After all the positive notes she’d made the night before, Carrie found herself questioning whether she was truly cut out for this. Every child at the center seemed to be having a very bad day. Even the unflappable Julie and Lucy seemed to be at their wit’s end. And even at their worst, the children who passed through Carrie’s house on a regular basis had never been this out of control. Or maybe it was just that here, there were so many more of them, all needing attention and discipline at once. As Lucy tried to calm two sobbing children and Alicia took charge of three more who’d been throwing food at each other just seconds before, Julie and Carrie took the instigators of the trouble to Julie’s office for a supervised time-out. “I am so disappointed in you,” Julie said, looking into each little face as they sat across from her at her tiny desk with its overflowing piles of folders. Jaws wobbled and eyes filled with tears. Carrie knew they deserved Julie’s harsh words, but she felt so bad for the three of them.
