Orphan Train

sounds like their chatter. The gray squirrels have the most meat,
     he tells me, but are hardest to see in the woods. They make a harsh chich-chich noise when they’re angry or scared. That’s how he finds them.
    Mr. Grote skins and guts the animals in several fluid motions, then hands me tiny
     hearts and livers, slabs of deep red meat. All I know how to make is boiled cabbage
     and mutton, I tell him, but he says it’s not that different. He shows me how to make
     a gallimaufry, a stew of diced meat, onion, and vegetables, with mustard, ginger,
     and vinegar. You cook the meat in animal fat over high heat to sear it, then add potatoes
     and vegetables and the rest. “It’s just a hotchpotch,” he says. “Whatever’s around.”
    At first I am horrified by the ghoulish skinned squirrels, as red and muscular as
     skinless human bodies in Miss Larsen’s science book. But hunger cures my qualms. Soon
     enough, squirrel stew tastes normal.
    Out in back is a homely garden that, even now, in mid-April, has root vegetables waiting
     to be dug—blighted potatoes and yams and tough-skinned carrots and turnips. Mr. Grote
     takes me out there with a pick and teaches me how to pry them from the earth, then
     wash them off under the pump. But the ground is still partially frozen, and the vegetables
     are hard to extract. The two of us spend about four hours in the cold digging for
     those tough old vegetables, planted last summer, until we have a gnarled and ugly
     pile. The children wander in and out of the house, sit and watch us from the kitchen
     window. I am grateful for my fingerless gloves.
    Mr. Grote shows me how he grows wild rice in the stream and collects the seeds. The
     rice is nutty and brown. He plants the seeds after harvest in late summer for the
     crop the following year. It’s an annual plant, he explains, which means that it dies
     in the autumn. Seeds that fall in autumn take root in spring underwater, and then
     the shoot grows above the surface. The stalks look like tall grass swaying in the
     water.
    In the summer, he says, he grows herbs in a patch behind the house—mint, rosemary,
     and thyme—and hangs them to dry in the shed. Even now there’s a pot of lavender in
     the kitchen. It’s a strange sight in that squalid room, like a rose in a junkyard.
    At school one late-April day Miss Larsen sends me out to the porch to get some firewood,
     and when I come back in, the entire class, led by Lucy Green, is standing, singing
     happy birthday to me.
    Tears spring to my eyes. “How did you know?”
    “The date was in your paperwork.” Miss Larsen smiles, handing me a slice of currant
     bread. “My landlady made this.”
    I look at her, not sure I understand. “For me?”
    “I mentioned that we had a new girl, and that your birthday was coming up. She likes
     to bake.”
    The bread, dense and moist, tastes like Ireland. One bite and I am back in Gram’s
     cottage, in front of her warm Stanley range.
    “Nine to ten is a big leap,” Mr. Post says. “One digit to two. You’ll be two digits
     now for the next ninety years.”
    Unwrapping the leftover currant bread at the Grotes’ that evening, I tell them about
     my party. Mr. Grote snorts. “How ridiculous, celebrating a birth date. I don’t even
     know the day I was born, and I sure can’t remember any of theirs,” he says, swinging
     his hand toward his kids. “But let’s have that cake.”

Spruce Harbor, Maine, 2011
    Looking closely at Molly’s file, Lori the social worker settles on a stool. “So you’ll be aging out of foster care in . . . let’s see . . . you turned seventeen
     in January, so nine months. Have you thought about what you’re going to do then?”
    Molly shrugs. “Not really.”
    Lori scribbles something on the file folder in front of her. With her bright button
     eyes and pointy snout nosing into Molly’s business, Lori reminds her of a ferret.
     They’re sitting at a lab table in an otherwise empty chemistry classroom at the high
     school during lunch period, as they do every other Wednesday.
    “Any problems with the Thibodeaus?”
    Molly shakes her head. Dina barely speaks to her; Ralph is pleasant enough—same as
     always.
    Lori taps her nose with an index finger. “You’re not wearing this anymore.”
    “Jack thought it might scare the old lady.” She did take the nose ring out for Jack,
     but the truth is, she hasn’t been in a hurry to put it back in. There are things about
     it she