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caretaker sign a form releasing Charlene to her care, and started out.
    After that, the kid locked herself in the passenger seat and sat there like an obedient machine. She wasn’t rude. She just volunteered no smiles, no conversation. She sat with the literal posture of a marine—boots clomped on the ground, posture straight, eyes focused ahead.
    Merry kept glancing over, trying to reconcile that stupid brush cut on the face of a little girl with big blue eyes and fragile features and a tiny rosebud of a mouth. It was like trying to pair peanut butter with pickles. The darn kid was tucked inside that seat belt as if she didn’t have a fear or emotion or worry in her life—and for darn sure, wouldn’t admit to one.
    Merry felt so rattled she forgot what road signs she was supposed to be watching for. In fact, she was pretty sure she’d turned the wrong way out of the driveway from the get-go.
    This silent business just couldn’t go on. “Charlene—” she started to say.
    â€œIf you don’t mind, I’d rather be called Charlie.”
    â€œOkay. Charlie, then.” Merry smiled, thinking, Oh God, could an eleven-year-old girl be suffering from gender issues? Or transgender issues? Or whatever it was called when one gender wanted to be another? “Charlie, I don’t know if anyone told you who I am.”
    Well, that at least forced a little more dialogue. “Of course people told me. Mr. Oxford told me I couldn’t go home until there was someone to take me. Then Mrs. Innes came to talk to me, and I heard that you were coming. So I could go home for a while.”
    â€œMore than for a while, Charlene—Charlie.” Cripes, she almost zoomed through a red light. And her hands on the wheel were slick as slides. She thought landing in suburbia was confounding, but this…she desperately wanted to help this little girl…only so far she hadn’t even caught a glimpse of a little girl inside those big, scruffy combat boots.
    â€œWe don’t know for how long,” Charlene said matter-of-factly. “Things may not work out. You don’t know me.”
    â€œAnd you don’t know me. But we can both try fixing that, starting right now, okay?”
    â€œSure.” The child said “sure,” but her voice and posture said I don’t believe you. I don’t believe anyone.
    Merry fumbled. She’d always been so gregarious that she figured she could talk to a wall, but how to get a conversation going with a youngster who didn’t seem to want to talk back? She said, “Maybe I can share something about myself, and then you can tell me stuff about you, all right?”
    No answer.
    â€œOkay! I’ll start!” God, had she ever seen that street corner before? She turned right. “I love dark chocolate. Bubble baths. Can’t stand peas. I never wear shoes if I can help it and tend to scream if I see a mouse….”
    Okay, no response from the other side of the car, so trying to be cute wasn’t working. She tried a different tack. “I grew up in Minnesota, mostly in the country around Rochester—where the Mayo Clinic is. My dad’s an anesthesiologist. We never lived in a suburb like you do. We had a place on a lake, lots of woods. I have two sisters, but they’re both more than ten years older than me, so growing up, it was pretty much just me and my dad….”
    Merry thought it might help for the child to know their circumstances were the same, the daughter-and-dad-living-alone thing, but Charlene showed no response to that either. Merry considered shutting up, but surely the more the child knew about her, the faster she’d start to feeling comfortable, right? So she bumbled on.
    â€œI can’t say I was a great student. Mostly got Bs and Cs. Just couldn’t seem to stick with the books. Did the cheerleading thing…” Definitely didn’t add the prom-queen type of