But Joseph said I wasn’t allowed to play with those kids. I wasn’t allowed to play at all.

I spent my days doing chores, taking care of Miriam, missing Momma and Daddy. The rest of the time I stared out that window, at the kids, coming up with as many “I love you likes” as I possibly could.

I love you like cinnamon loves sugar.

I love you like kids love toys.

But by the time Joseph and Miriam arrived, Lily was already gone.

Lily only lasted about three weeks in the home. After Momma and Daddy died, we were sent to some group home for orphaned kids like us. Orphans. That was a word I’d never heard before. There were eight of us living in that house with a whole bunch of grown-ups who’d come and go. There was a couple, a woman and man, who lived there with us all the time, Tom and Anne, but others passed through: everyone’s caseworker, who all seemed to be different; a tutor; some man who was always trying to mess with my head. Tell me why you’re upset, Claire. Tell me how you felt when your mother and father died.

It wasn’t a bad place, in hindsight. Later on, after living with Joseph and Miriam, the group home seemed like a palace. But for an eight-year-old girl who’d just become an orphan, it was about the worst thing in the world. No one wanted to be there, but especially not me. Some of the kids were mean. Others just cried all the time. Those other kids at the group home were taken away, given away or just flat out rejected by their folks. The fact that Momma and Daddy died was somehow or other a good thing; it showed that someone actually loved us, actually wanted us in their lives.

Lily was adopted, which was the be all and end all of life for an orphan.

Orphan. One day I’m just a little girl from Ogallala, and the next, I’m an orphan. There was a whole lot crammed in that small word: the way folks would look at me with pity in their eyes, would stare at my cheap, undersized clothes, which some charity dropped off for us, donations from kids who’d outgrown them though they sure as heck didn’t fit me, and say oh as if to say that explains it.

That explains the sad look in my eye, the quick temper, the tendency to sulk in a corner and cry.

Paul and Lily (yup, that’s right, Lily) Zeeger were the ones who adopted Lily, my Lily, little Lily. Sweet little Lily with her ringlets of black hair, black like Momma’s, the pudgy little hand that clasped my finger, the chubby cheeks and unselfish smile. The one I was meant to take good care of before Momma died. I eavesdropped on their conversations with the caseworker, Paul and Lily’s conversation with her: the irony of that name, Lily, whether or not it was destiny. “But of course,” said Big Lily, a beautiful blonde woman with turquoise jewelry, as if she was talking about a dog, “we’ll need to change her name. Can’t hardly both be called Lily,” and the caseworker agreed, “Of course.”

I threw a fit. Screaming. About how Momma gave Lily that name and they had no right to change it. I grabbed Lily and ran, through the house and out the back door, desperate for a place to hide. I ran into the woods, but with Lily in my arms, they caught me easily. The woman who ran the house, Anne, stole Lily right from my arms, saying, “This is just the way it’s got to be.” And Tom scolded me: “You don’t want to upset her, now do you?”

I saw that Lily was crying, her chubby arms reaching past Anne for me, but the woman kept walking, away, away, away, and Tom was holding me though I squirmed and kicked and chances are I bit him. I remember him screaming, and that’s when he finally let me go.

I tore into the house, searching every nook and cranny for my baby sister. “Lily! Lily!” I was screaming, crying, calling out her name so many times the word no longer sounded right in my head. I pushed my way into the other kids’ bedrooms, into bathrooms that were in use.

And then I saw it, out the window: the silver minivan pulling away down the drive.

It was the third to last time I would ever see my sister.

They renamed her Rose.

They weren’t bad people. That I’d come to realize later. But when you’re eight years old and you’ve just lost your folks, and now your sister’s been taken from you, too, you hate everyone. And that’s just what I did. I hated everyone. I hated the world.

“Tell me about Joseph,” says Louise Flores.

“I don’t want to talk about Joseph,” I say. I lay my head on the table sideways, where I can’t see her eyes, and ask, “How’d you find us anyway?” picking at the dry skin of my hands, watching the way they bleed.

“How’d we find you?” the woman repeats, and I catch sight of a curl of her lip out of the corner of my eye. She doesn’t like me. She doesn’t like me one bit. “That was dumb luck,” she says, the dumb, I’d bet, being me. “But if you’re asking how we found the baby, well, that was a tip.”

“A tip?” I ask, lifting my head to see her, the satisfaction that fills her eyes. You really are dumb, aren’t you? those eyes say to me.

“Yes, Claire, a tip. Short for tip-off. A phone call from an individual—” she starts, and I interrupt with, “Who?”

“—an individual,” she continues, “who wishes to remain anonymous.”

“But why?” I wonder out loud, though I don’t really have to think too long or hard to come up with an answer. My mind settles on one man. He never did like me anyway, that’s for sure. I heard them, right there, in that very next room. Fighting about me when they thought I couldn’t hear.

“Tell me about Joseph,” she says again.

“I told you already. I don’t want to talk about Joseph.”

“Then how about Miriam. Tell me about Miriam.”

“Miriam is a troll,” I say, letting my chip bag dance to the floor.

The woman is straight-faced. “What does that mean?” she asks. “A troll?”

“An imp,” I say. That’s just it. Miriam in a nutshell. I didn’t like Miriam, that’s for sure. But I did feel kind of sorry for her. She was small, maybe four feet tall, with mousy gray hair, her skin knobby like a streusel topping. She sat in her bedroom all day and night. She hardly said more than two words to me. She only ever talked to Joseph.

But that’s not the way she looked when she and Joseph, Matthew and Isaac showed up at the home to fetch me. No, that day Joseph made her up in a pretty gingham dress, short-sleeved with a V-neck and a big bow that wrapped around her like a hug; he made Matthew and Isaac put on nice shirts and pressed pants. Even Joseph was handsome in a striped shirt and a tie, a kindness to his eye that I never saw after that day. He made sure Miriam was taking her pills, that she put her lipstick on and that she smiled every time he so much as nudged her side. At least he must have because I don’t remember seeing Miriam smile a day in her life. But something or other impressed the caseworker who was convinced that living with Joseph and Miriam would be a wonderful thing for me. Blessed and fortuitous were the words she used. Cursed and damned were more like it. My caseworker swore that Joseph and Miriam had gone through a screening process and foster care training; they had children of their own. They were now licensed foster parents and were, for me, or so she claimed, a perfect fit.

No one asked if I wanted to live with Joseph and Miriam. By then I was nine years old. No one gave a hoot what I wanted. I was supposed to feel lucky that I was moving onto a foster home, that I didn’t have to stay in the group home forever. Joseph and Miriam were an extended sort of family, which was also a good thing. Supposedly. Though my relationship to Joseph and Miriam was so spotty I had a hard time connecting the dots. But there was paperwork, the caseworker said. Proof. And then she sat me down and looked me in the eye and said, “You’ve got to understand, Claire. You’re getting older all the time. This might be your one and only chance at a family.”