We watched them drive away, and then sat on the porch and watched Terry Johnson make his careful way through the damp grass, gingerly lifting every paw before carefully stepping on it, licking water from the grass. Still woozy, but he would recover completely.

“I left it on the table,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m sure Joellen can find me a place this week; you don’t have to worry. I’m…Francine, I am so sorry.”

She stared at me, beside her on the porch steps. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d guess you were being dramatic, but you’ve been in too many placements for that.”

“I can call Joellen tonight,” I assured her.

“Muiriel. I love that dog. But he is a dog. You are a person. And I am the person who bought the chocolate and handed it to you as you were getting ready to go to work; it was an accident. You did nothing on purpose—we’ll both remember better next time, and let’s congratulate ourselves on surviving Christmas—there was a ton of chocolate lying around then, too, and nobody died. Come on. We’re not that bad.”

“But—”

“Look at him! He’s perfectly fine. Even if he hadn’t been, it would not have been your fault, and for God’s sake, I would never kick you out. Don’t you know that by now?”

The words I understood, yes. But what she was saying; that no matter what I did, she wasn’t going to let me go? I could stay until I was done, even if I killed her dog?

It had been such a long time since I’d wanted to stay anywhere. With someone.

“Do you have kids? Your own?” I said, breaking my Do not ask the foster parents personal questions, especially if you like them rule.

“I do not,” she said.

“What did you do before you retired? Before you fostered?”

“Well,” she said, “I was a pediatric nurse.”

“No way.”

“Oh yes. I loved it. I worked at Children’s in the city. And then I was about to turn twenty-five years old, and there was this cardiologist from San Francisco. We moved to Seattle, got an apartment together.”

“But did you— You didn’t want kids?”

“I wanted kids desperately. He said he did, too, though it never was the ‘right time’ for him. But I loved him. So I waited, and when I was thirty, we got married; we moved back here to the island, and I thought, Well, now’s the time, but still he wasn’t ready. I loved him some more, and I waited and waited some more, and I woke up one day and I was forty years old. And he woke up that same day and told me he had changed his mind. He didn’t want kids. Or me. And he moved back to San Francisco.”

“Francine.”