The interview at that school, two days after Martin left for his route, was not successful. Kat would not engage with the headmistress, did not answer any of her questions, made no attempt to show the woman what she already knew. The headmistress suggested rather quickly that Kat might be better off with a tutor at home.

“Some children have special requirements, and I think your daughter might be one,” the headmistress said. “I’ve seen children like this before who are withdrawn. She wouldn’t do well in a social environment like our academy.”

Kat and I returned home. I was angry and hurt and annoyed, but Kat seemed unaffected. Perhaps a tutor was going to be the best thing, but maybe not until she was older. Perhaps for now I could teach Kat her letters and sums, I was thinking.

When Martin returned from his latest stint on the road and bearing three black bottles of hair tonic, I told him about the interview at the girls’ school and what the woman had said.

“Do you think it would be all right if I taught her here at home for this first year until we can see better how she prefers to learn?” I asked him.

“Certainly,” Martin said with a confidence that surprised me and with no surprise at all at what the headmistress had said about Kat.

So this is how Kat and I spend the autumn mornings. We work on her letters and simple sums. We string colored beads in different patterns and study maps of other countries and look at books with illustrations of animals and gems and plants. Some days I get out Da’s book and I read off some of the words until we find one she likes and then she attempts to write it. Her favorite word thus far is luminescent. It has always been one of my favorites, too.

Kat, for all her oddities, was born to learn. Everything that I tell her she absorbs like a sponge, though she asks only a few questions now and then.

While I hunger to hear the child’s voice more than just once or twice a day—and I do hear it at least once or twice a day—I do believe Kat has grown fond of me, perhaps even loves me. When Martin is home Kat seems no different than when he is away. She has nothing to say to him and he doesn’t seem to mind that she doesn’t. Mrs. Lewis’s words haunt me a little then, but I imagine Martin feels he cannot change the way Kat is, and therefore what good does it do to worry about it?

The year comes to a close after a quiet Christmas. I make the house as festive as I can with my weekly allowance, bringing in armloads of evergreen branches and a little pine tree that Kat and I decorate with homemade ornaments and garlands. But despite the cheerful look of the house, Martin is his usual aloof self when Christmas Day actually arrives. I asked him a few weeks earlier if he wanted to exchange gifts and he simply replied, “No.” I also asked him if he had any objections to my picking out our gifts for Kat, and he didn’t. His only stipulation was not to give her too many; two or three were plenty. I complied.