I never told Lucinda.

But some animal part of me, the part that had lived through a dozen placements ending without warning, could not quite believe this one would not end too, and it wanted to be ready to leave before I was made to.

Lucinda, I think, understood that without my saying it, because she never rushed me and never took my wariness as an insult.

She simply kept showing up — every morning, every night, patient and unoffended, tending me the way she had tended the rooftop garden, on faith, against the day I would finally believe she meant to stay.

And one day I noticed I had stopped keeping the bag packed.

I could not tell you the exact morning it happened.