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she felt like this—so certain, so committed, so excited—tomorrow, she would contact Judge Waxman to tell her the answer wasyes.

THREE
    B ea and Lauren showed up the following Sunday morning to help her prepare for the upcoming inspection from Child Welfare Services. Bea was organized and unsentimental, ruthlessly jettisoning yellowed plastic containers, wire hangers, and the broken sewing machine Miranda had lugged in from the street a decade ago and never had fixed. Lauren, by virtue of the fact that she had kids, could be counted on to spot hazards that posed a threat to child safety. Courtney was ring shopping with the insufferable Harris but said she would try to stop by later. As Miranda had intuited, she was the only one who seemed less than enthusiastic about the plan. Miranda brushed her concerns away; Bea and Lauren were right there with her.
    By the end of the day, Miranda’s sunny top-floor apartment was in peak condition. Unworn clothes were bagged and prepped for the Goodwill truck, and weeded-out books forthe library. Clutter and old papers had been tossed, filed, or recycled. And the place was squeaky clean, from top to bottom, inside and out. When Miranda had tried to shove some of her knitting supplies into a closet—everyone at
Domestic Goddess
, even Martin, had taken a knitting pledge—Bea had nixed the idea. “They’re going to look in the closets,” she said. “And in the medicine chest, kitchen cabinets—everywhere.”
    â€œDoes that mean I have to give up knitting?” Miranda said. She had hardly gotten started.
    â€œNo. We just have to turn your stuff”—she gestured to the skeins of yarn—“into decor.” To that end, she repurposed a basket Miranda had been planning to dump and artfully arranged the yarn into a display of pleasing textures and colors. The needles she gave to Miranda. “High up for these. Top shelf.”
    â€œBut it makes more sense to keep them with the yarn.”
    â€œAre you kidding?” Lauren said. “She’s right—knitting needles could be
lethal
weapons. Get them out of sight. Now.”
    Miranda meekly complied. Then she ordered pizza and opened a bottle of wine while they waited for it to arrive. Glass in hand, she looked around at her reconfigured apartment. The desk had been moved into the living room; she’d been persuaded to part with a poorly made bookcase, as well as many of the books in it, to make more room. “But not these; these are special.” Miranda stood protectively in front of a pile she’d saved from the discards.
    â€œThey look like kids’ books anyway,” said Lauren.
    â€œThey are.” Miranda picked up a copy of
The Poky Little Puppy
, which had been
published in 1942. “They’re all old, though. Some were mine when I was little; my mother had saved them. After she died, I couldn’t bring myself to get ridof them. And when I’d see an old book I liked at a sale or a flea market, I’d buy it. I didn’t really think of it as collecting until about five years in.”
    Lauren knelt in front of the pile. “
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The Velveteen Rabbit.
A Child’s Book of Fairy Tales
—look at these illustrations; they’re wonderful.”
    â€œThose are by Arthur Rackham. He’s one of my favorites.”
    â€œYou’ll have such fun reading these together.” Bea was looking at
Noël for
Jeanne-Marie
; one of the central characters was a sheep named Patapon. “She’ll have a ready-made library when she gets here.”
    â€œYou mean
if
she gets here.” Miranda sneezed; some of those books hadn’t been touched in a long while and were dusty. “It’s not a sure thing yet.” She reached for a cloth and dusted off Joan Walsh Anglund’s
A Child’s Year
. This was one of the books she had owned and loved; her name, written in red crayon,