I'll Let You Go by Bruce Wagner

at Lucy again.
    â€œThis,” said Tull, plucking a flower from a slim celadon vase, “is an orchid.” She held the stem in her hand and stared.
    â€œA
hybrid
,” said the cousin.
    A large white petal stood up like a bishop’s miter; beneath it, a pouch in the shape of the chin of a cartoon Mountie—or the chin of the boy called Edward.
    Bisecting both was a leafy mustache, speckled with polka dots.
    The invalid proffered a discrete flower, with movie-star-red lips. “This one
is
from South Africa—like your name,” he said. “It grows on waterfalls.”
    â€œYou know,” said Lucy, “you should really come to Four Winds and visit.” She turned to the others. “Don’t you think?”
    â€œIt’d be great!” said Boulder, rather affectlessly.
    â€œWe’re doing a homeless project,” she continued while Tull glared. “We’re building sidewalk shelters—I mean, that’s not
why
you should visit. It’s just that if you’ve ever had that
experience
or know someone who
has
 … We’re using really strong, light materials—space-age. And laptops to design them.”
    â€œ
We
were homeless once,” said Boulder.
    â€œThe earthquake doesn’t count.”
    â€œIt killed our beach house.”
    â€œYou had
two
beach houses.”
    â€œIt killed them
both
.”
    â€œShe stayed in a hotel for three months.”
    â€œA hotel is not a home.”
    â€œYou stayed at Shutters.”
    â€œThat’s a beach hotel,” said Tull for Amaryllis’s edification—then hated himself some more.
    â€œThat’s where I live,” chimed the orphan, then frowned. Again, she wished she hadn’t spoken. “A motel. The St. George—with my mother and brother and sister.”
    â€œA motel! The St. George?” queried Lucy. “I haven’t heard of it. Now, is that near the Bonaventure or the Biltmore? Is it four- or five-star?”
    Before the torture could continue, there was a sharp rap at the door and Amaryllis nearly jumped from her skin. The arrival of Mr. Hookstratten—Four Winds teacher of the year, private tutor to moguls and occasional on-set educator—was not unexpected, but the children(all but Edward, of course) scurried about as if they’d been up to great mischief. The balding scholar beamed from the driver’s side, hand of a raised arm gripping the Mauck wing, blinking in through bulgy, light-sensitive eyes. Boulder and Lucy rushed forward, trying to distract from the sight of Tull, who shadowed the orphan girl as best he could while she seized her backpack and made her way to the passenger-side portal whence she had come—clinging all along to the walls like a tiny cat burglar.
    â€œAnd who’s this?” Mr. Hookstratten cheerily inquired. Boulder said she was the daughter of a grip; Lucy said she was part of “the research project”; Tull said she had helped bring the food trays—all in unison, while Amaryllis quit the luxuriant specialty vehicle, vanishing into the brightness of day.
    W hen she got to the St. George, there were patrol cars and sedans with revolving red lights stuck on khaki-colored roofs. The babies were already in one of the backseats, with a policewoman fussing over them; the froggy front-office Korean pointed at Amaryllis and the men set after her. She had never run like that before, and prayed to Edith Stein no one would catch her.
    She would
have
to find Topsy now. He’d give her shelter, and she would finally tell him everything.

CHAPTER 9
Squatters
    F ive in the morning. Will’m stood among ovens and large iron machines, unfurling canvas stored in a hard long tube. The hawk-nosed baker, Gilles Mott, held the bird-and-berry scene (the very same depicted in the “Cadillac” ’s mural) carefully in flour-dusted hands, an auctioneer apprizing maps of a medieval