Respite care is basically a babysitter who’s got foster security clearance. I was sad about the prospect of a halfway Thanksgiving by myself. Then, two days before the day, a new kid came. His first time in care, he was near my age and already terrified, and to make it worse, he was denied a visit home for Thanksgiving. Oddly enough, he was not super comforted that at least I, a stranger, would be with him.

The respite lady lived alone in a mobile-home park in Tacoma. She was nice, but there was no Thanksgiving dinner. She did heat frozen turkey dinners for us, in the oven instead of the microwave, so they were good—but nothing like the Thanksgivings I loved. And even though he didn’t talk to me the entire time, I could tell this was definitely different from what the new kid was used to. We ate on trays in front of the TV.

The respite lady sat and crocheted. The boy looked at the National Geographic magazines the lady kept in a stack on the floor. I wandered around the mobile-home park and found wildflowers growing near a chain-link fence. I picked them and asked the lady for some string. She gave me a piece of dental floss, and it worked fine to wrap the flowers into a bouquet, which I put on my TV tray. Frances the badger put a tiny vase of violets on her desk at school for lunch, and I agreed it made things cheerful.

After dinner the lady dragged out a basket of toys for us. Most of them were for toddlers, lots of bath toys and old Playskool stuff. But she also brought out a dollhouse. It was wooden and had rabbit dolls instead of people. The girl rabbit wore a wedding dress and a veil. I dressed and undressed her, adding a kicky pink top, fluffing the veil and smoothing it, and then, in the rabbit’s upstairs bedroom, I saw it: the dollhouse. It was plastic, blue, with white shingles and a red front door. I held it in both my hands and could not believe something so mind-boggling could even exist. I stared into the rooms, each one tiny as a marble, where even tinier furniture was glued in place. In all the world there was never anything so perfect.

The new boy was rooted on the sofa with the Nat Geos. I brought him snacks. “It’s not usually like this,” I told him. “Thanksgiving is usually fun.” He took a lot of naps, and while he slept the long weekend away, I sat outside in the autumn sunshine examining that tiny meta house. I looked up sometimes and he was awake, sitting by the window. He waved, and I waved back, and he picked up another magazine.