I ran to a register where the kid bait waited to drive parents insane and picked up a pack of every kind of gum. I pressed them all to my nose and breathed deep until there it was: Fruit Stripe. Thick, compact packaging with lots of sticks of sort-of jelly-bean-scented, paper-wrapped perfection.

Every new house after was broken in with a first-day tradition: long walk for the lay of the land, and along the way a duck into a store for my Fruit Stripe.

New pack every couple of weeks kept me sleeping through each night.

Consistency. As a sleep aid, highly underrated.

Chapter Eighteen

EASTER SUNDAY AT SALISHWOOD was unexpectedly glorious, mostly because the sun was out again. Sean and I, still and forever happily Natan-free, guided groups of families on walks in the woods, where we spotted fledgling birds and baby squirrels and even fox kits. Spring babies. When the morning sun had burned the mist from the forest floor and rose high above the trees, we helped kids find the eggs we’d hidden earlier, consulting a map to keep track in case some got left behind. I watched them root around in bushes and up in trees and beneath rocks and wondered—worried—if Zola was still home. If she was happy.

Before I’d left for Salishwood that morning, Francine gave me an Easter basket full of chocolate eggs and jelly beans. “You’re still a kid for another few months,” she said. “My last. Indulge me.”

I loved it more than I let on.

“Hey,” Sean called, walking fast toward me. “Look who I found!” And from behind him, Zola ran screaming toward me.

I knelt down and let myself hug her for real.

“I missed you,” she said into my shoulder.

“Are you still home?” I asked.

She shook her head. My heart sank. Back with the bad-penny lady.

“But I have a new social worker. Guess who?” She smiled, huge.

“No! Joellen?”

She nodded and whispered in my ear. “Joellen says she’s trying to see if I can live with my grandma, so I can still see my mom sometimes.”

“Would that be good? Do you want that?”

“Yes.”

“Well, listen, no one will work harder to make that happen than Joellen. She’ll do everything she can.”

“I know.”

“Things okay at the house?”

She shrugged.

“Is she remembering to take you to swim?”

“Sometimes. Will you help me find eggs?”

“I know where all the best ones are.” And we searched in the forest while I worked to remember her life was out of my control and to not lose myself in worry for her. I could not rescue Zola or any kid. I was barely going to be able to save myself.

When the eggs were found and the afternoon warm, she waved from the bus window, and I smiled and, flying in the face of common sense, blew her kisses.