Livvie was happy.
And then one day, the four of them were out walking, running, blurring, shopping—when Livvie saw something. On a television, in a store. And it made her happy, too. It made her stop. And then Max stopped and Nix stopped and Claire stopped.
Livvie pointed at the screen, her memory rearranging itself, working its way through the haze. “Look!” she said.
“It’s the girl.”
The sweetest, nicest, most wonderful person in the world. Livvie remembered her. She didn’t remember the little room too well, but she remembered the girl.
“Natalie.” Max remembered even better than she did. He was a wild thing.
Livvie tilted her head to the side, and she remembered the small, small, small room and the blood and trying to breathe underwater.
“Natalie,” she repeated.
“Vice presidential nominee Quentin Burrows, a longtime supporter of family values and child welfare, has put his money where his mouth was, with what appears to be an impromptu adoption.…”
Livvie looked up at Nix. Nobodies didn’t ask questions but—Livvie did. “What’s adoption mean?” she asked.
For a moment, Nix didn’t say anything, and Livvie wondered why he looked like he’d swallowed a big ball of dirt. Claire—Livvie liked saying her name as two syllables, Cuh-laire, because one just wasn’t enough—must have noticed that Nix looked funny, too, because she did that thing where she touched him, lightly on the arm and it was like she was talking to him, only without words.
“Adoption means that Natalie has a new family,” Claire said carefully.
Livvie looked at the screen, and then at Max, and then back at Nix and Claire. “Like us?”
Nix picked her up. Nuzzled her face. Made her giggle.
“Like us,” Max said, even though he didn’t know what the word meant any better than she did.
Livvie squinted back at the screen and then nodded. Adoption was like a fairy tale. Like happily ever after.
It was good that Natalie had it, too.
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