I hefted my suitcase from the car, and we stood together before the only house in all of Seattle and its surrounding islands that had a long-term bed for me.

“Muiriel.” A woman came out to the porch, wiping her hands on a dish towel. Almost as small as Joellen, maybe in her sixties, a white lady with graying dark hair piled in a bun, wearing a plaid apron over a soft body in jeans and a gray sweater.

“Francine,” Joellen whisper-reminded me.

I held up my hand. “Hello, Francine.”

I picked up my suitcase, and Francine held the screen door open for us. We blinked the sun from our eyes and stood in the bright kitchen. Butcher-block countertop. White cabinets. Clean smell of dish soap. Through the wall of windows above the sink I saw a back field with a little wooden house.

“Chicken coop,” Francine said. “You like chickens?”

“I do,” I said. “Just not to eat.”

Her head tilted. “You eat pigs? Cows?”

“No, sorry.”

Bread without flesh is a good diet, wrote John Muir, confirming what I’d already learned on a field trip to the grocery store in second grade. A gutted pig hung from hooks by its back legs in the deli, and I figured out meat is animals.

“Muiriel,” Francine said, “we are going to have us a time. I don’t eat them, either. Here. Give.” She took my suitcase and led us down a narrow hall to a stairwell that opened into an attic room beneath the A-frame roof. A braided rag rug and one big bed beneath a dormer window. Smelled like clean laundry.

“Are there—where are the other beds?” I asked.

“I donated the bunks to hospice just last month,” Francine said. “Bought all new linens, too. Painted, repaired all the kicked-in doors and holes in the drywall; twenty years of fostering takes a toll on an old place,” she said.

I nodded. Absolute truth.

“Joellen tells me you’re not bound to make me have to do it all again, paint and all that. File says it, too. You set to prove them right?”

Not accusatory, not suspicious—just a matter-of-fact question.

“Yes,” I said. “But, so I’m— It’s only me? In this room?”

“Only you in the house. You’re my last,” Francine said.

“I told you it would be only you,” Joellen said, low.

“Yeah,” I said, just as low. “It’s just…a big room.” My heart sped up. So much easier to be ignored, helpful and hidden, unnoticed in a loud group of many kids.

“It’s beautiful,” Joellen said to Francine.

“Big bed,” I said.

“It’s a full,” Francine said. “Smaller than a queen, bigger than a bunk. Never had a kid your age. Twelve-year-olds fit pretty well in bunks, but I thought you’d like a real bed, room to stretch.”

I stared at the lonely expanse of blanket and pillows until Joellen nudged me.