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“International adoptions are complicated. Mara worked her way through it, and even then she was going to have to wait another six months for the adoption to be final. In the meantime, technically, Sameera is in the agency’s care. I can’t leave her here.”
    “But where else can she go?”
    “I don’t know. Nothing like this has ever happened before. I guess she’ll have to come home with me until we decide what to do.”
    “You can’t send her back to India.”
    “No. We’ll have to look for another adoptive family.”
    “And in the meantime she’ll be put into foster care. Why can’t I be it?”
    “Because you haven’t been approved.”
    “But I’m a pediatrician. I love kids. I know how to handle them. I own a house and earn good money. I’m a totally reputable person, and if you don’t want to take my word for it, ask anyone in town.”
    “Unfortunately, that takes time.” She reached for Sami, but Paige wasn’t giving her up so fast.
    “I want her,” she said, “which puts me up at the top of the list. I want to take her home with me now, and keep her until a better home is found, but you won’t find a better home than mine, I can promise you that.” Mara would be so pleased. “There has to be a way I can keep her.”
    The woman looked pulled in every which direction. “There is, I suppose. Assuming the head of the agency agrees, we could do a quick foster care home study.”
    “Do it.” The impulsiveness was pure Mara, and it felt good.
    “Now?”
    “If that’s what’s necessary for me to keep her tonight. She needs love. I can give her that. I can give her an instant, stable environment. It makes perfect sense.”
    The woman from the adoption agency couldn’t argue with that. After making several calls and getting a preliminary okay, she put Paige through an initial battery of questions. They were basic identity ones, just a start in the study the woman promised, and all the while Paige was answering, she was toting Sami up and down the stairs on her hip, transferring baby supplies from the nursery to her car. She stopped only when the car was full.
    The agency representative, who had followed her up and down, looked exhausted. After giving her a list of phone numbers and the promise that she would be in touch the next day, she drove off.
    Paige shifted Sami so that she could see the child’s face. Large brown eyes met hers. “Not a peep from you through all this? Not hungry or wet?” The child stared up at her silently. “Wouldn’t like supper?” The child didn’t blink. “Maybe a bath?” Paige knew that she couldn’t understand English but was hoping that her tone would inspire some tiny sound. “Yes?” She paused again. When no sound came, she sighed. “I could use both. Let’s go home.”
    She rounded the car and was about to open the passenger’s door when sight of Mara’s house gave her pause. Mara hadn’t owned it long; she had spent her first three years in Tucker paying back education loans and her next two saving for a down payment. The house wasn’t showy in any sense of the word, but buying it had been a triumph.
    Now it was empty, and Mara was buried on the hillside overlooking town. Paige felt a chill. Mara had been a vital part of her life for twenty years. Now she was gone.
    Paige closed her eyes. She held Sami closer, then closer still. The child was warm, silent but alive, and, in that, a comfort—but only until Paige began to think forward rather than back. Then, slowly, with dawning awareness, she opened her eyes and looked at the child, and in that instant, with the house locked, the agency representative gone, and Mara’s baby in her care, the reality of what she had done hit home. On as sorrowful a day as ever there was, it wasn’t sorrow she felt. It was a sheer and profound terror.

three
    P AIGE WASN’T ONE TO PANIC, BUT SHE CAME close to it during the drive from Mara’s house to hers. She kept thinking of all the things she didn’t