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only passing by his room, walking through the mechanics of a life, speaking automatic phrases of “good morning” and “good night.”
    “Hi, Mom.”
    She turned to see Rouge stroll into the parlor, and in a trick of the lamplight, his shadow seemed to walk beside him as an independent creature.
    “Hello, dear.” Did that sound too cheerful? Was it forced and artificial? Yes. “I can have dinner ready in twenty minutes.”
    “Fine,” he said, kissing her cheek.
    And wasn’t that small act a bit too perfunctory? Did Rouge seem more distracted than usual?
    Ellen sensed his pain or something akin to it. A sickness? She felt an impulse, some vestige of the mother she used to be in the days when she had two living children. Her hand was rising to touch his forehead, to test for a fever, when he turned away from her.
    He walked into the foyer, and then climbed the grand staircase toward the floors they no longer used. She trailed him as far as the balustrade, and shook her head in disbelief as she watched him on the landing. He was pulling the weather stripping away from Susan’s door.
     
    Gwen Hubble was not quite awake, but fighting her way to a conscious thought. She struggled to rise, then fell back on the cot, exhausted, as though her small body were made of far heavier stuff than a ten-year-old’s flesh and bone. She lay still for a moment, gathering strength to try again. Her eyes focused on the dim illumination of a plastic night-light in the wall plug.
    When her mind had cleared a bit, she found it easier to sit up.
    There was another tray on the small table by her cot. The last time, it had held a glass of orange juice and an egg. Not enough food. Now she was looking at half a cup of cocoa and a tiny roll. Not enough.
    With dull fixation, she stared at the glow of light on the ceramic tiles. The surrounding space was as large as her father’s master bathroom. And the tub in this room was also an antique, with four clawed lion’s paws for feet. The toilet seemed a long way off; the night-light was only a tiny spark of reflection on its porcelain.
    The urge to urinate was stronger than hunger. She pushed back the bedding and touched a rough wool surface with her bare feet.
    Where were her socks?
    On the first day, she had only missed her red parka, and the next morning—this morning?—her shoes were gone. Her hand went to the chain around her neck and closed on the amulet that Sadie Green had given her, a good luck charm with the engraved image of an all-seeing eye. So she still had that. Ah, but her braid had come undone in the night.
    Is it night?
    She tried to stand too quickly and her head ached. Slowly, she stood up and walked toward the toilet, unsteady on her legs. As she passed close to the door, she tried the knob, not really expecting it to open this time either.
    Why is this happening?
    That thought was too hard to hold on to, and she let it slide away as she went through the automatic actions of raising the toilet lid, tearing paper sheets from the roller and carefully setting the squares around the rim of the wooden seat, her ingrained protocol for strange bathrooms, and last, the flush.
    Now that her eyes had adjusted to the poor light, she could see more detail in the room. There was no mirror above the sink. She hadn’t noticed that the last time. She did remember the massive piece of furniture against the far wall. An armoire in a bathroom?
    The hamper was new to her, wasn’t it? She stared at it now. It was like the pull-out hampers in her own house, built into the wall. But this one had a long chain looping once through its handle and twice around the towel bar mounted next to it. The chain was padlocked.
    Why? What’s in the hamper? The question died away almost as soon as she had formed it.
    She was so hungry.
    Returning to the narrow cot, she stared down at the tray on the table. This morning when she ate the egg, she had fallen asleep immediately. At least she thought the first meal