“So, welcome,” the lady who owned the house said after Mrs. Marsden left. “I’m Beryl Green, like Mrs. Marsden said. You can call me Beryl.”

Ivy nodded.

“So I think maybe you walk this way to school?”

After a moment, Ivy nodded again. Her walks to school from the house on O’Reilly Street already belonged in the distant past, in a different lifetime.

The woman—Beryl—quirked her lips. She pointed her crutch—it was short and braced by a cuff on her forearm—down the hall. “I gave you the turret. Thought you might like it, but say if you don’t. Say if it freaks you out or something. I’ve never been a foster parent before—you’re my first stab at the job—so I don’t exactly know what kids like.”

“It will be fine. Thank you.” In any other circumstances, it would have been fantastic.

“Go to the end of the hall, the door to the stairs is on the left. There’s a light switch. On the right, kind of hard to find. Not where you’re looking for it. I don’t get up there myself much anymore, not since the accident.” Beryl waved a crutch in explanation.

Ivy pasted a sympathetic expression onto her face. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s ten years ago now, I’m used to it more or less. Got T-boned in an intersection. A guy ran a light and boom, instant life changer. In the hospital for months, lost my big job at the investment firm—I do all right working from home now, though—and then the icing on the cake, my fiancé pulled the plug on our wedding.”

“That was a mean thing to do,” Ivy said softly.

Beryl laughed. “For the best in the long run. Who’d want to marry somebody who’d throw you under the bus like that? I’m better off without him, but yeah, it was no fun at the time. Any-hoo, the doc had to put pins in my hip and both legs, so I don’t do stairs so well, but I used to love it up there. A friend of mine made the bed and took up towels. Someone you know, actually. She told me she was your teacher, when she heard who was coming to stay with me.”

Ivy’s heart lurched. “Ms. Mackenzie?”

“Yep, Geena. My best friend since high school. I was at her birthday party back in May, and I think—well, I might’ve already sort of met you then.”

Ivy bit her lip. So it must have been Beryl’s crutch she stumbled over when she was running out of the Really Fine Diner after her mom threw her sketchbook at the wall.

Beryl grimaced. “Anyway, never mind all that. You should check out your room. Say if there’s something you need that you don’t see.”

Ivy squeezed her suitcase handle. It had been Aunt Connie’s. It was brown pleather and gigantic. Big enough to hold pretty much everything Ivy owned.

“You’ll have to haul your stuff up yourself. I’m no help, sorry to say.”

“That’s all right.”

“There’s a phone in the den.” Beryl pointed in the opposite direction with her crutch. “Your friend—Prairie, right? such a cool name—called. She wants you to call her. I guess Mrs. Marsden called her parents because you stayed with them before.”

Ivy nodded.

“She said you didn’t want to go back to them?”

“They’re—really busy this time of year.” The fact was, Ivy hadn’t wanted them to know. She hadn’t wanted to be any more ashamed than she was already, she hadn’t wanted them to realize how bad things really were, and most of all she didn’t want to bother them. Mom Evers’s due date was soon; they didn’t need Ivy’s problems piled on top of them.

Beryl’s green eyes watched her closely. “Well, use the phone whenever you want. And come down to the kitchen when you’re done unpacking, I’ll get you something to eat. I made salmon for lunch, with wild rice and broccoli. Turned out well, if I do say so.”

“Okay. Thank you,” Ivy said, even though she didn’t intend to use the phone and she wasn’t hungry, either. She made herself smile before she trudged off with her suitcase because Beryl seemed nice enough. Different than she’d imagined when she saw her reading on the porch. More abrupt, less dreamy, but still nice. Ivy was lucky, there. As lucky as a Blake could get, anyway.

• • •

The room at the top of the turret was octagonal, so the furniture sat at angles. There was an antique bureau, a bed with a blue wool blanket, a braided rug, and a nightstand. The nightstand had claw feet, and for an instant Ivy was pleased about that.

She lifted her suitcase onto the bed and unzipped it. She took her clock from the T-shirt she’d wrapped around it and put it on the nightstand. She unpacked her socks and underwear into the top drawer of the bureau and put her dresses and shirts and shorts in the middle one. She zipped the suitcase back up—all that was left inside was her quilt, which she couldn’t bear to have out reminding her of the Everses and happy times—and put it in the closet. Next was the camera. She knelt on the floor and pulled the bottom bureau drawer open and set the Life Savers box with the camera packed into it inside. She gazed down at it. Then she pushed the drawer shut.

She made sure the drawer fronts lined up with the bureau frame exactly, then put her book bag on a peg in the closet. It hung limp, with only a few pencils in it. Her sketchbook was missing again. The only thing Ivy could figure was that it must have dropped out of her bag as she ran from the snack bar at the pool.

She closed the closet door and looked around the room. The blanket was smooth on the bed and the top of the bureau was bare except for some towels. The only sign she was there was her boots. Ivy put them in the closet and closed the door again.

After that there was nothing left to do. She crossed the room and sat in the turret’s window seat and looked down at the garden.