The girl lowered her face and said nothing.

“Even a little one?”

“I don’t think she’s coming back,” said Amy.

The police officers who took the call, a man and a woman, got nowhere either. The female officer, a heavyset white woman with a cropped haircut like a man’s, spoke to the girl in the kitchen, while the other officer, a handsome black man with a smooth, narrow face, took a description of the mother from Lacey. Did she seem nervous? he asked her. Was she drunk, on drugs? What was she wearing? Did Lacey see the car? On and on he went, but Lacey could tell he was asking only because he had to; he didn’t think the girl’s mother would turn up, either. He recorded her answers with a tiny pencil on a pad of paper that, as soon as she’d finished, he returned to the breast pocket of his uniform. In the kitchen, a flash of light: the woman officer had taken Amy’s picture.

“Do you want to call Child Protection, or should we do it?” the policeman asked Lacey. “Because, seeing as how you are who you are, it might make sense if we waited. No use putting her into the system right away, especially over the weekend, if you don’t mind keeping her here. We can put out a description of the woman and see if we get anywhere. We’ll also put the girl in the missing child database. The mother might come back, too, though if she does, you should keep the girl here and call us.”

It was a little past noon; the other sisters were all due back at one o’clock from the Community Pantry, where they’d passed the morning stocking shelves and dispensing boxes of canned goods and cereal, spaghetti sauce, and diapers. They did this every Tuesday and Friday. But Lacey had been nursing a head cold all week—even after three years in Memphis, she still hadn’t adapted to the damp winters—and Sister Arnette had told Lacey to stay home, no use making herself sicker. It was like Sister Arnette to make a decision like this, even though Lacey had woken up feeling perfectly well.

Looking at the officer, she made a quick decision. “I will do it,” she said.

Which was how, when the sisters returned, it happened that Lacey failed to tell them the truth about the girl. This is Amy, she told them, as they were taking off their coats and scarves in the hall. Her mother is a friend, and she was called away to visit a sick relative, and Amy will be spending the weekend with us. It surprised her, how easily the lie came; she had no practice with deceit, and yet the words had assembled themselves quickly in her mind and found their way to her lips without effort. As she spoke she glanced at Amy, wondering if she would expose her, and she saw a flicker of agreement in the girl’s eyes. She was, Lacey understood then, a girl used to keeping secrets.