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been seen, she pushed herself upright, got to her feet, and stepped backward, never taking her eyes from him. Tim knew that it was she who had led him to this place, that he might hear out the woman who had known Lily Kalendar best. She wanted him to do more than hear: she was commanding him to listen.

You have to know a few things about me first, Diane Huntress said. My father built the Sundown Community, which is what we used to call this area, in the forties, and he placed it in this basin because he wanted it to be at one remove from the outside world. He graded Sundown Road himself and he built that little plaza and the bandstand at the bottom. The whole thing was his idea. We never had any money, but that didn’t bother us. My father really didn’t care about money. Originally, all the people who lived here knew one another, and we used to have these communal meals, and there’d be singing, and people would play their instruments, and we’d dance. We had this sense of shared ideals, a shared vision. Nothing ever stays the same in this world, especially communities like Sundown. A lot of new people were moving in by the time Guy Huntress and I got married.

We were busy—Guy was a housepainter, and I came along and did the detail work. I worked as a waitress, too. We started going places together, spending what little we had on things we came across and liked instead of on hotels and fancy meals. We discovered we couldn’t have children, and that was a blow. And Guy didn’t want to adopt. But one day he said, You know, we could give back to the community by taking in a foster child. That way, at least we’d have a kid around the house. I thought it was a great, great idea, the greatest. We got in touch with Social Services, they put us in touch with Georgia Lathem, and that’s how we got our first three foster children. One after the other, not all together.

Sally, Rob, and Charlie. Wonderful kids. Screwed up as hell when we first got them, but basically okay. A little antisocial, you know, shoplifting, mouthing off, testing the rules. All the normal stuff. What we did with those kids, we thought was what everybody would do. Now, to Georgia Lathem and them, what we did was special. So when they had an unusual case come in, I guess they thought of us first. We go down to Karadara Street, we go into Miss Lathem’s office, and sitting there like a little wet cat is this child named Lily Kalendar. What we didn’t know about Lily and her background would fill volumes, let me tell you.

This one is going to be trouble, Guy said. This one is going to break your heart, he said. Are you sure you want to do this? Her first day in the Foundlings’ Shelter, Lily peed on the floor and tried to stab another kid with a pencil. Her second day, she lit a fire in the game room. She barely talked. She was like a little savage. Sure I’m sure, I told my husband. This kid Lily, this little monster, she’s going to be my project, because you know what? I love her already.

And I did. I did love that child. I saw something in her, maybe what you saw in that picture, Mr. Underhill. I saw a terribly damaged little girl who felt everything that happened everywhere. Do you know what I mean, Mr. Underhill? The spirit in there, it might have been scared and angry and half-poisoned, but it wasn’t selfish.

She was angry. Lily was the angriest child I ever met—no, the angriest person I ever met. The first thing I had to do was let her know that she could have all that anger and still feel safe. Once we got through that stage, I was pretty sure we could begin to make a human being out of the girl. She still talked in baby talk half the time, and she pronounced her name Wiwwy, because she couldn’t say the letter l. Wiwwy hate, Wiwwy bite. You know how many times I heard that? Other times, she rolled out curse words so terrible a superstitious person would say she was possessed. She was possessed, but by herself, not the devil.

When she got wild, I’d roll her up in a blanket