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poor kid had no spread, no curtains, no rugs. It just didn’t make sense. If her dad could afford that ghastly house, don’t you think he could have sprung for some nice, soft carpeting and pretty colors and girl stuff for his daughter? Merry pictured some Mary Eddy prints, maybe a canopy bed—the room was huge. They could throw out all that awful dark furniture, put in white. Maybe buy a little vanity.
    Charlene had a fab stereo system, no question, ditto for the computer and all. But there were cute desks and centers to contain all that mess of wires these days, something with style and color. Maybe Merry knew zip about parenting—but she knew girls.
    Her turnoff led her away from bustling suburbia. The last turn was into a remote old neighborhood with dignified shade trees and cracked sidewalks.
    Where she pulled in, the big old frame house had been converted into an assisted-living facility.
    Charlene’s one living relative was a great grandmother, who lived here—along with a dozen of her cronies over age ninety. It was no place for a child, but the foster-care system was predictably jammed up around the Christmas holiday, and the dietician who ran the home claimed they had a bed for Charlene—but only on an extremely temporary basis. Or that was the story Lee Oxford had told Merry when he’d first called.
    The driveway was gravel, the only vehicle in sight an aging van. Merry hiked up the handicapped ramp, trying to rev herself up for this first meeting—not that she needed any revving. From the moment she made the decision to come, she’d been researching everything about eleven-year-olds she could think of. Her own memories of that age were intense, but obviously, trends and styles changed. She’d bought Bratz and Elle Girl magazines, listened to Ciara and the Click Five and the other groups the music store promised her were the “in” music for ’tweens, hit the library, read some Blume and horse stories and tried to pick up on the writers the ’tweens were into these days.
    She rapped on the front door, and when no one immediately answered, rapped again. Abruptly a white-haired charmer with a cane answered the door. The lady was dressed in a pink-and-green dotted sweater with purple pants and a huge red bow sagging over one ear. Lots of positive attitude. Just deaf as a rock.
    â€œWell, aren’t you the pretty one, dearie-dear. Come on in….”
    One step inside and Merry could smell urine. From the entry, she caught a partial view of a giant living room off to the right, where a wall TV did The Morning Show at screaming volume. Chairs and couches and wheelchairs cupped close to the set in a tight semicircle. At a glance, she counted around ten people in the cluster, but then she was distracted by a bony, hairless elderly woman barreling straight for her in a wheelchair, evidently bent on escape.
    Quickly she closed the door behind her—which prevented the escape, but didn’t stop the wheelchair from clipping her in the knees. She winced, ducked, smiled for the charmer.
    â€œHi, I’m Merry Olson. I’m here for Charlene Ross. I don’t know if she’s around here or with her great-grandmother? But I have papers—”
    â€œHey? You’re selling cookies, you say?”
    â€œNo, no. I’m not selling cookies. I’m looking for Charlene Ross—”
    â€œHey, Frank, I think she’s selling cookies!” the charmer bellowed and then blessed her with another warm smile. “I hope you’ve got those mint chocolate ones, honey, those are my very favorite—Wilhemma, quit ramming her with your chair, you old bitch—”
    â€œNow, now.” A harried-looking man shot out of the kitchen, a dish towel over his arm. “We don’t use that language, Julia. I’ve told you that before—” A smile for Merry.
    She was pretty sure he identified himself as Frank, and the