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said it, Tanya looks up at me and says, ‘You’re my mommy. You love me.’ Next day I started the adoption process.” Blinking and looking away. “This at all helpful, so far?”
    “Perfect,” I said.
    “Maybe you’ll find out something I missed but she really seemed to deal with it okay. She’s a smart kid, her teacher has her at a half year ahead of the class. Got a grown-up way about her, which makes sense, given the years she spent traipsing around with Liddie. My influence, too, maybe. I’m no kid person, don’t have a clue about ’em. So I treat her like she understands everything.”
    “Sounds like that’s working.”
    “So how come I’m here, huh?” She looked down at her shoes, placed them together. Moved them a foot apart. “You probably noticed I’m a little strange in the neatness department. Need to have everything just so, nothing out of place, no surprises. Maybe because of the things my father did to me, but who cares why, the point is that’s how I am and I like it. Keeps life organized and when you’re busy, believe me, that’s a big help.”
    “Making things predictable.”
    “Exactly. Like the way I hang my clothes. Everything’s grouped by color, style, sleeve length. Blouses in one section, then jeans, then uniforms, et cetera. Why waste time looking in the morning? A couple of times, when I was working a shift that had me getting up when it was still dark, there were power outages. I’m talking a pitch-black house. I could get dressed, no problem, because I knew exactly where everything was hanging.”
    “It works for you.”
    “Sure does,” she said. “But now I’m thinking maybe I should’ve kept some of that to myself, not revealed it to Tanya.”
    “She’s doing the same things?”
    “She’s always been neat for a kid, which is fine by me. We clean house together, have fun doing it. But lately, it’s more than that. She’s got these little routines, won’t go to sleep until she checks under her bed, first it was five times, then ten, now it’s twenty-five, maybe even more. Top of that, she’s got to straighten her drapes and kiss them, goes to the bathroom five times in a row, washes her hands until the soap’s gone. I went in there once and she was polishing the spigots.”
    “How long has this been going on?”
    “It started right around when she turned five.”
    “Two years ago.”
    “Give or take. But it wasn’t a big deal until recently.”
    “Any recent changes?”
    “We moved to a new place—got a sublease in a house in Hancock Park. No problems, there. Tanya’s fine except for the routines.”
    “Do the routines always begin before bedtime?”
    “That’s the peak period,” she said, “but it’s moved into other times and it’s starting to affect her schoolwork. Not in terms of neglecting her obligations—just the opposite. She’ll tear up her work and redo it, over and over, unless I make her stop. Lately, she started getting real picky about her school lunch. If the sandwich isn’t cut exactly on the right bias, she wants to make another one.”
    Reaching down, she touched the briefcase. “Want to see any of her records?”
    “Has she had any unusual illnesses or injuries?”
    “Nope.”
    “Then I’ll read the records later. Do you have information about her birth?”
    “Nothing. I had to run titers on her to make sure she’d been vaccinated. She had, I’ll grant Liddie that.” She leaned forward. “You need to understand, Doctor, the only time I met Tanya before Liddie dropped her off was once, when she was two. She and Liddie stayed with me a couple of weeks before heading up to Juneau, Alaska. Like I said, I’m no kid person. But I ended up liking her. Sweet, quiet, didn’t get underfoot. She’s still that way, I couldn’t ask for a better daughter. It’s just these new habits are making me wonder about my approach. I did some reading on OCD in kids and they say it could be genetic, in the brain, serotonin