But once or twice a year, Joseph would get her to take the pills for a while, and she’d come out from the room and bathe herself, and we’d open up all the windows and it would be my job to get that god-awful Miriam smell out of the home before Ms. Amber Adler, in her junker car with the too-big Nike bag, arrived. He’d get out his toolbox and start fixing things around the house, paint over stains that had cropped up here and there around the home. Only when Amber Adler came to call did the dead lightbulbs get replaced, and squeaky hinges get oiled.

Joseph always had a new dress for me as opposed to the small, musty duds he dropped off in my room in a large white garbage bag, like he’d picked it up at the end of someone’s drive on garbage day. Once he even brought me a pair of shoes, patent leather which were far too big, but he told me to put them on nonetheless so Ms. Adler could see.

The caseworker brought letters from Paul and Lily Zeeger. She said she could give the Zeegers my new address, but after Joseph tore the photos of Momma into shreds, I said no thanks, that was all right, she could just bring the letters along when she came. Lily Zeeger wrote beautiful letters about my baby sister, Rose (Lily) with the name Lily always in parenthesis just in case I didn’t know who it was she was talking about. She said that Rose (Lily) was growing bigger and bigger every day, and that from the photos she’s seen, Rose (Lily) was looking more and more like our Momma, who was a stunning, sensational, dazzling woman (as if the many compliments might negate the fact that she’s dead). She said that Rose (Lily) was learning her ABCs, and how to count to ten, and that she could sing as well as the Yellow Warbler which, according to Big Lily, surrounded their Colorado home, and there were photos attached, of a charming little A-frame home snuggled right in the middle of the woods, with mountains in the background and a tiny dog, like a cocker spaniel or something, running around the legs of my Lily. And there she is, Little Lily, with the ringlets of black hair, black like Momma’s, that had grown longer and were clipped back in ladybug barrettes, and she was wearing a bright yellow sundress with ruffles and a bow as big as her head. And she was smiling. Paul Zeeger stood on a balcony in a shirt and striped tie, looking down at Little Lily, and I imagined Big Lily took the picture ’cause she was nowhere to be seen. Even the dog looked happy. The letter said how Rose (Lily) was taking a ballet class and loved to practice her pirouettes and relevés for Paul and Lily, and how she absolutely adored her cerise leotard and tutu, and that in the fall Rose (Lily) would begin preschool at the Montessori school in town.

“What’s a Montessori school?” I asked Ms. Amber Adler and she looked at me and smiled and said, “It’s a good thing,” while patting my hand.

I asked her why Paul and Lily Zeeger didn’t have any kids of their own. Why’d they need my Lily? And she said sometimes things just worked out that way. One or the other of them couldn’t have kids. It just wasn’t meant to be. And I thought of Joseph saying that if God wanted Miriam to be well, he’d make her well, and I thought that if God wanted Paul and Lily to have kids, he would have given them kids. Kids of their own. Not my Lily. Lily was mine.

I thought a lot about that A-frame house where Lily now lived. I thought about the tall, tall trees and the mountains and the dog. I thought how I’d like to go there, to that house in the woods, and see my Lily again. I wondered if I ever could.

Big Lily said that I could write a letter back to Rose (Lily) if I wanted to and she’d read it to her. So I did. I told her about the tulips outside our home (of which there were none) and what I was learning in school (there was no school). The only reading that went on in our home was from the Bible; the only writing was when Joseph made me copy word for word from Deuteronomy or Leviticus. The school reports that Joseph handed over to the caseworker—those which showed my poor grades in school—were forged, photocopies of Matthew’s or Isaac’s report cards that had been altered with my name, with failing grades in math and science, with teacher comments that detailed my disregard for authority figures, my misbehavior.

“Don’t you like school?” the caseworker would ask.

“I like it just fine,” I’d say.

“What’s your favorite subject?” she wanted to know. I didn’t know much about subjects. So I said math. “But, Claire, it says here that you are failing your math class,” and I would shrug and say that it was hard and she’d remind me, as she often did, how lucky I was to have Joseph and Miriam in my life. How other foster families would not be so flexible and understanding. “You need to try harder,” she would say to me, and to Joseph and Miriam, she’d suggest a tutor.

In my letters, I told Little Lily about living in the big city—Omaha—and I described the buildings; though I’d never once seen the buildings, I had an inkling they were there. This Omaha place was much different than Ogallala. I could tell that from the smells, the sounds, the kids on the other side of the window. Momma used to talk about Omaha when we were kids. About the people and buildings, museums and zoos. In my letters I told Lily about my brothers (who I barely knew). I told her about the friends I’d made in school (there were no friends) and how my teachers were an absolute delight (there were no teachers).

In Big Lily’s responses, she told me of Rose’s (Lily’s) fourth birthday present: a new bike, mint green and pink, with training wheels and tassels, a white wicker basket and a banana seat. There were pictures. Little Lily in a helmet on the bike with Paul Zeeger pushing from behind. The little cocker spaniel running after them. She told me of an upcoming vacation to California to see the beach. She said that this would be Rose’s (Lily’s) first time ever seeing the ocean and wondered: had I seen the ocean before? They’d picked out a new swimsuit and cover-up for the occasion. The next time the caseworker arrived, there were drawings from Lily herself, of the ocean and fish and blobs in the sand that may or may not have been seashells. And a bright yellow sun with rays that swept off the page. On the back Big Lily had written in her perfect penmanship: Rose (Lily), 4 years old.

They weren’t bad people.

In time I understood that.

But knowing it in my mind and in my heart were two very different things.

HEIDI

In the morning, Zoe—reluctantly—offers up another outfit for Willow to wear. This time black leggings that are far too short for Zoe’s own legs—and much shorter on Willow’s—and a sweatshirt with paint splatters on the front, an art smock from the previous school year.

“Zoe, please,” I say, “this one is a mess.”

“Fine,” she gripes, yanking an extra school cardigan from its hanger and thrusting it into Willow’s hands, “here.”

The girls eat breakfast—heaping bowls of Frosted Flakes—and then Zoe disappears to bathe and dress. Ruby, on my lap, is sound asleep, finally, having been up and agitated since before 5:00 a.m., awoken in the early hours of dawn by a fever. Because unhappy babies need to be rocked when they’re upset—and we, of course, had no rocking chair—I pressed her to my chest and moved back and forth, back and forth in a seesaw motion until she finally began to settle, until the muscles in my back began to burn. But I didn’t mind. There was something gratifying about it, something so satisfying when Ruby finally began to grow tired and slowly closed her eyes.

It was then that I lowered my body onto the leather armchair, completely immersed in the way Ruby’s eyelids fluttered when asleep, the way her tiny fingers folded over my thumb, refusing to let go. Completely immersed in the tiny toes of her left foot where she’d wiggled the lacy sock right off and onto the hardwood floor. Completely immersed in the filaments of hair that emerged from her head, in the softness of her scalp, the blanch skin.