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an Italian restaurant. A church, a real estate agent, an art gallery with pictures of sailboats in the front window, another church, a florist, a drugstore, another church: it seemed to go on and on before I found the coffee shop, where a handwritten sign in the window offered 2 EGGS, HASH BROWNS & TOAST, $1.99 . Just what I needed.
    As dead as it was on the street, the bustle in the little one-room diner more than made up for it. I smelled coffee and felt a pang of longing for Mama. A waitress eyed my rucksack and told me I could sit at the counter. All the people in the booths along the wall looked up from their plates as I passed, bumping my rucksack into the other waitress as I went, and I mumbled an apology.
    I got to the counter and one or two of the men glanced up from their newspapers. There wasn’t a single stool.
    *   *   *
    After Luke we moved to Baltimore. My mom got a job in a law office—it was always accounting or law; her typing speed was the one thing she could take anywhere—and for a while we pretended everything was normal.
    Then, just before Christmas, Mama brought me to a party at her boss’s house. Like I said, after what happened with Luke and Penny Wilson she could never trust me with a babysitter.
    Before we left she sat me down on the sofa. “This is the first really good job I’ve ever had, Maren. I have friends—people I can talk to, people I can have a laugh with at lunch. And there’s something else: I might be up for a promotion soon.”
    â€œThat’s great, Mama.” But I couldn’t be happy for her, not when she was only telling me this out of fear that I’d ruin it for her, that I’d slip up again and we’d have to move away.
    â€œIt could be great for both of us, if you could only…” She sighed. “Please, please, please be good. Promise me you’ll be good this time.”
    I nodded, but it was never a matter of trying hard enough to be good. It was like leading me to a banquet and telling me not to eat.
    It was a proper grown-up cocktail party, with shrimp arranged around bowls of bloodred dipping sauce and women with perfect manicures sipping from long-stemmed martini glasses, laughing a little too loudly as they popped their olives. There was a cathedral ceiling in the living room, and the Christmas tree went up all the way to the top.
    There was a spare room near the front door, and Mrs. Gash told us we could go in and put our coats on the bed. No one came in behind us, so my mother closed the door and said, “Don’t talk to anyone. If anyone says hello or asks your name you can tell them, but that’s it—I don’t want anybody thinking you’re rude. Just read your book.”
    â€œWhere?”
    She pointed to an armchair in the corner of the room, and I went over and dropped into it with a sigh. “I’ll bring you a plate and something to drink. Please , Maren—please stay here and be good.” In a few minutes she returned with the promised plate of shrimp and crackers, asked me one more time not to leave the room, and left again. I ate the shrimp and watched as three women came in, shrugging off their coats and shaking the cold out. No one noticed me sitting in the corner.
    The pile of coats grew and grew, and after a while people stopped coming in. I could see a fur coat peeking out at the bottom of the pile and I got up, reached in, and petted the sleeve. I thought I might like to burrow into the coat pile and take a nap so that when I woke up it would be time to go home, so that’s what I did.
    Under the coat pile it was warm and safe and cozy, and in every breath I smelled perfume and cigar smoke. I fell asleep. The shrimp hadn’t satisfied me, though, and my stomach rumbled as I dozed.
    Some time later I felt something brush my cheek, and in a second I was fully awake, my heart pounding. In the darkness I sensed a hand reach into a pocket by