“I don’t know.”

But I see that the baby is a drooling, boogery mess. Willow concedes to the Tylenol and I read the directions for the dosage. Willow holds Ruby while I squeeze the berry flavor medicine into her mouth, and we watch as Ruby goes silent, and then smacks her lips together. It’s yummy, the Tylenol. And then we wait for the medicine to kick in, for Ruby to stop crying. We wait and think. Think and wait. Wait and think. Think and wait.

What will I do when Ruby does, if ever, stop crying? Say goodbye and return home? Leave Ruby and Willow here, in the rain?

With the diarrhea soaked diaper, a red, swollen, boiled and blistered diaper rash on her genitalia and buttocks (as I imagine there to be, hiding beneath the diaper). That, alone, would make me scream.

“When’s the last time she saw a doctor?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” says Willow.

“You don’t know?” I ask, taken by surprise.

“I don’t remember,” she corrects.

“We could take her to the doctor.”

“No.”

“I could pay. For the bill. Medicine.”

“No.”

“Then a shelter. Protection from the elements. A good night’s sleep.”

“I don’t do shelters,” she says again—a replay of last night in the diner—the tone of her voice hammering the message home. I. Do. Not. Do. Shelters. I can’t blame her. I, myself, would think long and hard before checking into a homeless shelter. Shelters themselves can be dangerous places, brimming with desperate men and women, turned by circumstance into violent predators. There are communicable diseases in shelters: tuberculosis, hepatitis and HIV, and, sometimes, the homeless are not allowed to bring their personal possessions inside. Which means, abandoning Willow’s vintage suitcase and whatever treasures it may hold. There are drugs in shelters, drug addicts, drug dealers, there are infestations of lice and bed bugs, there are people who will steal the shoes from your feet while you sleep. In the coldest months, people wait in line for hours to be assured a bed in a shelter. And even then, there may or may not be space.

“Willow,” I say. There’s so much I want to say. The “L” comes soaring in on the tracks above us, drowning out the sound of my voice. I hesitate, wait for it to pass and then say, “You can’t stay out here forever. There are things Ruby needs. Things you need.”

She looks at me with those cornflower eyes, her skin drab, remnants of eye makeup intensifying the baggage beneath her eyes. “You think I want to live on the streets?” she asks. And then says to me, “I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

CHRIS

The front door opens and there they stand like two drowned rats. There’s a baby in Heidi’s arms, a scent far worse than cumin wafting from the girl. I rub at my eyes, certain I’m hallucinating, certain my Heidi would never bring a homeless girl into our home, into the home where her own daughter lives and breathes. The girl is a ragamuffin, a street urchin. She’s barely older than Zoe. She won’t make eye contact with me, not when Heidi tells me her name is Willow or when I say lackadaisically (I don’t want to appear too stupid when the cameramen appear to inform me that I’m on the next installment of Candid Camera) that mine is Chris.

Heidi announces, “She’s going to stay with us tonight,” just like that. Like those damn kittens, and I’m too stupefied to say yes or no, not that anyone bothered to ask my opinion. Heidi shepherds the girl into our home, and suggests she remove the soused boots from her feet, and as she does so, about a gallon of water pours from their insides and onto the floor. Beneath those boots, her feet are bare. No socks, her feet macerated and covered in blisters. I wince, and Heidi and the girl’s eyes follow mine down to the bare feet. I know Heidi’s thinking about how to remedy the girl’s ailing feet, but I’m just hoping whatever she’s got isn’t contagious.

Zoe appears from her bedroom, the words “what the...” dropping from a gaping mouth. I’m guessing our daughter isn’t overly familiar with the f word that follows that statement, so I nearly say it aloud for her. What the fuck are you thinking, Heidi? But already Heidi is showing the girl into our home, introducing her to our daughter, who stares dumbly at this waif and then looks to me for an explanation. I can only shrug.

The girl’s eyes get lost on the TV, on some basketball game: Chicago Bulls versus the Pistons, and I hear myself ask—for lack of anything better to say—“You like basketball?” and she flatly answers, “No,” and yet she’s staring at that TV as though she’s never seen an electrical appliance before in her life. When she talks, I catch a scent of bacteria fermenting in her mouth: halitosis. I wonder when she last brushed her teeth. They’ve probably got that “fuzzy sweater” thing going on. There’s an ungodly smell coming from her and when I move to the window and open it a crack, Heidi shoots me an evil eye, to which I reply, “What? It’s stuffy in here,” and hope the rain stays at bay long enough to air out the stench.

The girl is nervous, like a trapped tomcat, eyes darting around the room, searching for a bed under which she can hide.

I can’t figure out what is the weirdest of all: this strange girl in our home, or the way Heidi cradles that baby as if it is hers, the way she supports its head with the palm of her hand and rocks it back in forth intuitively. Her eyes gaze at that baby in a covetous way, an almost silent hum sneaking from her when the TV breaks for commercial and the room is filled with a split second of silence.

“I’m going to my room,” Zoe declares, and walks down the hall and slams the door.

“Don’t worry about her,” Heidi apologizes to this girl—Willow—and says, “She’s just...she’s twelve.”

“She doesn’t like me,” Willow guesses. Nope, I think, she doesn’t.

But Heidi says, “No. She just...” She fights for an appropriate answer and comes up near empty. “She hates everything,” she says instead, as if somehow everything does not encompass this strange new addition to our home.

“You can stay in here,” Heidi says as she leads the girl down the hall and into my office where we keep a classy leather sofa bed for when guests come to stay. Except that this is not a guest. I watch from the doorway as Heidi hands the baby back to the girl, then removes stacks of my work from the sofa and sets them on the desk with a thump.

“Heidi,” I say, but she ignores me, too busy removing the cushions from the sofa and tossing them to the floor.

“What you need,” she’s saying to the girl, who stands, grappling with the infant and a sopping suitcase in her hands, standing as uncomfortably in the room as I feel, “is a good night’s sleep. A square meal. Do you like chicken?” she asks, the girl’s wavering nod barely visible before Heidi says, “We’ll have chicken tetrazzini. Or better yet, chicken potpie. Comfort food. Do you like chicken potpie?”

And there’s only one thought running through my mind: I thought we were vegetarians. Where has Heidi been hiding the chicken all this time?

In her haste, Heidi knocks a dozen or more Excel spreadsheets and my fancy financial calculator to the floor. I push my way inside, losing patience, and collect the spreadsheets one by one. The girl reaches over and picks the calculator up off the floor, running her fingers over the numbers and buttons before returning it nervously to me. “Thanks,” I mutter, and then, “Heidi,” I say again, but this time she pushes past me—leaving the girl and me alone in the room for all of twenty seconds—in search of a set of chambray sheets from the linen closet. I snatch my laptop as the girl watches me, unplug the printer from the wall and carry the both of them, with great difficulty, from the room, tripping over the printer’s electrical cord as I do. I bypass Heidi in the doorway and snap this time, “Heidi,” and when her brown eyes pay me the time of day, I growl, “I need to speak with you. Now,” and she sets the sheets on the pull-out bed and follows me—piqued, as if I’m the one being bullheaded and impetuous—from the room.