Silas had learned to study them completely, because he had lived in ten households and each one had its own invisible rules, its own moods, its own ways a child could put a foot wrong, and a boy who guessed wrong got labeled difficult and moved along.

His beautiful, startling attentiveness was a wound.

He paid such close attention to what people needed because, for most of his life, failing to had cost him his home.

The moment I knew, really knew, came over a cookie.

Weeks earlier I had mentioned, in passing, in the middle of some other story, that my daughter Ivy had always hated finding raisins in her baked goods.

It was nothing, a throwaway line.