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  Julie shrugged, trying to steel herself against inevitable disappointment, but as she stood up, she couldn’t quite douse the flare of hope in her heart. “Don’t count on that Dr. Wilmer.”

  Dr. Wilmer smiled softly. “I’m counting on you. You’re an extremely intelligent and intuitive girl who’ll know a good thing when she finds it.”

  “You must be really good at your job,” Julie said with a sigh that was part hope, part dread of the future. “You almost make me believe all that stuff.”

  “I am extremely good at my job,” Dr. Wilmer agreed. “And it was very intelligent and intuitive of you to realize that.” Smiling, she touched Julie’s chin and said with gentle solemnity, “Will you write to me once in a while and let me know how you’re doing?”

  “Sure,” Julie said with another shrug.

  “The Mathisons don’t care what you’ve done in the past—they trust you to be honest with them from now on. Will you be willing to forget the past, too, and give them a chance to help you become the wonderful person you can be?”

  All the unprecedented flattery wrung a self-conscious giggle from Julie who rolled her eyes. “Yep. Sure thing.”

  Refusing to let Julie dismiss the importance of her new future, Theresa continued somberly, “Think of it, Julie. Mary Mathison has always wanted a daughter, but you’re the only little girl she’s ever invited to come live with her. As of this moment, you get to start all over with a clean slate and your own family. You’re all shiny and brand new, just like you were as a baby. Do you understand?”

  Julie opened her mouth to say she did, but she seemed to have a funny lump in her throat, so she nodded instead.

  Theresa Wilmer gazed into the huge blue eyes looking back at her from that enchanting gamin face, and she felt a constriction in her own throat as she reached out and brushed her fingers through Julie’s tousled brown curls. “Maybe someday you’ll decide to let your hair grow,” she murmured, smiling. “It’s going to be beautiful and thick.”

  Julie found her voice at last and her forehead furrowed into a worried frown. “The lady—Mrs. Mathison, I mean— you don’t think she’ll try to curl it and put ribbons in it or anything dopey like that, do you?”

  “Not unless you want to wear it that way.”

  Theresa’s sentimental mood lingered as she watched Julie leave. Noticing that she’d left the office door slightly ajar and knowing her receptionist was at lunch, Theresa straightened and walked over to close it herself. She was reaching for the knob when she saw Julie go out of her way to pass by the coffee table without actually stopping and then step out of her way again in order to pass the receptionist’s vacant desk.

  Lying on the coffee table after she left was a large fistful of purloined candy. On the receptionist’s cleared desk, there was one red pencil and one ballpoint pen.

  A feeling of joy, pride, and accomplishment made Theresa’s voice husky as she whispered to the departed child, “You didn’t want anything to spoil your nice clean slate, did you, sweetheart? That’s my girl!”

  3

  THE SCHOOL BUS PULLED TO a stop in front of the cozy Victorian house that Julie had let herself think of as her home during the three months she’d lived with the Mathisons. “Here you are, Julie,” the kindly bus driver said, but as Julie stepped off the bus, none of her new friends called good-bye to her like they usually did. Their cold, suspicious silence compounded the static terror that was already making her stomach churn as she trudged up the snow-covered sidewalk. Money that had been collected from Julie’s class for the week’s lunches at school had been stolen from the teacher’s desk. All of the kids in her room had been questioned about the theft, but it was Julie who had stayed in at recess that day to put the finishing touches on her geography project. It was Julie who was the main suspect, not only because she’d had the perfect opportunity to steal the money, but also because she was the newcomer, the outsider, the kid from the big bad city, and since nothing like this had happened in her class before, she was already guilty in everyone’s eyes. This afternoon, while waiting outside the principal’s office, she’d heard Mr. Duncan tell his secretary that he was going to have to call Reverend and Mrs. Mathison and tell them about the stolen money. Obviously, Mr. Duncan had done so because Reverend Mathison’s car was in the driveway, and he was rarely home this early.

  When she reached the gate in the white picket fence that surrounded the yard, she stood there, looking at the house, her knees shaking so hard that they banged together at the thought of being banished from this place. The Mathisons had given her a room of her very own, with a canopy bed and a flowered bedspread, but she wasn’t going to miss all that nearly so much as she was going to miss the hugs. And the laughter. And their beautiful voices. Oh, they all had such soft, kind, laughing voices. Just thinking of never hearing James Mathison say “Good night, Julie. Don’t forget your prayers, honey,” made Julie long to fling herself into the snow and weep like a baby. And how would she go on living if she could never again hear Carl and Ted, who she already thought of as her very own big brothers, calling to her to play a game with them or go to the movies with them. Never again would she get to go to church with her new family and sit in the front pew with them and listen to Reverend Mathison talking gently about “the Lord” while the entire congregation listened in respectful silence to everything he said. She hadn’t liked that part at first; church services seemed to go on for days, not hours, and the pews were hard as rock, but then she’d started really listening to what Reverend Mathison said. After a couple of weeks, she’d almost started believing that there was really a kind, loving God who actually watched out for everybody, even trashy kids like Julie Smith. As she stood in the snow, Julie mumbled, “Please” to Reverend Mathison’s God, but she knew it was no use.

  She should have known all this was too good to last, Julie realized bitterly, and the tears she’d been fighting not to shed blurred her vision. For a moment, she allowed herself to hope that she’d merely be given a whipping instead of being sent back to Chicago, but she knew better than that. In the first place, her foster parents didn’t believe in whippings, but they did believe that lying and stealing were grievous offenses that were totally unacceptable to “the Lord” and to them. Julie had promised not to do either one and they’d trusted her completely.

  The strap of her new nylon book bag slipped off her left shoulder and the bag slid to the snow, but Julie was too miserable to care. Dragging it by the remaining strap, she walked with numb dread toward the house and up the porch steps.

  Chocolate chip cookies, Julie’s favorites, were cooling in trays on the kitchen counter as she closed the back door. Normally the delicious aroma of freshly baked cookies made Julie’s mouth water, today it made her feel like throwing up because Mary Mathison would never again make them especially for her. The kitchen was strangely deserted, and a glance into the living room confirmed that it, too, was empty, but she could hear her foster brothers’ voices coming from their bedroom down the hall. With shaking hands, Julie looped the strap of her book bag over one of the pegs beside the kitchen door, then she pulled off her quilted winter jacket, hung it there, and headed down the hall in the direction of the boys’ bedroom.

  Carl, her sixteen-year-old foster brother, saw her standing in their doorway and looped his arm around her shoulders. “Hi, Julie-Bob,” he teased, “What do you think of our new poster?” Ordinarily, Carl’s nickname for her made her smile; now it made her feel like bawling because she wouldn’t hear that again either. Ted, who was two years younger than Carl, grinned at her and pointed toward the poster of their latest movie idol, Zack Benedict. “What do you think, Julie, isn’t he great? I’m going to have a motorcycle just like Zack Benedict’s someday.”

  Julie glanced through tear-glazed eyes at the life-sized picture of a tall, broad-shouldered, unsmiling male who was standing beside a motorcycle, his arms crossed against a broad, deeply tanned chest with dark hair on it. “He’s the greatest,” she ag