She held it up and examined the creases to make sure it didn’t bear any stains. Lydia always had grubby hands. Katie couldn’t give a stained dress away. This one appeared pristine. Surprising. Nothing about Lydia had been pristine. She liked to play in the dirt and chase the cats and climb trees to play with the squirrels and the birds. A child who never sat still. Like Phoebe. Katie swallowed the lump in her throat and folded the dress in half and then again before she handed it to Emma, who added it to the scant pile of clothes. Emma smoothed the small stack of blue, green, and lilac dresses on the double bed squeezed in next to the crib where Sarah lay on her back batting her fat hands at a plastic pig that had belonged to Elam instead of napping as she should be. “Are you sure you don’t want to keep these dresses? One day they’ll fit Sarah.” Katie turned back to the hooks, not wanting her friend to see her face. She leaned toward the open window, inhaling the scent of cut grass.
