The girl just stood there, watching her.
“I need privacy. You should . . . aw, hell.” None of the social niceties mattered here.
The girl frowned and took a step closer. She cocked her head in the same way the blue jay had, as if to see things from a preferable angle.
“I’m peeing,” Julia said matter-of-factly, reaching for the toilet paper.
The girl was intent now, utterly focused. Once again she’d gone completely still.
When Julia was done, she stood and pulled up her pants, and then flushed the toilet.
At the noise, the girl screamed and threw herself backward so fast she stumbled and fell. Sprawled on the floor, she started to howl.
“It’s okay,” Julia said. “No hurt. No hurt. I promise.” She flushed the toilet again and again, until the girl finally sat up. Then Julia washed her hands and moved slowly toward her little patient. “Would you like me to keep reading?” She knelt down. They were eye level now, and close. She could see the remarkable turquoise color of the child’s eyes; the irises were flecked with amber. Thick black lashes lowered slowly, then opened.
“Book,” Julia said again, pointing at the novel on the table.
The girl walked over to the table and sat down on the floor beside it.
Julia drew in a sharp breath, but other than that, she didn’t react. She went to the nearest chair and sat down. “I think Ellie and I should move Mom’s old love seat in here. What do you think?”
The girl moved a little closer. Sitting cross-legged, she looked up at Julia.
Just then, even with her food-stained face and tangled hair, the girl looked like every kindergartner in every classroom at story time.
“I bet you’re waiting for me to start.”
As always, the only answer was silence. Those eerie blue-green eyes stared up at her. This time, maybe, there w
as a hint of anticipation, impatience, even. An ordinary kid would have said Read in an imperious tone. This girl simply waited.
Julia returned to the story. On and on she read, about Mary and Dicken and Colin and the secret garden that had belonged to Mary’s lost mother. She read chapter after chapter, until night began to press against the window in strips of pink and purple. She was approaching the final chapters when a knock sounded at the door. The dogs started barking.
At the noise, the girl raced to her potted plant sanctuary and hid behind the leaves.
The door opened slowly. Behind it, the golden retrievers were crazy to get inside. “Down, Jake. Elwood. What’s wrong with you two?” Ellie slipped past them and slammed the door shut with her hip. In the hallway, the dogs howled pitifully and scratched at the door.
“You need to get those dogs trained,” Julia said, closing her book.
Ellie, who had a tray of food, set it down on the table. “I thought getting rid of their balls would make them trainable. No such luck. It’s in the dick.” She sat down on the end of her old bed. “How’s the girl doing? I see she still thinks I’m Nurse Ratchett.”
“She’s doing better, I think. She seems to like being read to.”
“Has she tried to escape?”
“No. She won’t go near the door. I think it’s the doorknob. Shiny metal really sets her off.”
Ellie leaned forward and put her forearms along her thighs. “I wish I could say I was making progress on my end.”
“You are. This story is making headlines. Someone will come forward.”
“People are coming forward. I had seventy-six people in my office today. All of them had lost daughters in the last few years. Their stories . . . their pictures . . . it was awful.”
“It’s incredibly painful to sit witness to such grief.”
“How do you do it, listen to sad stories all day long?”
Julia had never seen her job that way. “A story is only sad if there’s no happy ending. I guess I always believe in that ending.”