Two were kind and left.

One talked to him constantly in a bright voice like he was a puppy, and he stopped coming out of his room for a month.” He looked at her directly.

“Can you be around a child who doesn’t answer you, every day, for a long time, without needing him to?”

Maya thought about a nine-year-old girl in a series of houses, being asked how she was doing.

“Yes,” she said.