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from the airport, despite all his efforts to reassure her. He knew that Carole Collins was hardly a cozy woman. She had never had children of her own, and never seemed interested in talking to them. The children of her employees and friends meant nothing to her. It was an irony that, so late in life, she should find her path crossed with this child. And the foreman hoped it would soften her a little.
    “You must be tired,” she said, as she looked at Marie-Ange, once they were alone in the kitchen, and Marie-Ange had to fight back tears, as she longed for the loving embrace of Sophie. “You can go to bed in a minute.”
    Marie-Ange was tired, but more than that, she was finally hungry, but Carole Collins was the first person that night who did not offer her anything to eat, and Marie-Ange was afraid to ask her.
    “Do you have anything at all to say?” she asked, looking straight at Marie-Ange, and the child thought it was a reproach that she had not thanked her.
    “Thank you for letting me come,” she said in precise, but accented English.
    “I don’t think either of us had much choice in this,” Carole Collins said matter-of-factly. “We’ll have to make the best of it. You can do chores here.” She wanted to get things straight right from the beginning. “I hope you brought something more sensible than that to wear,” she said over her shoulder, as she turned her wheelchair around with a practiced hand.
    Carole Collins had had polio as a young girl, and never regained the use of her legs, although she was able to drag herself around on crutches with braces on her legs, but she chose not to. The wheelchair was less humiliating, and more efficient, and she had used it for more than fifty years. She had turned seventy that April. She had been widowed when her husband died in the war, and had never remarried. The farm had been her father’s, and she ran it well, and had eventually annexed it to her brother’s land after he died. John’s father had been her brother, and his wife had remarried and moved away, and was only too happy to let his sister buy her out. Carole Collins was the family’s only survivor. She knew a lot about farming, and absolutely nothing about children.
    She was giving up her spare room to Marie-Ange, and she wasn’t pleased about it, although she seldom if ever had visitors anyway. But it seemed like a waste of a good room to Carole, and she led Marie-Ange to it, through the dimly lit living room, and down a long dark hallway, as Marie-Ange followed. She had to fight back tears every inch of the way, from grief, terror, and exhaustion. And the room she saw when Carole turned the light on for her was spare and barren. There was a cross on one wall, and a Norman Rockwell print on the other. The bed had a metal frame, a thin mattress, and there were two sheets and a blanket folded neatly on it, a single pillow and a towel. There was a small closet, and a narrow dresser, and even Marie-Ange could see that there would be nowhere to put what she had brought in her three huge suitcases, but she would have to face that dilemma in the morning.
    “The bathroom is down the hall,” Carole explained. “You share it with me, and you’d better not spend too much time in it. But I guess you’re not old enough to do that.” Marie-Ange nodded. Her mother had always liked to take long, leisurely baths, and when they were going out, she spent a long time doing her makeup, and Marie-Ange loved to sit and watch her. But Carole Collins didn’t wear makeup, and she was wearing jeans and a man’s shirt, and her gray hair was cut short, as her nails were. There was nothing frivolous or particularly feminine about her. She just looked old and grim to Marie-Ange as they looked at each other. “I assume you know how to make your bed. If not, you can figure it out,” she said with no warmth whatsoever, and Marie-Ange nodded. Sophie had taught her to make her bed long before, although she was never very