She had come under her own power, wheeling the chair with the fierce stubbornness that the disease had not managed to take from her, and she had clearly come for a purpose.

She positioned herself beside Juliet, and she looked at me across the great intimidating desk with an expression I had not seen her turn on me since I was a boy.

“That girl,” she said, lifting one thin hand to point at Juliet, “has treated me more like family in six months than anyone else in this house has in years.”

My chest tightened.