I crawled backwards, dragging the trunk with me.

“I thought you’d forgotten all about that trunk.”

I thought about the news clipping Ditte had sent. It would be on top of all the other words in the trunk. I hadn’t been able to face it for a long time.

The trunk was covered in a film of dust. “Did you keep it safe on purpose, Lizzie, when I went to school? Or just by accident?”

Lizzie sat on the bed and watched me. “There seemed no reason to mention it to anyone.”

“Was I really such a bad child?” I asked.

“No, just a motherless one, like so many of us.”

“But that’s not why they sent me away.”

“They only sent you to school. And it probably was ’cos you’d no mother to care for you. They thought it best.”

“But it wasn’t best.”

“I know that. And they came to know that. They brought you home.” Lizzie tucked a lock of my unruly hair back into its pin. “What’s made you remember it now?”

“Ditte sent me a slip.” I showed it to her. As I read the quotation, I saw her relief.

Then I looked at her sheepishly. “There is another reason,” I said.

“Which is?”

“Dr. Murray thinks a word is missing from the Dictionary.”

Lizzie looked at the trunk, and her hand sought her crucifix. I thought she might start fretting, but she didn’t.

“Open it slowly,” she said. “In case something has made a home of it and is startled by the light.”

I sat all afternoon with my Dictionary of Lost Words. Lizzie came and went more than once, bringing sandwiches and milk, and reluctantly relaying a message to Da that I was feeling poorly. When she came into her room for the third time, she turned on the lamp.

“I’m knackered,” she said, sitting heavily on the bed and disturbing the slips spread across it. She moved her hand through them like she was moving it through leaves. “Did you find it?” she asked.

“Find what?”

“The lost word.”

The look on Dr. Murray’s face came back to me.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I did find it, eventually.”

I reached over to Lizzie’s bedside table and picked up the slip. There was no question of me giving it to Dr. Murray. Even if he wasn’t in a temper, I couldn’t think of a single scenario that would make the word’s presence in my hand acceptable.

“Do you remember it, Lizzie?” I said, holding it out to her.

“Why would I remember it?”

“It was the very first. I wasn’t sure, but when I took everything out of the trunk, there it was, right at the bottom. Do you remember? It had looked so lonely.”

She thought for a bit, then her face brightened. “Oh, I do remember. You found my mother’s hat pin.”