The lying, these days, it’s just so easy a thing to do. It comes naturally, automatically, until I can no longer tell what’s fact, what’s fiction.

“You take that baby,” I say, “and I’ll be forced to call the police. Child endangerment, in addition to theft. She’s safer here, with me.”

She needs to understand that the baby is better off with me. “When I met you,” I remind her, “she had a fever. Blisters on her rear end, patches of eczema across her skin. She hadn’t been bathed in weeks, and you were all but out of food. It’s a wonder she wasn’t hypothermic, emaciated or dead.

“Besides,” I tack on, inching closer to the baby, knowing good and well I will fight for her if I need to, that I will draw the knife from the robe and argue self-defense.

But I can see already, by the resignation in her eyes, that I will not need to fight. The baby, for her, is a burden, a weight. The visceral feelings—that undeniable need to hold the baby, the sense of floating purposelessly adrift when she’s not in my embrace—those are mine. All mine. That longing that stems from the tips of my toes, all the way to my entrails. Mine.

“You hardly need a baby slowing you down,” knowing as well as she does that she likely has someone in hot pursuit. Whom, I hardly know, but I register she does, the man or woman who delivered that ochre bruise, I assume.

“You’ll take care of her,” she states. Not so much as a question, but a need. I need you to take care of her.

I say that I will. My face softens, for the baby’s sake, and the words cascade from my mouth like a waterfall. “Oh, I will,” I promise, “I will take such good care of her,” like a child who’s been blessed with a new kitten.

“But I can’t have you in my home,” I say then, my voice tightening, as I walk a fine line between caring for that baby and needing Willow out of my house, “not when you’ve been stealing from me,” and she protests, “I didn’t—” and I interrupt with, “Just go.”

I don’t want to hear it, the lies and denials, any excuses about needing money for this or that, when it’s clear I’m not buying her opening story. She took my father’s wedding ring, plain and simple, and sold it at the pawnshop.

And now she must go.

She doesn’t say goodbye to me. She asks again, “You will take care of her. Of Ruby?” but the words come out halfhearted and not genuine, for it’s proper etiquette, she must assume, to make sure the baby is in good hands before she goes. But there’s a hesitation, nonetheless, a brief hesitation as she eyes the baby and quite possibly her blue eyes fill with tears. Fake tears, I tell myself, nothing more.

And then she steps toward the baby and runs a hand across her head; she whispers a goodbye before she goes, wiping those artificial tears on the back of a sleeve.

“I’ll treat her as if she were my very own,” I avow, closing and locking the door as she leaves. I watch from the bay window to make sure she’s gone, moping down the city street in the cold April rain. And then I turn to the baby girl, completely enraptured by her doughy cheeks, her snow-white hair, her toothless mouth that unfolds into a radiant smile, and think: Mine. All mine.

WILLOW

At some point when I wasn’t paying attention, I turned sixteen.

And that was when it happened, all of it in about three weeks.

It was the end of winter, and I was feeling antsy for spring, but for whatever reason, the snow kept falling from the ominous, gray sky. I was freezing cold each time Matthew and I took the buses around town, and the sweatshirt and gym shoes never seemed to do. The cold winter air blew into each and every bus stop, and since most of my clothes were dresses and jumpers from Joseph, my legs were completely bare.

At night, as I slept on that bed with the thin patchwork quilt, with only an oversize T-shirt to keep me warm, I trembled, my body covered in goose pimples, which quadrupled each time Joseph pulled that T-shirt up over my head.

I thought of all the ways I’d kill him if I could. Thinking of Momma and “I love you likes” got replaced with thinking of Joseph and all the ways I’d do him in if I could. Pushing him down the stairs. Hitting him over the head with a frying pan. Setting the whole Omaha home on fire while he was asleep.

But then what would I do?

I hate you like arachnophobes hate spiders. I hate you like cats hate dogs.

One lifeless winter day, Matthew and I caught the bus and headed to the library. I remember that I was excited ’cause that day, Matthew was going to show me how to use the computers. I’d never used a computer before.

We hadn’t gone more than a block down the street when Matthew asked if I was cold and when I told him I was, he sneaked an arm around my back and pulled me close to him. In an instant, it was as if there wasn’t another soul on that bus but Matthew and me. Like the whole rest of the world had disappeared. Matthew’s arm felt warm, strong, secure.

I turned my head and peeked up at him, wondering if those chocolate eyes might explain it to me what just happened. How my insides got all gooey, how my hands turned to slime. Matthew didn’t say anything, nor did his eyes. He was looking out the window like he didn’t even notice what happened, but inside I wondered if he felt that change like me after all.

We went to the library, and pulling up two chairs to one computer, Matthew showed me a world I’d never known before. He showed me something called the internet, where I could look up anything I’d ever wanted to know about the planets or jungle animals or spiders; he showed me how I could play games.

There was music on there, too, on the computer. We slipped on the library’s headphones, and Matthew put some music on, kind of loud, but I liked it. I liked the sound of the bass right there in my ear. I thought of Momma. Of spinning around the room to Patsy Cline.

Going to the library became Matthew’s and my regular thing. It was my favorite thing to do. The library was quiet and warm, even though right outside the big glass doors, the world was cold and loud. The building was big, four-stories or more, tucked right there in between all those huge buildings. Sometimes I just liked to ride the elevators, up, down, up, down, even if we didn’t go anywhere at all. We talked a lot there, Matthew and me, and if he told me once he told me a thousand times that he was gonna get me out of that house and away from Joseph. He just had to figure out how, is all. By then I’d started thinking a lot about the world outside of Omaha, and it made life there with Joseph and Miriam even worse. I wanted more than anything to leave, to run as far away as I could, but Matthew said to wait. He was going to figure it out for me; he said not to worry, and so I didn’t.

But what I really looked forward to there at the library was tucking ourselves into some vacant aisle—just us. We’d sit on the floor and sprawl our legs out before us, and lean up against the towering shelves. We’d skim through the books for random facts and take turns saying them aloud, like Did you know fresh eggs will sink but a rotten egg will float? Or Did you know 89 percent of the human brain is made up of water? just like we did when we were kids and Matthew would pass by my room at night. I read books about Audrey Hepburn and Patsy Cline. I looked up that place where Lily now lived, Colorado, and learned more about the flat plains of the thirty-eighth state and about the Continental Divide. I learned more about that Magnificent Mile Momma used to talk about, and I learned about Chicago, the Windy City, City of Broad Shoulders.

“Did you know Arthur Rubloff came up with the name Magnificent Mile in 1947?” I asked, but Matthew just said to me, “What’s the Magnificent Mile?”

And then one day we’re sitting there, in one of those vacant aisles, when all of a sudden Matthew found my hand tucked in the kangaroo pouch of that orange sweatshirt and pressed it between his. Matthew had held my hand before, on those buses, or when I was scared, but this time it was something different because this time I could tell Matthew was scared, too. His hand was all sweaty-like, and when he grabbed for it, I felt my heart grow three times inside of me, as if it was going to burst right there from my chest. I didn’t know what it was that I was feeling and I wanted so badly to ask someone, anyone.