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hoped your vacation would be?” she said, and I shook my head. “Has this happened to Willow before?”
    “Yeah. She breaks bones a lot.”
    “How?”
    For someone who was supposed to be smart, this woman sure didn’t seem it. How do anyone’s bones break? “She falls down, I guess. Or gets hit by something.”
    “She gets hit by something?” Donna Roman repeated. “Or do you mean someone?”
    There had been one time in nursery school when a kid had run into you on the playground. You were pretty gifted at ducking and weaving, but that day, you hadn’t been fast enough. “Well,” I said, “sometimes that happens, too.”
    “Who was with Willow when she got hurt this time, Amelia?”
    I thought back to the ice-cream counter, to Dad, holding your hand. “My father.”
    Her mouth flattened. She fed coins into another machine, and out popped a bottled water. She twisted the cap. I wanted her to offer it to me, but I was too embarrassed to ask.
    “Was he upset?”
    I thought of my father’s face as we sped off toward the hospital following the ambulance. Of his fists, balanced on his thighs as we waited for word about Willow’s latest break. “Yeah—really upset.”
    “Do you think he did this because he was angry at Willow?”
    “Did what?”
    Donna Roman knelt down so that she was staring me in the eye. “Amelia,” she said, “you can tell me what really happened. I’ll make sure he doesn’t hurt you.”
    Suddenly, I realized what she thought I’d meant. “My dad wasn’t mad at Willow,” I said. “He didn’t hit her. It was an accident!”
    “Accidents like that don’t have to happen.”
    “No—you don’t understand—it’s because of Willow—”
    “Nothing kids do justifies abuse,” Donna Roman muttered under her breath, but I could hear her loud and clear. By now she was walking back toward the room where my parents were, and even though I was yelling, trying to get her to hear me, she wasn’t listening. “Mr. and Mrs. O’Keefe,” she said, “we’re putting your children into protective custody.”
    “Why don’t we just go down to the station to talk?” the officer was saying to Dad.
    Mom threw her arms around me. “Protective custody? What does that mean?”
    With a firm hand—and the help of the police officer—Donna Roman tried to peel her away from me. “We’re just keeping the children safe until we can get this all cleared up. Willow will be here overnight.” She started to steer me out of the room, but I grabbed at the doorframe.
    “Amelia?” my mother said, frantic. “What did you say?”
    “I tried to tell her the truth!”
    “Where are you taking my daughter?”
    “Mom!” I shrieked, and I reached for her.
    “Come on, sweetheart,” Donna Roman said, and she pulled at my hands until I had to let go, until I was being dragged out of the hospital
kicking and screaming. I did this for five minutes, until I went totally numb. Until I understood why you didn’t cry, even though it hurt: there are kinds of pain you couldn’t speak out loud.
     
    I’d seen and heard the words foster home before, in books that I read and television programs I watched. I figured that they were for orphans and inner-city kids, kids whose parents were drug dealers—not girls like me who lived in nice houses and got plenty of Christmas presents and never went to sleep hungry. As it turned out, though, Mrs. Ward, who ran this temporary foster home, could have been an ordinary mom. I guess she had been one, judging from the photos that plastered every surface like wallpaper. She met us at the door wearing a red bathrobe and slippers that looked like pink pigs. “You must be Amelia,” she said, and she opened the door a little wider.
    I was expecting a posse of kids, but it turned out that I was the only one staying with Mrs. Ward. She took me into the kitchen, which smelled like dishwashing detergent and boiled noodles. She set a glass of milk and a stack of Oreo cookies in