Rolanda had been bent over her computer for over an hour when she suddenly realized that she was no longer alone in the Newford Children’s Foundation office. Lifting her head, she looked across the waiting room to find a red-haired girl standing in front of Isabelle Copley’s painting The Wild Girl, and for a long moment all she could do was regard the stranger with mild confusion. It wasn’t that the girl was barefoot and wore only jeans and a thin flannel shirt—clothing not at all suitable for late-September weather; it was that she seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Rolanda hadn’t heard the front door open, hadn’t heard the girl enter. One moment she’d been alone at her desk and the waiting room was empty, in the next the girl was here, standing barefoot on the carpet and looking up at the painting. She bore, Rolanda realized, an uncanny resemblance to the subject of the painting.
“She could be your twin,” Rolanda said.
The girl turned with a smile. “Do you think so?”
“Definitely.”
Rolanda had thought the girl was in her early teens, but now she was no longer so sure, though she couldn’t pinpoint what had made her change her mind. Perhaps it was the momentary trace of a very adult mockery that she’d seen in the girl’s smile. Or perhaps it was the worldly look in her eyes. The latter, in itself, wasn’t so unusual. The children who came to the NCF’s offices invariably had either one of two looks about them: a worldliness that was out of keeping with their tender years, or fear. Rolanda hated to see either. Both spoke of lost childhoods.
“It’s awfully cold to be walking around in bare feet,” she said.
The girl looked down and wriggled her toes on the carpet. “I suppose it is.”
“What’s your name?”
“Cosette.”
Of course, Rolanda thought. They never had last names. Not at first.
“I think we might have some socks and shoes that would fit you,” she said. “A jacket, too, if you’d like one. Or a sweater.”
“That would be nice.”
Rolanda stood up from behind her desk. “Let’s go see what we can find.”
The girl dutifully fell in step behind her as Rolanda led the way down the central hall toward Shauna Daly’s office. Because it was the largest room in the building, Shauna had to share her space with much of the clothing and toys that were donated to the Foundation. Still more was kept in boxes in the basement, replenished whenever the supply in Shauna’s office ran low.
“Take whatever you like,” Rolanda said.
Cosette seemed delighted by the jumble of clothing that took up one side of the office. Laid out on a long worktable, or spilling out of various boxes, were any number of jeans and skirts, jackets, sweaters, socks and underwear. Shoes were lined up under the table, ranging from tiny footwear suitable for infants to boots and shoes to fit teenagers.
“Do you have a place to stay, Cosette?” Rolanda asked as the girl felt the texture of various jackets and sweaters.
“Oh sure. I sort of have a boyfriend and I’m going to be staying with him.”
Oh-oh, Rolanda thought. She’d didn’t like the sound of that. A “boyfriend.” Who let her wander around on the streets barefoot and without a jacket.
“What’s his name?” she asked, keeping her tone casual.
When the girl lifted her gaze from the clothing and turned it toward her, Rolanda felt an odd sensation. It was as though the carpet underfoot had suddenly dropped a few inches, settling like an elevator at a new floor. It wasn’t worldliness that lay in the girl’s eyes, she realized, but she couldn’t put a name to it. Otherworldliness, perhaps.
“His name?” the girl said. “It’s, um ... Alan. Alan Grant.”
Rolanda recovered her equilibrium and gave her a sharp look. “Alan Grant the publisher?”
“That’s right,” Cosette said with a bright smile. “He does make books, doesn’t he?”
Rolanda was shocked. She knew Alan. Everybody at the NCF did. He was one of the Foundation’s biggest supporters. He was also old enough to be this girl’s father.
“And he’s your ‘boyfriend’?” she asked.
“Well, sort of,” Cosette said. “I only met him last night and I know he likes Isabelle better than he likes me, but she’s not interested in having a boyfriend and I am.”
Relief flooded Rolanda when she realized that it was the girl who was fixated on Alan, not the other way around.
“I think he thinks I’m too young,” Cosette added.
“Perhaps you are ... for Alan, I mean.”
“I’m much older than I look,” Cosette assured her.
She sat down on the floor and tried on various shoes.
“Are you hungry?” Rolanda asked.
Cosette shook her head. “I don’t really need to eat.”
More warning bells went off in Rolanda’s head. While Cosette was thin, it wasn’t the same sort of thinness that Rolanda usually associated with eating disorders, but looks could always be deceiving.
“Why’s that?” she asked, maintaining that studied nonchalance she always assumed with clients when she wanted information, but didn’t want to scare them off.
Cosette shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just the way we are. We don’t need to sleep, either, and we never dream.”
“We?”
Cosette ignored her for a moment. Having found a pair of clunky leather shoes that she appeared to like, she was now trying on sweaters. She finished pulling one over her head before replying.
“My ... family, I guess you’d call them.”
“Do they live in the city?”
“All over, really. I don’t really keep track of them.”
“Why’s that?” Rolanda asked.
Cosette gave her another of those odd looks that had so unsteadied Rolanda earlier. She took off the sweater she’d been trying on and hoisted herself onto the table, where she sat with her legs dangling and the sweater held against her chest.
“Why do you want to know so much about me?” she asked.
“I’m just interested in you.”
Cosette nodded with slow understanding. “That’s not really it at all. You think I’m like the other kids who come here, don’t you? That I’m in trouble and I need help.”
“Do you?” Rolanda asked. “Need help, I mean.”
“Oh, no,” Cosette said with a merry laugh.
Rolanda was struck with a sense of incongruity at the sound of Cosette’s mirth until she realized why the girl’s laughter sounded out of place: the laughter was genuine, unforced—an alien sound in this place.
When children laughed here, it was not because they were happy or amused. Theirs was a laughter that grew out of stress, or relief, or some combination of the two.
Cosette hopped down from the table. “Thanks for the shoes and the sweater,” she said. “I don’t really need them, but I like getting presents,” she added over her shoulder as she left the room.
“You’re welcome,” Rolanda began.
She was caught off guard by the girl’s sudden departure, but by the time she had followed her out into the hallway, Cosette was already at the far end of the hall, opening the front door.
“Wait!” Rolanda called.
Cosette turned to give her a wave and stepped outside. Rolanda broke into a trot, reaching the front door just before it closed. When she stepped out onto the porch, the girl was gone. She wasn’t on the walkway, or on the sidewalk, or anywhere up or down the street.
That eerie feeling returned, the vague sense of vertigo, as if the ground underfoot had abruptly become uneven or spongy, and Rolanda had to steady herself against one of the porch’s supports. It was as though Cosette had never existed in the first place, disappearing as mysteriously as she had appeared in the office a few minutes ago.