"Oh, God," she said.
"Hello, Tammy," I said.
We went upstairs. The apartment was two rooms and a kitchen, very clean, cleaner than mine, with the clean of someone who scrubs when she can't sleep. There was a suitcase open on the couch, half packed. There was a box of Cheerios and a jar of peanut butter on the counter and not much else. On the refrigerator, under a magnet shaped like a strawberry, there was a drawing in crayon of a house with a crab apple tree in the yard, and a woman standing in front of it with red hair, which mine is not, it is brown, and a man with a green tank on wheels. I looked at it and Casey saw me look at it and went red and went into the bedroom and shut the door.
Tammy didn't sit down, so I didn't either. We stood in her kitchen like two people waiting for a bus.
"He came to find you," she said. It wasn't a question.
"Every day this week. After school. He sat at my counter."
"Did he eat?"
"He ate."
She put her hand over her eyes. "I didn't send him. I want you to know that. I would never—I told him about you, I told him the story, I didn't think he'd—he's nine. He's nine years old."
"I know you didn't send him."