“Is it just you with Agatha?” I asked, trying to recall what John had said. “Don’t you have a nurse or anyone else to help you?”

Laura tucked her hair behind her ear. “We tried nurses in the past, but—this sounds silly—they did their jobs too well. They would get into a schedule, and then I found myself avoiding them so I didn’t disrupt their routine. I could go a whole day without seeing Agatha. And . . . even though it made my life easier, I missed her. She’s my child, and I think . . . I think she needs me. Children, especially girls, need their mothers.”