“Truthfully, both,” he says.

STANDING BEFORE THE LARGE WALNUT DOOR, WITH ITS OVERSIZED brass knocker, Molly hesitates. She turns to look at Jack, who is already back in his car, headphones in his ears, flipping through what she knows is a dog-eared collection of Junot Díaz stories he keeps in the glove compartment. She stands straight, shoulders back, tucks her hair behind her ears, fiddles with the collar of her blouse (When’s the last time she wore a collar? A dog collar, maybe), and raps the knocker. No answer. She raps again, a little louder. Then she notices a buzzer to the left of the door and pushes it. Chimes gong loudly in the house, and within seconds she can see Jack’s mom, Terry, barreling toward her with a worried expression. It’s always startling to see Jack’s big brown eyes in his mother’s wide, soft-featured face.

Though Jack has assured Molly that his mother is on board—“That damn attic project has been hanging over her head for so long, you have no idea”—Molly knows the reality is more complicated. Terry adores her only son, and would do just about anything to make him happy. However much Jack wants to believe that Terry’s fine and dandy with this plan, Molly knows that he steamrollered her into it.

When Terry opens the door, she gives Molly a once-over. “Well, you clean up nice.”

“Thanks. I guess,” Molly mutters. She can’t tell if Terry’s outfit is a uniform or if it’s just so boring that it looks like one: black pants, clunky black shoes with rubber soles, a matronly peach-colored T-shirt.

Molly follows her down a long hallway lined with oil paintings and etchings in gold frames, the Oriental runner beneath their feet muting their footsteps. At the end of the hall is a closed door.

Terry leans with her ear against it for a moment and knocks softly. “Vivian?” She opens the door a crack. “The girl is here. Molly Ayer. Yep, okay.”

She opens the door wide onto a large, sunny living room with views of the water, filled with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and antique furniture. An old lady, wearing a black cashmere crewneck sweater, is sitting beside the bay window in a faded red wingback chair, her veiny hands folded in her lap, a wool tartan blanket draped over her knees.

When they are standing in front of her, Terry says, “Molly, this is Mrs. Daly.”

“Hello,” Molly says, holding out her hand as her father taught her to do.

“Hello.” The old woman’s hand, when Molly grasps it, is dry and cool. She is a sprightly, spidery woman, with a narrow nose and piercing hazel eyes as bright and sharp as a bird’s. Her skin is thin, almost translucent, and her wavy silver hair is gathered at the nape of her neck in a bun. Light freckles—or are they age spots?—are sprinkled across her face. A topographical map of veins runs up her hands and over her wrists, and she has dozens of tiny creases around her eyes. She reminds Molly of the nuns at the Catholic school she attended briefly in Augusta (a quick stopover with an ill-suited foster family), who seemed ancient in some ways and preternaturally young in others. Like the nuns, this woman has a slightly imperious air, as if she is used to getting her way. And why wouldn’t she? Molly thinks. She is used to getting her way.

“All right, then. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me,” Terry says, and disappears through another door.

The old woman leans toward Molly, a slight frown on her face. “How on earth do you achieve that effect? The skunk stripe,” she says, reaching up and brushing her own temple.

“Umm . . .” Molly is surprised; no one has ever asked her this before. “It’s a combination of bleach and dye.”

“How did you learn to do it?”

“I saw a video on YouTube.”

“YouTube?”

“On the Internet.”

“Ah.” She lifts her chin. “The computer. I’m too old to take up such fads.”

“I don’t think you can call it a fad if it’s changed the way we live,” Molly says, then smiles contritely, aware that she’s already gotten herself into a disagreement with her potential boss.

“Not the way I live,” the old woman says. “It must be quite time-consuming.”

“What?”

“Doing that to your hair.”

“Oh. It’s not so bad. I’ve been doing it for a while now.”

“What’s your natural color, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I don’t mind,” Molly says. “It’s dark brown.”

“Well, my natural color is red.” It takes Molly a moment to realize she’s making a little joke about being gray.

“I like what you’ve done with it,” she parries. “It suits you.”

The old woman nods and settles back in her chair. She seems to approve. Molly feels some of the tension leave her shoulders. “Excuse my rudeness, but at my age there’s no point in beating around the bush. Your appearance is quite stylized. Are you one of those—what are they called, gothics?”

Molly can’t help smiling. “Sort of.”

“You borrowed that blouse, I presume.”

“Uh . . .”

“You needn’t have bothered. It doesn’t suit you.” She gestures for Molly to sit across from her. “You may call me Vivian. I never liked being called Mrs. Daly. My husband is no longer alive, you know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No need to be sorry. He died eight years ago. Anyway, I am ninety-one years old. Not many people I once knew are still alive.”

Molly isn’t sure how to respond—isn’t it polite to tell people they don’t look as old as they are? She wouldn’t have guessed that this woman is ninety-one, but she doesn’t have much basis for comparison. Her father’s parents died when he was young; her mother’s parents never married, and she never met her grandfather. The one grandparent Molly remembers, her mother’s mother, died of cancer when she was three.

“Terry tells me you’re in foster care,” Vivian says. “Are you an orphan?”

“My mother’s alive, but—yes, I consider myself an orphan.”

“Technically you’re not, though.”

“I think if you don’t have parents who look after you, then you can call yourself whatever you want.”

Vivian gives her a long look, as if she’s considering this idea. “Fair enough,” she says. “Tell me about yourself, then.”

Molly has lived in Maine her entire life. She’s never even crossed the state line. She remembers bits and pieces of her childhood on Indian Island before she went into foster care: the gray-sided trailer she lived in with her parents, the community center with pickups parked all around, Sockalexis Bingo Palace, and St. Anne’s Church. She remembers an Indian corn-husk doll with black hair and a traditional native costume that she kept on a shelf in her room—though she preferred the Barbies donated by charities and doled out at the community center at Christmas. They were never the popular ones, of course—never Cinderella or Beauty Queen Barbie, but instead one-off oddities that bargain hunters could find on clearance: Hot Rod Barbie, Jungle Barbie. It didn’t matter. However peculiar Barbie’s costume, her features were always reliably the same: the freakish stiletto-ready feet, the oversized rack and ribless midsection, the ski-slope nose and shiny plastic hair . . .

But that’s not what Vivian wants to hear. Where to start? What to reveal? This is the problem. It’s not a happy story, and Molly has learned through experience that people either recoil or don’t believe her or, worse, pity her. So she’s learned to tell an abridged version. “Well,” she says, “I’m a Penobscot Indian on my father’s side. When I was young, we lived on a reservation near Old Town.”

“Ah. Hence the black hair and tribal makeup.”

Molly is startled. She’s never thought to make that connection—is it true?

Sometime in the eighth grade, during a particularly rough year—angry, screaming foster parents; jealous foster siblings; a pack of mean girls at school—she got a box of L’Oreal ten-minute hair color and Cover Girl ebony eyeliner and transformed herself in the family bathroom. A friend who worked at Claire’s at the mall did her piercings the following weekend—a string of holes in each ear, up through the cartilage, a stud in her nose, and a ring in her eyebrow (though that one didn’t last; it soon got infected and had to be taken out, the remaining scar a spiderweb tracing). The piercings were the straw that got her thrown out of that foster home. Mission accomplished.