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had been in the morning—if she could only rely on the formula of juice and an egg as breakfast food. Now she was looking at the miserly dinner roll and the cocoa. Gwen was starting to form another concept, a connection of food and sleep. But then she drifted on to thoughts of her best friend. Where was Sadie, and how was she?
    Gwen ate the small roll. Not enough food. Her stomach growled. It was work to hold on to a single idea. She stared at the cocoa in her cup. Again, she made the connection of food and sleep. Food? Or drink? She walked back to the sink and poured the cocoa down the drain, running water in the basin to clean away the dark splatters.
    When Gwen came back to the cot, she was facing the hamper and its padlocked chain. She walked toward it, moving very slowly—so drowsy. It was like having the flu—or her brain might be filled with cotton wadding; the child gave equal weight to both possibilities. She touched the handle of the hamper, then her legs failed her and she was sinking to her knees.
    So it was not the cocoa that made her sleep; she had guessed wrong. Her face pressed into the rough wool of a small oval rug. And though she lay sprawled on the floor, there was one moment of fright that came with the sensation of falling, the idea that the tiled surface might not be solid, that the rules of the universe no longer applied to her.
    Her eyes closed.
     
    Late on the night of her daughter’s death, all those years ago, Ellen Kendall had opened the door of Rouge’s bedroom and found her small son rolled into a ball studded with auburn cowlicks, tiny fingers and pajama feet. His eyes had snapped open. Uncurling swiftly, he had flung out his arms and legs, a child unfurled, as though opening his breast to make an easy target for whatever had come for him in the dark. Realizing that it was only his frightened mother on the threshold, his face had flooded with disappointment. And Ellen knew her ten-year-old son wanted to die, to go with his sister—into the ground. On the following day, she had placed her surviving child in the care of a psychiatrist, not believing that she could keep Rouge alive by herself. What good had she been to Susan?
    And then she had poured herself into a bottle—no meager feat; Ellen had not become a drunk in one day.
    Now, years of sobriety later, she stood at Susan’s door and stared at the walls for a moment, mildly startled by what time had done to her daughter’s bedroom. Over the past fifteen years, the once bright wall paint had settled down to a calm pale pink.
    Rouge sat tailor-fashion on a dusty braided rug woven with threads of every color, all of them muted now. Ghosty white sheets draped the furniture, and a gray film lay over every inch of the exposed floorboards. He was digging through a large cardboard box of Susan’s personal effects.
    Ellen crept silently into the room. Her son paid no attention to her, he was so engrossed in an old yearbook from St. Ursula’s Academy.
    Why must he do this to himself—to her?
    She wanted to cry, but her voice was surprisingly normal when she spoke to him. “Need some help? Are you looking for something of—”
    “I met a woman tonight.” He set one book down and opened a volume for another year. “She knew us when we were nine or ten. But I don’t remember her name. I thought there might be a picture in here.”
    Ellen was on guard now, and worried. The us and we had lingered in Rouge’s sentences for more than a year after his twin’s death. And now the words were back again, like ghosts in his mouth.
    “Could you describe the woman, Rouge?”
    He selected another volume from the stack of school annuals. All of them dated back to the years before Susan was murdered. “She has wide-set eyes anda—”Suddenly, he slammed one of the books. “She’s not here. She didn’t go to St. Ursula’s.” He pushed the books to one side and raked both hands through his hair.
    Ellen knelt down on the rug beside him. “Do