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never by invitation. She seems to have a way of seeping in, especially in the summer, when she and Elizabeth bump into each other outside more often.
    Elizabeth opens the curtains in the living room and in the small dining room, then goes down the hall to shut the doors to her bedroom and the office. When she returns to the kitchen, she finds that Hannah has spilled grape juice all over herself, her pink and white sunsuit, and the white ceramic tile floor. A river of purple is running across the red Formica tabletop and has soaked the pile of mail she just picked up from the post office.
    “Oops,” Hannah says guiltily when Elizabeth comes in and sees the mess.
    “It’s okay,” she tells the child.
    She picks up the mail, which she has yet to examine, and sticks it into one half of the double stainless steel sink. Then she grabs a pile of wet paper towels and cleans the floor and Hannah’s sticky hands and face.
    “Yucky,” Hannah comments, then adds, “Poopie.”
    Remembering what Pamela said, Elizabeth ignores that. She surveys the purple-streaked sunsuit and says, “You know what? If we don’t get that into the washing machine, it’s going to stain really badly. Will you let me take it off you?”
    Hannah nods, looking bored.
    Elizabeth wrestles her out of the sunsuit and leads her, clad only in her training pants, into the living room. “Do you want to sit here and watch television while I go down and put your outfit into the laundry?”
    “TV,” Hannah agrees, climbing onto the couch.
    Elizabeth turns it on, finding a late-afternoon cartoon show. “Here you go, sweetie. Is this good?”
    “Good.”
    Elizabeth smiles and leaves Hannah in the living room, thinking that as much as she dislikes Pamela’s taking advantage of her, it’s kind of nice to have a little child around the house.
    You’ll never have one of your own , she reminds herself. You’ll be alone for the rest of your life .
    Sighing, she unlocks the door in the hallway that leads down to the basement. It’s unfinished, and filled with cobwebs and junk left behind by the woman who lived there before and died in the house.
    Elizabeth flicks on the light and makes her way gingerly down the steep steps, ducking to avoid a shred of spiderweb dangling near the bottom of the stairs. She puts the sunsuit into the washer that sits in one corner, near an old, deep laundry sink.
    “Cold, delicate,” she murmurs aloud as she sets the controls.
    She turns to go back up to the kitchen and jumps, gasping at the sight of someone moving in the shadows under the stairs.
    She opens her mouth to scream, men realizes that it’s nothing.
    Just an old wooden coat stand, some boxes, and her imagination.
    But her heart is still pounding as she hurries back upstairs.
    “W ere you a good girl for Aunt Liz?” Pamela asks when she returns an hour later and scoops a squirmy Hannah off the couch.
    “She sure was,” Elizabeth lies, wishing she could tell Pamela about how she’d found Hannah—whose “poopie” comment was apparently meant to be a warning—smelling to high heaven and shredding the People magazine when she’d come back up from doing the laundry. She could also mention how Hannah had, in one swift movement, shattered her favorite crystal candy dish that had been sitting on the coffee table.
    She wished, too, that she knew how to tell Pamela she didn’t want to be called “aunt” or “Liz.”
    “What happened to her clothes?” Pamela balances Hannah on her hip and steadies the crying baby in his carrier. “Did she throw up on them or something?”
    “Oh, I almost forgot.” Elizabeth tells her about the grape juice incident. “I forgot to get the sunsuit out of the washing machine and put it into the dryer.” More like, she hadn’t been able to leave the little monster alone for another minute because she’d undoubtedly destroy the house. “Let me run down and get it for you now, and you can—”
    “Actually, I’m kind of in a