She shook her head.
“It’s near Seattle,” Reverend Tanner said, his mention of it significant to June but not in the way he was thinking.
“You know Seattle?” Mr. Stolz asked her. “That’s way too big a town for me.”
“We’re close enough, I suppose,” Mrs. Stolz added, if perhaps somewhat confused herself. “It’s a half-day’s car ride.”
June said, “I will go there soon.”
“You seem quite certain of that.”
“I am.”
“Well, I guess why shouldn’t you be?” Mrs. Stolz said, gently squeezing her palm. “You’re a very strong girl, aren’t you?”
June was about to tell her it didn’t matter what she was but Reverend Tanner answered for her, pronouncing with a strange, surprising tone of pride that she was “as strong as they come,” and it was then that Mr. Stolz stepped forward and aimed his tiny camera right at her and quickly clicked the shutter. He had taken pictures of only a few other children. June’s instinct was to put her hand over the lens, but Reverend Tanner immediately introduced the boy behind her and Mrs. Stolz tightly pressed her hand in farewell as one of the aunties ushered June away.
By the time the Stolzes got around to meeting the last child in line June was back to the girls’ bunk room, where she changed out of her good blouse and skirt. She had first gone straight to the Tanners’ cottage, tapping on the front door and then going around to the back, but a new dark brown window shade had been put up, covering the glass right to either edge of the frame. There was no answer at the rear door, either. Despite her resolve not to bother her, she needed now to see Sylvie right away, not to interrogate her or make her promise anything but simply to stand before her and read her eyes, her face. Did she know what the old couple was here for? Was that why she had not come out? Was she hoping that someone like them would take her? Relieve her of this burden?
“May we come in?” a voice said. It was Mrs. Stolz, her head poking in the doorway of the bunk room. When she saw that June was dressed she entered, her husband at her side. They seemed somehow shorter and even plumper now that they were standing up: these two smiling folk dolls, their cheeks round and pink. He was dressed in a denim work shirt and rough wool trousers and scuffed-up shoes, and though they seemed to her as impossibly rich as all the other civilian Americans she had ever seen, she understood now that they were probably country people, small-town citizens like those in the village where she had grown up. But rather than feeling enmity toward them for how those villagers had treated her mother and father with suspicion and resentment and ultimately callousness and cruelty, instead a tide of longing unexpectedly washed over her, this longing for the days before her father yielded to his demons and retreated to his study, longing for her mother’s proud face, longing finally for her two brothers and two sisters who could not even stand here as she was in an ugly, too-large pair of trousers, and all at once June was not mature or resolute or strong in the least but a fallen pile of child, sobbing and shaking.
“Oh my dear, oh my dear, dear,” Mrs. Stolz cooed, embracing June and pressing her to her ample breast as they sat on the cot. “It’ll be fine now.”
“Easy there,” her husband said, leaning over them as he patted June on the back. “You have a family again. We’re going to take six of you. We have plane tickets for six.”
“For goodness’ sake, John, we haven’t even asked her yet!” she said to him, shushing him. And then to June: “Would you like to come live with us, sweetheart? As my eager husband said, you’ll have sisters and brothers. We’ll have plenty of room and plenty to eat. We have four of our own but they’re pretty much grown up. We have a big farmhouse and barns and surrounding us are all the fir trees you will ever want to see.”
“Not like here.”
“John, please!”
“You should know we have animals, too,” he went on anyway, as though he had practiced his pitch and didn’t wish to lose the chance. “Horses and milking cows and chickens, not to mention dogs and cats. Do you like animals? Do you want to have a pet?”
She didn’t know whether she did want one or not, but she nodded, weakly, for it was all she could manage, the rest of her gone slack in Mrs. Stolz’s arms. June had no feeling in her limbs. And if she felt no love or kinship yet, it was enough to be absorbed into this kind stranger woman’s flesh, to lose herself and still be alive, to shed the tyranny of this body, always aching and yearning, always prickly and too aware. Even more than death, she was sure, she hated this enduring. This awful striving that was not truly living. But maybe it was ending now…
“You don’t have to tell us right this minute,” Mrs. Stolz said. “We’ll be staying here for a couple more hours. We’re going to go talk to some other children now, but we made sure to see you first.”
“Nobody chose me before.”
“We’re all the more fortunate, then! We’re lucky. There must be a reason. You have a spirit in you that is wondrous, anyone can see it, and you’re going to be happy in our home.”
“You’ll be the oldest,” her husband said. “You can help with translating, among other things. There’ll be some chores, naturally, just like the jobs Reverend Tanner says all of you do around here.”
“You don’t have to help with anything you don’t want to,” Mrs. Stolz said, glaring at her husband. “I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through already. What you’ve had to live through and see. But I can promise that you’ll be safe and sound with us. You’ll always have our love and support. And God’s love, above all. You’re going to begin a whole new joyous life.”
She hugged June closer, and despite a seam of unease, June shut her eyes, bracing the woman tightly in return, while Mr. Stolz took a step back to snap another picture, this time of the two of them; but he found he had run out of film. While he turned the crank to wind in the roll, Mrs. Stolz stroked at June’s temple, her hair.
“What a lovely thing,” she said, touching the tortoiseshell clasp. “You know, it’s the first thing I noticed when I saw you. I thought it made you look so beautiful and graceful. Just like a fluttering butterfly.”
No sooner had Mrs. Stolz spoken the words than June tried to break away from her. The woman, not understanding, clutched at her again, holding on, but June warded her off with a forearm that pressed stiffly enough against her clavicle that the woman gave out a panicked cry: “Oh no, what’s wrong? Please!”
Her husband took hold of June, more in confusion than anger, but she rose and stamped on his foot, causing him to drop the camera, the back panel springing open and exposing the stretched film. June heard him curse loudly as she ran away, Mrs. Stolz weeping beside him as she sat crumpled on the bunk room floor. She ran as fast as she could, up into the bare hills, climbing until she started to descend, the sun following her down in the next valley until it grew dark.
When she finally returned, just before lights-out, the Stolzes were long gone. No one knew the Stolzes had come to see her, and she had only missed dinner, which she sometimes did before, staying in with Sylvie Tanner. The ten-year-old girl in the next bunk, So-Hyun, told June that they had adopted six of the children, just as they said they would, three girls and three boys, of varying ages. They were in Seoul now, and in two days they would be leaving the country. They didn’t have room for the children’s footlockers and so they’d left them behind, each child taking only one sentimental object, like a doll or book or blanket; the rest of their things were distributed to the others. So-Hyun had gotten a sweater, which she showed to June, a red wool one that was of good quality but was pocked with several moth holes in the chest and back.