One evening, about a month after she came, she was carrying her glass of milk to the table and it slipped out of her hands.

It hit the kitchen floor. It didn’t break. It just tipped over, and milk went everywhere. Across the floor. Under the table.

Ivy froze.

Then she dropped to her knees.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

She was grabbing at the milk with her bare hands. Trying to wipe it up. Pushing it around on the floor. Her whole body was shaking.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry…”

“Ivy,” I said. “Sweetheart. Stop.”

“I didn’t mean to!”

I knelt down on the floor next to her. Right in the milk. I put my hands over hers.

“I know you didn’t,” I said. “It’s just milk. That’s all it is.”

She looked up at me. Her eyes were huge. Terrified.

“Are you mad?” she whispered.

“Not even a little,” I said.

She stared at me.

She stared at me in total disbelief. Like I’d just told her the sky was green.

Daniel came over with a roll of paper towels. He sat down on the floor too. All three of us, sitting on the kitchen floor in a puddle of milk.

“You know what I did once?” Daniel said to her. “When I was about your age? I knocked over a whole gallon of milk. A whole gallon. In my grandmother’s kitchen. It went everywhere. It went under the stove. Her kitchen smelled like sour milk for a month.”

Ivy looked at him.

“Was she mad?”

“She was a little mad,” Daniel admitted. “But then she made me a grilled cheese sandwich. Because she said a boy who spills that much milk must be very hungry.”

Ivy looked at him for a long time.

Then, very slowly, the left side of her mouth went up.

Just a little.

It was the first time I ever saw her crooked smile.

But every night, she packed her clothes back into her duffel bag.

Every single night.

I’d go up to tuck her in, and I’d see it. Her clothes folded neatly and zipped into the blue bag with the broken zipper, sitting on the floor next to her bed. Her shoes lined up next to it. Ready.

In the morning, she’d take out what she needed for the day. At night, she’d put it all back.

“Sweetheart,” I said once. “You can put your clothes in the dresser. That’s what it’s for.”

“I know,” she said.

She didn’t put them in the dresser.

I didn’t ask her again. Joanne had told us. Don’t push. Let her decide when.

It took almost three months.

But slowly, Ivy began to feel at home.

It happened in little ways. So little you almost wouldn’t notice.

One morning, I came downstairs and she was already in the kitchen, standing in front of the open refrigerator, looking for the orange juice. She hadn’t asked.

One afternoon, she came home from school and threw her backpack on the floor by the front door and kicked off her shoes and flopped down on the couch with a big sigh. Like any eight-year-old in America.

“Margaret,” she called from the living room one Saturday. “Where are my crayons?”

“Under the couch, sweetheart,” I called back from the kitchen. “Where you left them.”

“And my shoes?”

“Also where you left them.”

“Where’s that?”

“Wherever you took them off.”

I heard her groan.

Daniel was standing next to me at the counter, making coffee.

He was grinning.

“She finally knows this is her home,” he said quietly.

That night, I went up to tuck her in.

The blue duffel bag was in her closet. On the floor. Empty.

Her clothes were in the dresser drawers. Not folded very well. Shoved in, mostly. A sock hanging out of the top drawer.

I stood there in the doorway looking at that sock for a long time.

I had to go downstairs and sit on the back steps for a while before I could talk to anybody.

A few weeks later, Ivy stormed upstairs because Daniel wouldn’t let her watch TV past bedtime.

There was a cartoon movie on. She wanted to see the end of it. It was eight-thirty. Bedtime was eight.

“That’s so unfair!” she shouted from halfway up the stairs. “You’re the worst!”

“Good night, Ivy!” Daniel called after her cheerfully.

“I hate this house!”

She slammed her bedroom door. So hard the pictures in the hallway rattled.

Daniel turned around on the couch and looked at me.

He was grinning from ear to ear.

“She’s finally being annoying,” he said.

I started laughing.

I laughed so hard I had to hold on to the back of the couch. I laughed until tears ran down my face. Daniel laughed too.

Upstairs, I heard Ivy’s door open a crack.

“What’s so funny?” she yelled down.

That made us laugh even harder.

But everything truly changed one evening in our kitchen.

It was a Thursday in May. Warm. The windows were open, and you could smell the lilacs from the bush in the backyard.

I was making dinner. Spaghetti and meatballs. The radio was on, like always. And an old song came on. Moonlight Serenade. Glenn Miller. My parents’ song.

I couldn’t help it. I never can, when that song comes on.

I started dancing. Just a little. Swaying back and forth at the stove, stirring the sauce. A little turn on my good knee. A little step.

Then I noticed Ivy.

She was standing in the kitchen doorway. Watching me. She had a crayon in her hand.

“Want to try?” I said.

She shook her head fast.

“I can’t dance.”

“Neither can Daniel,” I said.

From the living room, Daniel shouted, “Hey!”

Ivy almost smiled.

I turned the burner down under the sauce. I wiped my hands on my apron. And I held out my hand to her.

“Come on,” I said. “Just one step.”

She looked at my hand.

“What if I do it wrong?” she said.

“Then we’ll invent a new dance,” I said. “Nobody owns dancing, sweetheart. You can’t do it wrong. You can only do it your way.”

She hesitated for a long time.

Then she put her crayon down on the counter. And she came across the kitchen. And she took my hand.

Her hand was small and a little sticky.

“Okay,” I said. “Put your other hand here. On my shoulder. That’s it. Now just step to the side with me. Like this.”

She stepped to the side. A little stiff.

“Like this?”

“Perfect,” I said. “Now step back.”

She stepped back.

“Now we’re going to turn,” I said.

Her eyes went wide.

“I’ll fall!”

“I’ve got you,” I said.

I lifted my arm. She went under it. She spun around, once. Too fast. Her feet got tangled.

She stumbled right into my arms.

And she laughed.

A real laugh. A big, loud, surprised laugh. Like a hiccup. Like something that had been stuck inside her for a long time and just came out.

I’d never heard her laugh like that.

In the living room doorway, Daniel was standing there watching us. He had his hand over his heart.

From then on, dancing became our evening ritual.

Every night after dinner, after the dishes, Ivy would come into the kitchen and lean against the counter.

“Music time?” she’d ask.

“Only if you’ve finished your homework,” I’d say.

“That’s blackmail!”

“That’s parenting,” I’d say.

She’d stomp off to finish her homework. Ten minutes later, she’d be back, waving her worksheet in the air.

“Done! Now music time?”

Soon, she was dancing around the kitchen every single night.

I taught her the box step. The basic waltz. A little swing. How to point her toes. How to spot when she turned, so she wouldn’t get dizzy. How to hold her arms so they looked like wings.

She was good. Really good. She had a natural sense of rhythm. She listened to the music with her whole body.

“Margaret,” she said one night. “Can I come to your studio sometime? And take a real class?”

“Ivy,” I said. “You can come every single day if you want.”

She came on Tuesdays and Saturdays. She stood in the back row of my beginners’ class in a pair of pink tights I’d bought her, watching the other girls, copying every move. After three weeks, she was in the front row.

One night, in late June, we were sitting on the kitchen floor after dancing. Out of breath. Leaning back against the cabinets. Eating popsicles. Grape for her, cherry for me.

We’d just watched a movie together, earlier that evening. A silly one about a girl who finds a magic coin that grants wishes.

“Margaret,” Ivy said. “Can we make a list? Like the girl in the movie? Of wishes?”

“A wish list?”

“A dream list,” Ivy said. “Things we want to do someday.”

“Of course we can,” I said. “Everybody should have something to dream about.”

I got a piece of paper from the junk drawer. She got her crayons. We sat at the kitchen table, and she wrote it out. Very carefully. Her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth.

At the top, in big letters, she wrote:

OUR DREAM LIST.

Then underneath:

Get a puppy.

Eat ice cream for breakfast.

Learn to do five spins without falling.

Go to the ocean.

See Margaret dance on a real stage.

Daniel learns to dance. (Probably impossible.)

Daniel read that one over her shoulder and pretended to be very offended.

Then she stopped.

She was holding the crayon over the paper. Not writing.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” I said.

“How do you spell nobody?” she said.

“N-O-B-O-D-Y.”

She wrote it very slowly. Then she kept writing.

She folded the paper over before I could read the last line. She put her arm over it.

“That one’s a secret,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. “That’s fair. Everybody’s allowed a secret.”

She kept that list on her bedside table, under her moon-shaped lamp.

Sometimes I’d see her reading it at night when I came to tuck her in.

One evening, after our dancing, she asked me something that stayed with me for the rest of my life.

We were in the kitchen. The music had ended. She was standing in front of me, still holding my hands, a little out of breath.

“Margaret,” she said. “Can families stay together forever?”

I looked down at her.

“Sometimes they can, sweetheart,” I said.

“Can we?” she said.

I pulled her against me. I held her tight.

I didn’t know what to say. I knew what Joanne had told us. The goal of foster care is reunification. I knew we weren’t supposed to make promises.

But I held her, and I felt her heart beating against my stomach, and I couldn’t make myself say the true thing.

“I hope so,” I said into her hair.

Unfortunately, hope wasn’t enough.

Eleven months after Ivy came to live with us, our caseworker called.

It was a Wednesday morning in January. I was at the studio, in my office, eating a cinnamon roll from the bakery next door and doing the schedule for the spring recital.

Joanne Pruitt’s name came up on my phone.

“Margaret,” she said. “We’ve located Ivy’s relatives.”

I put down the cinnamon roll.

“What does that mean?”

“Her mother’s sister,” Joanne said. “Rhonda. She lives in Indiana. Near Fort Wayne. She didn’t know Ivy was in care until a few months ago. She’s been going through the approval process since October.”

I couldn’t breathe.

“And?”

“And she’s been approved,” Joanne said. “She wants to take her. Family placement.”

“She’s happy here,” I said. My voice was shaking. “Joanne. She’s happy here. She’s doing well in school. She’s dancing. She’s… surely that matters?”

There was a long pause on the line.

“It does, Margaret,” Joanne said gently. “It matters a lot. I know how much you love her. I see it. Everybody sees it.” She sighed. “But the decision has been made. The court has approved the placement. Family comes first. That’s the law. That’s always been the goal. I told you that, on the first day.”

“I know you did.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Can we stay in contact?” I said. “After? Can we visit? Write? Call?”

“We’ll discuss that with her aunt,” Joanne said. “I’ll do everything I can.”

I sat in my little office at the studio for a long time after I hung up.

Through the window in my office door, I could see my afternoon class coming in. Little girls in pink tights. Seven and eight years old. Laughing. Pulling on their ballet shoes.

One of them looked a lot like Ivy.

I couldn’t stop looking at her.

When we told Ivy, she was sitting at the kitchen table doing her homework. Spelling words.

Daniel and I sat down on either side of her. I told her. As gently as I could. That her Aunt Rhonda had been found. That Aunt Rhonda wanted her to come live with her in Indiana. That Aunt Rhonda was her family.

Ivy didn’t say anything.

She just stared at the kitchen table. At her spelling worksheet. Her pencil was still in her hand.

After a long time, she said one word.

“When?”

“Next Friday,” Daniel said. His voice was rough.

Ivy nodded.

She put her pencil down. She got up from the table. She went upstairs to her room.

She didn’t slam the door. That was the worst part. She just closed it. Very quietly.

That night, I went up to tuck her in.

The blue duffel bag was out of the closet again. It was on the floor next to her bed.

Her clothes were back in it. Folded. Neatly. Every single thing.

Her shoes were lined up next to it.

Ready.

Two evenings before she left, I found her sitting on the floor of her room, next to the duffel bag. Just sitting there. Not doing anything. Staring at it.

I sat down on the floor next to her.

She didn’t look at me.

“Are you sending me away,” she said very quietly, “because I was bad?”

My heart nearly stopped.

“No, sweetheart,” I said. “No. No.”

“Because I yelled at Daniel? About the TV?”

“No.”

“Because I said I hated this house?”

“Ivy, no.”

“Because I broke that blue cup?”

It was the cup with the little white flowers on it. My grandmother’s. Ivy had knocked it off the counter in October, dancing. It had shattered into about a hundred pieces. She’d cried for an hour. I’d hugged her and told her it didn’t matter. It was just a cup.

“Absolutely not,” I said. “Never. That cup doesn’t matter. It never mattered.”

Her eyes filled with tears.

“Then why can’t I stay?” she said.

I pulled her into my arms. Right there on the floor. Next to the duffel bag.

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” I said. “Do you hear me? Nothing. Not one single thing. You’re the best thing that ever happened to this house.”

“But I don’t want another house,” she said into my shoulder. Her voice was muffled. “I don’t want to go to Indiana. I don’t even know Aunt Rhonda. I met her one time when I was four.”

“I know, sweetheart.”

“I want this one,” she said. “I want this house.”

I couldn’t answer her.

I couldn’t say anything without crying, and I didn’t want to cry in front of her. I didn’t want her last memory of this house to be me falling apart.

So I just held her.

I held her until she fell asleep against me. Then Daniel came and lifted her into her bed. And I sat on the floor of the yellow room until three in the morning.

On her last evening, after dinner, Ivy came into the kitchen.

She stood by the counter, the way she always did.

“Music time?” she said.

“No homework tonight,” I said.

“Can we do our song?”

I turned on the radio. I found the old CD in the cabinet, the Glenn Miller one, and put it in the player.

Moonlight Serenade.

We danced slowly in the kitchen. She stood on my feet, the way she used to when she first started, even though she didn’t need to anymore. Even though she was too big for it now. I held her hands and moved us around the kitchen. Slowly. Back and forth.

Daniel stood in the doorway and watched. He didn’t say anything.

“Promise you won’t forget it,” Ivy whispered. “Our song.”

“I promise,” I said.

“And you won’t forget me?”

“Never,” I said. “Never, ever, ever.”

The next morning, Daniel carried her duffel bag out to Joanne’s car.

Ivy came down the front steps in her pink coat. It fit her now. She’d grown into it. The sleeves weren’t rolled up anymore.

She hugged Daniel first. For a long time. He picked her up off the ground. I saw his face over her shoulder. He was crying. I’d only seen Daniel cry twice before, in eighteen years of marriage.

Then she came to me.

She wrapped both arms around my waist and held on. Very tight.

“I love you,” I whispered into her hair.

“I love you too,” she said.

Then she let go.

She got into the back seat of Joanne’s car. Joanne closed the door.

Ivy looked at us through the window. She put her hand flat on the glass.

Then the car pulled away, down our street, and turned the corner.

And she was gone.

For the first few months, we got updates.

Joanne would call. Or Aunt Rhonda would send an email. Short ones. Ivy is settling in. Ivy started at her new school. Ivy has a cold but she’s fine.

Once, in April, a letter came. In an envelope with an Indiana postmark. Inside was a drawing. Crayon. Two people dancing in a kitchen. One tall, one small. Music notes floating all around them.

At the bottom, in Ivy’s handwriting: I didnt forget the song. Did you?

I wrote back that same night. Three pages. I told her I’d never forget it. I told her about the studio. About Gus the retired mailman finally learning the foxtrot. I put in a picture of Daniel trying to do the box step, with his tongue sticking out.

I never heard back.

The updates got shorter.

Then they stopped.

I called Joanne. She called Rhonda. Rhonda didn’t call back. Joanne said that once a child’s placement with family was finalized, there wasn’t much she could do. Rhonda wasn’t required to stay in contact. It was her choice.

I wrote letters. Six of them. To the address in Fort Wayne.

The last two came back. RETURN TO SENDER. MOVED. NO FORWARDING ADDRESS.

Eventually, we lost all contact with Ivy.

As the years passed, Daniel and I stopped talking about her. Not because we forgot. Because we couldn’t stand it.

The yellow room upstairs stayed yellow. We didn’t take down the moon lamp. We didn’t take the stuffed rabbit off the pillow. We just closed the door again.

We stopped hoping we’d ever hear from her again.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Because something else happened, after she left. Something I didn’t understand for a very long time.

For months, I kept teaching at my studio.

I went in every day. I unlocked the door at nine in the morning. I turned on the lights and the music. I taught my classes.

But every time an eight-year-old girl walked through that door, my heart jumped.

Every single time.

A little girl with short dark hair. A little girl in a pink coat. A little girl who stood in the back row and copied every move. My heart would jump, and I’d think, Ivy? And then she’d turn around, and it would be somebody else.

One afternoon, about a year after Ivy left, I was teaching a beginners’ class. Seven- and eight-year-olds.

A little girl named Sophie came up to me after class. She had red hair and freckles and a missing front tooth.

“Mrs. Margaret,” she said. “Can you teach me how to do a spin? A real one?”

“Of course, sweetheart,” I said. “Come here. Put your arms like this.”

She looked up at me with big eyes.

“What if I fall?” she asked.

I froze.

I stood there in the middle of my studio with my arms in the air.

What if I fall?

I’ll fall!

I’ve got you.

Ivy had asked me those exact words. In our kitchen. The very first night.

“Mrs. Margaret?” Sophie said. “Are you okay?”

I couldn’t answer.

I forced a smile. I turned around and found another instructor, a young woman named Kayla who’d been teaching for me for two years.

“Could you finish with Sophie?” I said. “I just need a minute.”

I went into my office and closed the door and sat down on the floor with my back against it.

After that, even walking into the studio got hard.

I’d unlock the front door in the morning, and I’d have to stand there for a minute with my hand on the doorknob before I could make myself go in.

I’d hear the music and feel sick.

“Margaret?” Kayla would say, standing in my office doorway. “Are you listening? I asked about the spring recital costumes.”

“Sorry,” I’d say. “What did you say?”

I started canceling performances. The holiday show. The spring showcase. I told the parents it was budget problems.

I started handing my classes to other instructors. First the little kids’ classes. Then all the classes.

I’d sit in my office and do paperwork while the music played on the other side of the wall. I’d close my eyes and listen to the sound of little feet on the wooden floor. And it would hurt so much I couldn’t breathe.