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would be a sight, Toby thought to himself.) Toby had settled the St. Anthony’s next to him in the passenger’s seat of his truck for safekeeping.
    And that’s where it should have stayed, except that, while Toby was turning another corner into the gray fog, the suitcase tumbled to the floor of the truck. Toby reached over to tug it back onto the seat, his eyes drifting from the road for just one moment.
    Which, as it happened, was just long enough.
    Toby slammed on his brakes. Standing not ten inches from his front bumper was a pixie of a girl with crow-black hair. In her hand was a plate of cake, her fork frozen halfway to her face as she stared at Toby through the windshield. A young woman, tall and thin, rushed over and grabbed the girl by the shoulders. “Cady!” she cried. “Are you okay?”
    Toby was parked in the middle of a damp green lawn. Another little girl, much younger than the first, sat in front of a deck of cards at a picnic table covered with a polka-dot cloth, a friendly looking couple beside her. In the distance, Toby could just make out the hazy outline of the sign on the lawn’s edge.
    MISS MALLORY’S HOME FOR LOST GIRLS
    “I’m . . . I’m fine,” the girl told the woman, who must have been Miss Mallory herself. “I . . .” The girl blinked. “He just appeared.” With the tines of her fork she gestured to Toby through the windshield. “Right out of the fog.”
    Toby felt his face flush as he studied the girl standing before him. Could it possibly . . . ? He shook his head clear of wild thoughts, quickly unbuckled his seat belt, and leapt from the truck. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what happened.”
    When Miss Mallory first opened her mouth to respond, Toby was certain she was going to shout at him, and he wouldn’t have blamed her. But to his surprise, she seemed to change her mind. With one hand clutched to her chest, she gave him a sharp nod.
    “Would you like to join us for some cake?” she asked, taking the black-haired girl’s hand in her own. “We’d be happy to have you.”
    “I . . .” Toby began, his head turned halfway toward his truck. The engine was still running. “I don’t know if I . . .”
    “Oh, please do!” the girl—Cady—said. “I made the cake myself. It’s delicious.”
    And at that, Toby smiled. It was a real and true smile, the kind he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. “Of course I will,” he replied. He turned off his truck and took a seat at the picnic table near the front door, nestled between a bed of petunias on the left and a bed of pansies on the right. Miss Mallory handed him a plate of cake. Each crumb looked moist and rich and heavenly. “I’m Jennifer Mallory,” she introduced herself.
    “Toby Darlington,” he replied.
    Which was only partly a lie.
    “Do you have a Talent?” the younger girl asked him from the far end of the table. “Mine’s licking envelopes. I can do twenty in eight seconds, no paper cuts.”
    “Amy, dear, don’t talk with your mouth full,” the woman who must have been Amy’s mother admonished. “And we don’t ask people about their Talents. It’s rude.”
    “It’s okay,” Toby replied. “I don’t have a Talent,” he told Amy. “I’m Fair.”
    Which was absolutely a lie.
    Across the table, Toby noticed Cady studying him carefully. He felt for a moment that she was looking right through him, right to the very depths of who he was. Toby wasn’t entirely certain that anyone had ever looked at him that way before. “Is everything all right?” he asked her kindly, raising the fork to his mouth.
    “Oh, I was just trying to see what kind of cake you are,” Cady replied, offering an embarrassed little grin before taking a small nibble of cinnamon cake herself.
    Toby raised an eyebrow. “What kind of cake I am?”
    “Your perfect cake,” she said by way of explanation. “Usually I can tell as soon as I meet someone. Like, Amy’s mom there is a pineapple