“Kah,” she said, in one short puff. And then, apparently exhausted by the effort, she closed her eyes.

I was thrilled by this development, but when I mentioned it to Laura that afternoon, she waved it off. After seeing my disappointed reaction, she softened.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can see that it means a lot to you, and that says a lot about who you are as a person, Margot. But the truth is that Agatha’s random utterances mean no more than a baby’s babbling.”

“But it seemed like she was really trying to make this specific sound,” I said. “Maybe she was trying to speak.”

And then there was the faintest change in Laura’s energy. “I doubt it,” she said flatly.

That was my signal to drop the subject, so I did. Later, turning it over in my mind, I wondered if I had somehow offended Laura. Was she jealous? From what I’d seen, Agatha didn’t say anything at all to her mother.

So I decided to stay quiet about it. No point making Laura dislike me.

And anyway, it never came to anything. From time to time, I would ask Agatha what she was thinking about. And the answer, when she deigned to give one, was always the same: Kah.

I DEVELOPED A routine—or maybe it developed around me. Every day after breakfast, I put on my gardening clothes, helped settle Agatha in for her schoolwork—which meant turning to the next blank page in her notebook and writing the date and subject at the top—and then went down to work in the garden with Laura. I’d graduated from basic weeding to pruning dead leaves, checking and repairing the tiny rubber irrigation hoses, and removing bugs from the tomatoes.

One day, as we worked in silence plucking pests and clearing dead leaves out of the pumpkin patch—for which we wore long sleeves and thick gloves, because it turns out every part of a pumpkin plant wants to scratch the bejeezus out of you—I looked up at Copeland Hall looming over us, its imposing wings extending in opposite directions.

“This house is amazing,” I said. “Did your family build it?”

It had taken me two weeks to summon the nerve to bring it up, because I was afraid any questions I asked would make it sound like I was asking how much everything was worth. The last thing I wanted was for the Suttons to think I cared about how much money they had. I did wonder a little, but not in a greedy way. Besides, it wasn’t like knowing how rich they were was a comfort. The priceless antiques and oil paintings only reminded me on a daily basis that I was a penniless orphan.