The classes took eight weeks. Every Tuesday and Thursday night in a church basement across town, with eleven other couples and a woman named Joanne Pruitt from the county who wore enormous glasses and spoke very fast.

She told us about trauma. About attachment. About what kids who’ve been moved around a lot might do when they come into a new house. Hide food. Refuse to unpack. Test you, to see if you’ll send them away.

“These children have learned that grown-ups leave,” Joanne said. “Your job is to not leave. Even when they push you. Especially when they push you.”

She told us one more thing, on the last night. She looked right at me when she said it.

“And you have to remember,” she said, “that the goal of foster care is reunification. With family, if possible. You might love a child with your whole heart, and still have to let them go. If you can’t accept that, this isn’t for you.”

I nodded.

I thought I accepted it.

I didn’t know anything.

Three months later, on a cold Tuesday afternoon in February, a little girl arrived at our doorstep.

Joanne Pruitt brought her. They stood together on our porch in the gray afternoon light.

Ivy was eight years old.

She was small for eight. Thin. She had dark hair cut short and uneven, like someone had done it with kitchen scissors. She was wearing a pink coat that was two sizes too big, with the sleeves rolled up three times.

She was carrying a blue duffel bag with a broken zipper. And a plastic grocery bag, from a Kroger, full of clothes.

That was everything she owned.

I knelt down on the porch so we’d be the same height.

“Hello, sweetheart,” I said. “I’m Margaret.”

She looked at me. She didn’t smile.

“Hello,” she said.

Her voice was very quiet. Very polite.

“This is Daniel,” I said. Daniel was standing behind me in the doorway. He waved at her. A small wave. Like he was afraid of scaring a bird.

Ivy looked at him. She didn’t wave back.

“Would you like to see your room?” I asked.

She nodded.

We took her upstairs. To the yellow room.

We’d opened the door for the first time in years. We’d cleaned it. We’d bought a white bed with a purple quilt and a little desk and a lamp shaped like a moon. I’d put a stuffed rabbit on the pillow. Daniel had put a box of crayons and a pad of drawing paper on the desk.

Ivy stood in the doorway and looked at it for a long time.

She didn’t go in.

“Am I allowed to sleep in that bed?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said. “It’s yours.”

She looked up at me.

“For how long?” she asked.

I looked at Daniel. Daniel looked at me.

What do you say to that? To an eight-year-old who asks how long before she’ll even step into her own bedroom?

“For as long as you’re here, honey,” I said.

Ivy nodded slowly. Like that was the answer she’d expected.

She walked into the room. She put the blue duffel bag down on the floor next to the bed. She put the grocery bag next to it.

She didn’t unpack.

During those first weeks, Ivy asked permission for everything.

Everything.

“Can I open the refrigerator?”

“Of course, sweetheart.”

“Can I sit on the couch?”

“Absolutely.”

“Can I use the bathroom?”

“You never have to ask that, honey. Never.”

“Can I have a glass of water?”

“Ivy, you can have whatever you want. This is your house now.”

She’d look at me when I said things like that. A long, careful look. Like she was trying to figure out what the trick was.