Clara didn’t speak for a long time.
That was how I knew it had landed properly. Clara, who had an instinct for filling silences, who could talk through almost anything including her own discomfort, sat with both hands on the wheel and said absolutely nothing for nearly two full minutes. The engine idled. A delivery truck rumbled past on Asylum Avenue and the car shuddered slightly in its wake.
“Placed,” she said finally. “As in, deliberately. As in, someone chose you specifically.”
“As in, someone needed a child in that house and arranged for one to be there.”
She exhaled slowly. “To cover for Lillian being gone.”
“Yes.”
“So when they say they adopted you because they always wanted more children—”
“They needed a placeholder,” I said. “Something to fill the shape Lillian left so that
