Echea

The girls were still smiling when they saw me.

"Something fu

"Echea," Kally said. "Did you know someone owned her dress before she did?"

No, I hadn’t known that, but it didn’t surprise me. My daughters, on the other hand, had owned only the best. Sometimes their knowledge of life-or lack thereof-shocked me.

"It’s not an unusual way for people to save money," I said. "But it’ll be the last pre-owned dress she’ll have."

Mom? It was A

I blinked the message away, then sighed and pushed back my chair. I should have known the girls would do something that first morning. And the laughter should have prepared me.

"Remember," I said as I stood. "Only one main course. No matter what your father says."

"Ma!" Kally said.

"I mean it," I said, then hurried up the stairs. I didn’t have to check where A

As I got closer, I heard A

"…didn’t mean it. They’re old poops."

"Poop" was A

"It’s my dress," Echea said. She sounded calm and contained, but I thought there was a raggedness to her voice that hadn’t been there the day before. "It’s all I have."

At that moment, I entered the room. A

Echea was standing near her window seat, gazing at the lawn as if she didn’t dare let it out of her sight.

"Actually," I said, keeping my voice light. "You have an entire closet full of clothes."

Thanks, Mom, A

"Those clothes are yours," Echea said.

"We’ve adopted you," I said. "What’s ours is yours."

"You don’t get it," she said. "This dress is mine. It’s all I have."

She had her arms wrapped around it, her hands gripping it as if we were going to take it away.

"I know," I said softly. "I know, sweetie-baby. You can keep it. We’re not trying to take it away from you."

"They said you would."

"Who?" I asked, with a sinking feeling. I already knew who. My other two daughters. "Kally and Susan?"

She nodded.

"Well, they’re wrong," I said. "My husband and I make the rules in this house. I will never take away something of yours. I promise."

"Promise?" she whispered.

"Promise," I said. "Now how about breakfast?"

She looked at A

I was so proud of her.

"Breakfast," A

The government had fed the children standard nutrition supplements, in beverage form. Echea hadn’t taken a meal on Earth until she’d joined us.

"You name your meals?" she asked A

"Three of them," I said, trying to sound normal. Instead I felt defensive, as if we had too much. "We only have three of them."

The second night, we had no disturbances. By the third, we had developed a routine. I spent time with my girls, and then I went into Echea’s room. She didn’t like House or House’s stories. House’s voice, no matter how I programmed it, scared her. It made me wonder how we were going to link her when the time came. If she found House intrusive, imagine how she would find the constant barrage of information services, of instant e-mail scrolling across her eyes, or sudden images appearing inside her head. She was almost past the age where a child adapted easily to a link. We had to calm her quickly or risk her suffering a disadvantage for the rest of her life.

Perhaps it was the voice that upset her. The reason links made sound optional was because too many people had had trouble distinguishing the voices inside their head. Perhaps Echea would be one of them.

It was time to find out.

I had yet to broach the topic with my husband. He seemed to have cooled toward Echea immediately. He thought Echea abnormal because she wasn’t like our girls. I reminded him that Echea hadn’t had the advantages, to which he responded that she had the advantages now. He felt that since her life had changed, she should change.

Somehow I didn’t think it worked like that.

It was on the second night that I realized she was terrified of going to sleep. She kept me as long as she could, and when I finally left, she asked to keep the lights on.

House said she had them on all night, although the computer clocked her even breathing starting at 2:47 a.m.

On the third night, she asked me questions. Simple ones, like the one about breakfast, and I answered them without my previous defensiveness. I held my emotions back, my shock that a child would have to ask what that pleasant ache was in her stomach after meals ("You’re full, Echea. That’s your stomach telling you it’s happy.") or why we insisted on bathing at least once a day ("People stink if they don’t bathe often, Echea. Haven’t you noticed?"). She asked the questions with her eyes averted, and her hands clenched against the coverlet. She knew that she should know the answers, she knew better than to ask my older two daughters or my husband, and she tried ever so hard to be sophisticated.

Already, the girls had humiliated her more than once. The dress incident had blossomed into an obsession with them, and they taunted her about her unwillingness to attach to anything. She wouldn’t even claim a place at the dining room table. She seemed convinced that we would toss her out at the first chance.

On the fourth night, she addressed that fear. Her question came at me sideways, her body more rigid than usual.

"If I break something," she asked, "what will happen?"

I resisted the urge to ask what she had broken. I knew she hadn’t broken anything. House would have told me, even if the girls hadn’t.

"Echea," I said, sitting on the edge of her bed, "are you afraid that you’ll do something which will force us to get rid of you?"

She flinched as if I had struck her, then she slid down against the coverlet. The material was twisted in her hands, and her lower jaw was working even before she spoke.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Didn’t they explain this to you before they brought you here?" I asked.

"They said nothing." That harsh tone was back in her voice, the tone I hadn’t heard since that very first day, her very first comment.

I leaned forward and, for the first time, took one of those clenched fists into my hands. I felt the sharp knuckles against my palms, and the softness of the fabric brushing my skin.

"Echea," I said. "When we adopted you, we made you our child by law. We ca

"People do illegal things," she whispered.

"When it benefits them," I said. "Losing you will not benefit us."

"You’re saying that to be kind," she said.

I shook my head. The real answer was harsh, harsher than I wanted to state, but I could not leave it at this. She would not believe me. She would think I was trying to ease her mind. I was, but not through polite lies.

"No," I said. "The agreement we signed is legally binding. If we treat you as anything less than a member of our family, we not only lose you, we lose our other daughters as well."

I was particularly proud of adding the word "other." I suspected that, if my husband had been having this conversation with her, that he would have forgotten to add it.