Page 37 of Meet Me in the Garden

She scans the seats and walks toward me, sits with only one empty chair between us. I could reach out and touch her shoulder. Al widens his eyes at me, tilts his head. He’s telling me to talk to her, but Delphine turned from me and ran, and I can’t afford to get it wrong again.

“You’re Nathalie, right?” I finally ask. As good a start as any. Her head whips toward me. “My name is Odette.”

“Odette from the story?” she asks in a clear, strong voice.

“What story?”

“Mommy told me a story about Odette. She made paintings and lived in a blue house with two sisters.”

Tears prick my eyes. “Yes. That’s me. Except I don’t live in the blue house anymore. I live in a cream-colored house, with just one of my sisters. The other one lives three doors down. This man here,” I say, tapping Al’s knee, “is my brother-in-law. He has three children, and I have one, and we all live in a nice house together.”

“Are they boys or girls?”

Al speaks very sweetly. “Well, I have one boy, Rudy, who is the oldest. And then twins, Titter and Bobby, one girl and one boy. And Odette has a boy named Clément.”

“Clément’s just a few months younger than you are,” I say.

“I’m five-and-a-half,” Nathalie says.

“I know,” I say.

“How?”

“Because your mommy is very special to me. She’s my cousin and my best friend.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“I do.”

Nathalie scoots into the chair next to mine. The half moons under her eyes are pale purple, and when she reaches for me I see dirt under her fingernails. She squeezes my wrist tightly.“Where is she?”

“She’s in a hospital. She told us where to find you.”

Nathalie nods. “It’s laundry night.”

“That’s what she told us. She wanted us to know so we could take you home with us and take good care of you while she’s gone. Does that sound all right with you?”

She scoots up onto her knees, leans to my ear to tell me a secret. “I want a sandwich.”

“I’ll make you one.”

“But we have to wait,” she says, sitting back down. “The clothes take twenty-one minutes to wash, and forty-four minutes to dry.”

“What if we wait for them to finish washing, and then take them home and hang them on the line?”

“We always put them in the dryer.”

I glance at Al. He shrugs. “We can wait,” I say.

She twists her mouth to one side, thinking, then slides off her chair and walks the perimeter of the room. I clutch Al’s hand when she nears the entrance, terrified she’ll bolt, but she does a full loop and when she returns to us, she says, “We can dry them on the line.”

Claire and Adele are watching from the front window as we pull up in the car. I open the door for Nathalie, who drops her bag of wet clothes on the drive before scooting out. When we turn toward the house, Claire is frozen in the window, covering her mouth with her hand, and Adele is at the entry, so astonished she doesn’t know what to say.

“Where is the line?” Nathalie asks, scanning the front.

“Through the house to the back,” I tell her. Claire’s here now, too, inthe foyer, gazing at Nathalie like she was born of thin air. But Nathalie doesn’t seem to notice either of them. “She wants a sandwich,” I say, following her in. “And to hang her laundry.”

“But it’s dark outside,” Claire says. “Past bedtime. The other children are sleeping already.”