“It’s so pretty,” I said. “Thank you.”

Francine put my suitcase on a wide chest of drawers and went to the window to push it open. “Air this joint out a little,” she said. And then something black flitted in, a fast, aimless bird with silent wings. “Oh,” Francine said, “get!” She flapped her apron and shooed it back outside. “Bats,” she said.

Joellen’s face went ashen. “In the daylight? Doesn’t that mean they’re rabid?”

“Not necessarily,” Francine said. “You girls like lemonade? Unpack and come get some.” She made her slow way down the steps. I leaned out the window. Attached beneath the sill: a wooden bat house. Joellen was shaking.

We stood for a moment in that cavernous room, filled with light and a wide-plank wood floor. The closet door with a brass handle, no keyhole. A perfectly nice room. I sat on the end of the lonely bed. White quilt with vines of leaves and blue flowers stitched, maybe by hand, all over it. This woman put a hand-sewn quilt on a bed for a foster placement? What the hell?

Joellen sat beside me. “Bats.” Her voice was faint. “I can keep looking.”

“Just mice with wings,” I said, and worked the necklace in my pocket.

Later, I stood with my lemonade beside Francine on the porch and waved as Joellen maneuvered the car around granite boulders in the grassy driveway. The sun was really out now, and the grass and trees smelled fresh, different from the trees and lawns and forested parks I walked in Seattle, definitely better than the streets. Here, without the hum of freeway traffic, the quiet was nearly deafening.

Joellen finally got the car turned around; she waved out the window and was gone. The blackbirds rose again from the trees.

Joellen’s leaving had never been a big deal. She’d always been so close, never more than a few minutes away. Now a half-hour ferry ride and a lot of water between us, and I couldn’t breathe very deeply.

“You okay?” Francine asked.

I nodded.

“Hungry?”

I was. But instead I said, “Can I take a walk?”

She took my lemonade glass into the house and came back out with a folded paper map. “Trails,” she said. “Joellen said you’d want to walk.”

Oh, Jo. Breathe.

“Make sure your phone is on,” Francine said.

I exhaled and got ready for a familiar, annoying battle. “Don’t have one.”

She frowned. “No phone?”

“No phone.”

Her eyes went wide. “Really?”