“Oh my God! … oh my God” she screamed, backing into the house, and running to find her husband. “My God … Bert, there's a dead woman on our doorstep and she's naked!” He ran to the door and found her there, half in and half out of the door, still bleeding and still unconscious.

“Christ … it's that kid from next door, the one whose aunt died … the one you never see … we've got to call the police.” But Mollie was already dialing. The police came almost immediately, and the ambulance was there even before that. They took her to Brewster Hospital and half an hour later she came around, and saw the Archers staring at her in the emergency room. Mrs. Archer started to cry, she reminded her so much of her daughter. And it was obvious she had been beaten and raped and deposited on their doorstep. But the examination showed later on that she hadn't been raped at all, just beaten to within an inch of her life. She had stitches in various places, and the gash on her breast was bad, but the worst was the concussion he'd given her when he threw her against the wall the first time. She threw up almost as soon as she woke up and she lost consciousness several times, but the doctors assured Mrs. Archer she'd be all right, and they left her there several hours later. She was unwilling to talk about who had beaten her up, but the police weren't through with their investigation.

“Who do you think would do such a thing to her?” Mrs. Archer asked her husband on the way home, but it was days before the truth came to light, and Hilary didn't tell them. Jack gave it away himself the third time the police went to see him, and they brought charges against him, which Hilary begged them to drop.

“He'll kill me if you do that.” She was terrified now. He would kill her now, for sure, or worse.

But the police changed everything. “Hilary, you don't have to go back, you know. You could go to a foster home.”

“What's that?” Her eyes were wide with fear, but what could be worse than the hell she'd been living?

“It's a temporary home, even a long-term one sometimes where kids can live who don't have anywhere else to go.”

“You mean like an institution?”

The officer shook his head. “No, like real folks who take kids like you into their homes. What do you think?”

“I think I'd like to do that.” In order to set it up, she had to be processed through the Florida courts as a homeless minor. And it turned out to be much easier than anyone had thought when she explained that she was an orphan and had never been adopted by her aunt and uncle. She went back to see him only once, and Mollie Archer came with her and stood uneasily in the doorway. Hilary had wanted to get her things and she was afraid of confronting Jack. It was the first time she'd seen him since the night he beat her, and she was terrified of what he'd do to her for setting the police on him. But he only stared at her in venomous fury and dared to say very little with Mrs. Archer standing by her.

She packed her few belongings in the only suitcase she owned, and tucked the little cloth pouch carefully into the lining. She knew she had to take good care of it now, it was the only friend she had in the world … her escape money to find her sisters … her ten thousand dollars. If Jack had known it existed and that she had it, he would surely have killed her for it.

Jack slammed the door behind her and locked it loudly, and she walked quietly across the backyard to Mrs. Archer's house and waited for the juvenile authorities to pick her up again. They had a foster home for her and the people were coming for her in the morning. It was all so effortless, and for a moment, she allowed herself to think that it was going to be easy now. Smooth sailing, and then back to New York in a few years, to find Megan and Axie, and one day, they'd be living with her and she'd take care of them again. She'd be able to do that, with the windfall she'd found hidden among Eileen's nylons. It was the only nice thing her aunt had ever done for her, and even that she hadn't meant to do. But it didn't matter now. The money was in Hilary's suitcase and she intended to guard it with her life. To her, it was an absolute fortune.

The social worker came for her, as promised, in the morning, and after a brief appearance in court took her to a family in a battered-looking house in a poor suburb of Jacksonville. The woman opened the door wearing a warm smile and an apron, there were five other kids inside varying from about ten to fourteen from what Hilary could see, and the place instantly reminded her of the house Eileen and Jack had lived in in Boston. It had the same fetid smell, worn-out furniture, and battered look. But with half a dozen kids living there, it was hardly surprising.

The woman's name was Louise and she showed Hilary to her room, a room she was to share with three other girls, all of them living on narrow army cots Louise had bought from army surplus. There was a black girl sitting on one of them, she was tall and thin, with big black eyes, and she glanced over at Hilary with curiosity as she walked into the room and put down her things as the social worker introduced them.

“Hilary, this is Maida. She's been here for nine months.” The social worker smiled and disappeared, back to Louise and the mob of children in the kitchen. The house looked busy and full but wasn't welcoming somehow, and it gave Hilary the feeling that she had just been dropped off at a work camp.

“Hilary … what kinda name is dat?” Maida stared at her with hostility now that the social worker was gone and looked her over from the collar of her ugly dress to the cheap shoes Eileen had bought her. It was not a pretty outfit, and it was a far cry from the organdies and velvets of her childhood, forgotten luxuries by now. And with her serious green eyes, she looked at the black girl and wondered what life would be like here. “Where you from, girl?”

“New York … Boston … I've been here for two years.”

The black girl nodded, she was reed thin and Hilary could see she bit her nails to the quick. She was tall and angry and nervous. “Yeah? So why you come here? Your ma and pa in jail?” Hers were. Her mother was a prostitute and her father was a pimp and a pusher.

“My parents are dead.” Hilary's voice was dead too as she said it, and her eyes were guarded as she stood just inside the doorway.

“You got brothers and sisters?” She didn't see what difference it made and she was about to say yes, and then decided against it and merely shook her head. Maida seemed satisfied with her answer. “You gonna work hard for Louise, sweetheart. She a bitch to work for.” It was not entirely welcome information, but somehow Hilary had suspected as she walked in the door that this was not going to be as easy as they'd told her.

“What do you have to do?”

“Clean the house, take care of her kids, the yard, the vegetable garden out back … laundry … any thing she tells you to do. Kinda like slavery, except you get to sleep in the main house and she lets you eat here.” There was an evil smile in Maida's eyes and Hilary wasn't sure whether to laugh or not. “But it still beats juvie.”

“What's that?” She was a neophyte to all this, to foster homes and juvenile halls and parents who had gone to jail, even though her own father had died there. It was difficult to absorb the changes he had wrought in her life with one night of unbridled fury. Hilary often thought late at night, when she allowed herself to think about it, that he might as well have killed her along with her mother. It would have been a great deal simpler, instead of this slow death he had condemned her to, far from home and those she loved, abandoned among strangers.

“Where you been, girl?” Maida looked annoyed. “You know, juvie … juvenile hall …” She made a big deal of mouthing it, as Hilary nodded. “That's jail, for kids. If they don't find you a foster home, you go there, and they lock you up and treat you like shit. I'd rather work my ass off for Louise until my Ma gets out again. She'll be out next month and I can go home then.” This time she'd been caught in a drug bust with her “husband.” “What 'bout you? How long you think you gonna be here? You got relatives to go to?” She figured Hilary's parents had just died and maybe this was only a temporary arrangement. There was something different about Hilary, the way she spoke, the way she moved, the silent way she stared at everything, as though she didn't really belong here. But she shook her head in answer to Maida's question, just as the social worker walked back into the doorway.

“You girls getting acquainted?” The woman smiled, as though totally unaware of the jungle she worked in. To her, these were all nice kids, and she was finding them lovely homes, and everyone was happy.

Both girls looked at her as though she were crazy, but Maida was the first to speak. “Yeah. That's what we doin' … gettin' quainted. Right, Hilary?” Hilary nodded, wondering what she was supposed to say and relieved when the social worker took her back to the kitchen. There was something about Maida that scared her.

“Maida's done very well here,” the social worker confided as they walked down a dreary hall to the kitchen.

The children had gone back outside, and Louise was waiting for them, but all signs of any food they'd been eating were gone, and Hilary felt her stomach growl as she wondered if they'd give her something to eat, or if she'd have to wait until dinner.

“Ready to get to work?” Louise asked, and Hilary nodded, having gotten the answer to her question. The social worker seemed to disappear, and Louise directed her outside to a shovel and some rakes. She was told to dig a trench, and promised that some of the boys would help her, but they never showed. The boys were smoking cigarettes behind the barn, and Hilary was left to wield the shovel by herself, grunting and perspiring. She had worked hard in the last four years, but never at manual labor. She had cleaned Eileen and Jack's house, done their laundry, cooked their meals, and nursed Eileen until she died, but this was harder than anything she'd done before, and there were tears of exhaustion in her eyes when Louise finally called them in out of the torrid heat and told them to come to dinner.

She found Maida there, looking victorious as she stood by the stove. To her had fallen the ladylike task of cooking dinner, if one could call it that. It was a few pieces of meat and gristle floating in a sea of watery grease, which Louise cheerfully called stew as she ladled out small portions to each of them and sat down to say grace. And despite the pangs of hunger that she felt, and the dizziness from being in the hot sun all day, Hilary was unable to make herself eat it.

“Come on, eat up, you gotta keep up your strength.” Louise grinned horribly at her, it was all like some awful fairy tale, about a witch who was going to eat the children. Hilary remembered tales like that from her childhood, but they never seemed quite as real as this, and the witch always died and the children went back to being princesses and princes.

“I'm sorry … I'm not very hungry …” Hilary apologized weakly as the boys laughed at her.

“You sick?” Louise looked annoyed. “They didn't tell me you was sick….” She looked as though she were about to send her back to some unknown fate and Hilary remembered Maida's unpleasant description of “juvie.” Jail for kids. That was all she needed. But she had nowhere else to go now. She couldn't go back to Jack. She knew what he'd do to her this time. So it was Louise or juvie.

“No, no, I'm not sick … it's just the sun … it was hot outside …”

“Aww …” The other kids were quick to make fun of her and Maida gave her a vicious pinch as she helped wash the dishes. It was an odd arrangement, Hilary realized again. They weren't like friends or family, Louise didn't pretend to mother them, they were just like a hired work force she'd brought in to do her work, and that was how they treated her as well. It all seemed very temporary and very distant. Louise's husband seemed to come and go. He had lost one leg in the war and the other was severely crippled. He was unable to work as a result, and Louise took these kids in to do his share of the work, and her own, and for the money it brought her. The State paid her for each child she took in, and she didn't get rich on it, but it gave her decent money. The maximum she could take in was seven, and they knew there would be another one coming soon, because with Hilary there were only six. There was a pale blond fifteen-year-old girl named Georgine, as well as Maida, and three rowdy boys in their early teens. Two of them had been leering at Hilary since dinner. None of them were handsome kids, and few of them even looked healthy. It would have been hard to on the diet they were given. Louise cut all the corners she could, but Hilary was used to that from living with Eileen and Jack, although Louise seemed to have perfected the art even further.