Chapter 1

Scarecrow was the nickname they hung on him. The kids at Millhaven Group Home had landed on it for the new kid, 13-year-old Quinn Norman, with the honest cruelty that bored-gray kids have as a matter of course. Quinn was tall for thirteen, all sharp angles and jutting elbows, with a face that seemed to have been assembled in a hurry. His ears were a touch too large, a nose that had been broken more than once and blue-gray eyes set deep beneath a heavy brow.

He didn't fight it. Not because he couldn't; Quinn had learned early that he could absorb and dish out a remarkable amount of the world's punishment without giving in, but fighting meant trouble, and trouble meant being moved again. Quinn was very tired of being moved. Millhaven was his third placement in fourteen months.

So, he let them call him Scarecrow. Sticks and stones. What mattered was the line in the ground he'd drawn on his first day. Say what you like, but do not lay hands on me. He'd communicated this without a single word, simply through the quality of his eager stillness that promised he was ready. The kids understood. Nobody touched him, but that didn't mean they couldn't hang a name on him.

The weird tests had started on Monday and ran the entire week.

They weren't like regular school tests, which Quinn liked. Tests were a relief from classroom boredom.

These were different.

The man in a brown sweater who introduced himself as Dr. Reese had come to Millhaven with a briefcase full of booklets. One by one, the residents had been pulled from their regular schedule and sat down at the kitchen table across from him.

Quinn's session had lasted three times longer than anyone else's.

Dr. Reese had started with shapes and patterns, the kind of visual puzzles where you identify which piece completes the figure. Quinn moved through those quickly, almost impatiently. Then came written problems, then verbal ones, then something that wasn't quite either: ethical dilemmas described in careful, neutral language, questions about how systems worked and why they failed. Dr. Reese had stopped writing at some point and simply watched Quinn think, chin resting on his folded hands, expression unreadable.

"Do you enjoy these?" the doctor asked near the end.

Quinn had considered lying, the way he always considered lying when an adult got nosy, but an honest answer came out instead.

"Yeah," he said. "They're like locks, fun to unlock."

Dr. Reese had written something down then. He'd written lot of somethings.

Quinn had thought about it afterward, lying in the top bunk while Denny snored below him, staring at a water stain on the ceiling that looked vaguely like the continental United States. He finally figured that the tests were some kind of weird social worker program. He'd been in the system long enough to know they were always sorting you. Hogwarts sorting cap had nothing on the system and its army of social workers.

He'd forgotten them by the weekend.

Monday arrived sunny, hot for late September. Quinn had claimed the far corner of the yard after breakfast. It was his usual spot, tucked against the back fence where the property abutted the Jenkins' next door. They had an apple tree whose lowest branches dipped generously over the fence line. He sat with his back resting on the cedar fence, munching on an apple, reading a paperback about a bank robber named Parker.

Mrs. Vickers came out of the house and waved to him. She was the house supervisor, a squat, tired woman who had a permanent grouchy expression. She was on the back steps and wanted him to come in.

Quinn tucked the paperback into his pocket and crossed the yard.

"There's a man here to take you to an interview," Mrs. Vickers said, already half-turned back toward the door, already moving on to the next item on her list. She paused just long enough to add, in a lower voice, "If I was you, I'd be on my best behavior, young man."

The man was waiting in the front hallway.

He was big. Not just tall but bulky, like he was an ex-tackle for the 49ers. He was old, with close-cropped steel-gray hair and a weathered face. He wore a dark suit and white shirt with no tie. The man's eyes found Quinn the moment he came through the door and performed a rapid assessment -- top to bottom and back up. It made Quinn feel less like a person being looked at and more like a piece of furniture.

The man's lip curled. Just slightly. Just enough.

Quinn had been sneered at before. This one was no different like the expression of a somebody who had been promised something and found it a disappointment. The look lasted only a second before the man's face closed back into blankness, but Quinn had seen it, filed it, and felt the familiar cold settling in his stomach.

This was not a good sign.

"I'm taking you to see the Colonel," the man said. His voice was low and unhurried, the voice of someone who rarely needed to repeat himself. "You'll sit quietly in the car. You'll speak when spoken to. You'll be polite." He paused, and something shifted behind his eyes -- not anger exactly, but the shadow of it, the suggestion of what anger from this man might look like. "And if you do anything -- anything at all -- to upset him, I will make your life extremely uncomfortable. Do you understand me?"

Quinn nodded to show he understood.

The car was a black sedan parked at the curb, engine already running. Quinn slid into the back seat. He heard a click. He immediately grabbed for the door handle. Locked. He pulled twice before accepting the fact that it was locked and sat back and waited.

Think, he told himself. Think and wait for your chance.

The big man had settled into the driver's seat. He watched Quinn check the door in the rearview mirror.

"Settle down, kid," he said. "And remember what I said."

Quinn looked out the window. Millhaven's front yard slid past, then the street, then the neighborhood -- a geography he'd barely learned and was maybe already leaving. He realized he still held the apple core. In the end, he stuck it in his shirt pocket. He tried hard to stop the beginnings of panic. He wondered about the title the man had used.

The Colonel.

He watched the city scroll past the window and did what he had always done when the ground started shifting beneath him.

He started paying very close attention.

Chapter 2

The gate was black iron, set into a stone wall that ran the length of the block and then kept going. The man had been silent during the half-hour drive. Quinn spent the time watching the city change around him.

Then this place.

Quinn kept quiet. He was not a kid who said things just to fill silence. His face pressed against the window.

Huge. That was the first word that surfaced. The green grass lawn rolled out from the main house in every direction -- wide lawns so green they looked fake, flower beds full of bright flowers laid out with sharp precision, ancient oak trees casting broad shadows over stone pathways. There were hedges cut into clean geometric shapes, and further back, what looked like an orchard. There was even a fountain at the center of the main drive, sparkling as the water caught the light. Jennings Park down the street from Millhaven could have fit inside the front lawn ten times, with room left over.

The car pulled up to the red brick house, gravel crunching under the tires. The big man parked in front.

"Out."

The entrance hall had a floor made of cream-colored marble. It was cool inside and smelled of furniture polish. Quinn's ragged sneakers squeaked on the shiny floor.

A woman appeared from a side hallway with the quiet efficiency of someone who had been expecting them since before they arrived. She had pure white hair pinned back and a white apron over a dark dress. She carried herself with a self-contained dignity.

"Ms. O'Toole," Sullivan said, and there was respect in his voice. "This is the boy. Quinn Norman."

Ms. O'Toole looked at Quinn with clear gray eyes that were neither warm nor cold.

"You'll want to wash your hands first before you see the Colonel. I'll tell him you're here," she said, not unkindly. "Down the hall, second door."

Quinn used the toilet and washed his hands. He looked at himself in the mirror above the sink and thought he looked exactly like what he was: a scrawny thirteen-year-old in a secondhand flannel shirt. A kid who had no more business in this mansion than a fly. He dried his hands, tucked in his shirt, and went back to the hallway.

The big man was waiting. He handed Quinn a cold can of Coke without comment, which was so unexpected that Quinn almost said something. He took the Coke and followed him.

They passed through a sitting room and a second hallway lined with framed photographs--men in military uniforms, formal group portraits, a few landscape pictures of mountains and lakes. They came to a tall double door.

The big man rapped twice and they went in.

The library stopped Quinn cold.

He had been in libraries before--school ones, a public branch he'd visited a hundred times during the year he'd lived on the streets because they were warm and nobody bothered you if you were quiet. He thought he understood what a library was. He did not understand this one. The room had every single wall from floor to ceiling filled with books. Thousands of books. Tens of thousands maybe, their spines forming a kind of wallpaper, every color and width and age. And running along the shelves at the upper level, a wooden ladder mounted on a brass railing that curved all the way around the room, so that you could slide yourself to any point and climb to the top shelf, which was high off the ground.

Quinn stared at it for a beat too long.

"Move, boy," Sullivan said quietly at his shoulder.

A man in a blue suit was seated in a leather chair near the fireplace, reading, and he did not look up immediately.

Quinn stood and waited.

The Colonel, Quinn knew it, even before Sullivan murmured the introduction. He was old but not frail. His hair was gray and cut close, his face deeply lined and had a permanent tan in the way of men who have spent serious time in the weather. He held himself in the chair with a controlled composure. His suit was dark blue and a white shirt and striped tie. His hands on the book were steady and large-knuckled.

He finished his page and looked up.

His eyes were pale blue or gray; it was hard to say in the library light. They settled on Quinn with the same quality of assessment that Sullivan's had, but different in character. Sullivan had been disappointed. This man was checking for something else. Something Quinn didn't have a word for. He held himself still.

"Sit down, Quinn," the Colonel said.

His voice was measured and deep, neither loud nor soft, just clear.

Quinn sat like he always did in the presence of authority: back straight, butt resting on the first six inches of the chair. He still held the Coke. He wasn't sure what to do with it.

Sullivan stood off to the side. He felt him watching him.

The room smelled of old books, polish, and a faint scent of pipe tobacco.

"Tell me your full name," the Colonel said.

"Quinn Arthur Norman."

"Age."

"Thirteen. Fourteen in March."

"And how long have you been in the state's care?"

Quinn looked at him steadily. "Since I was six."

The Colonel's expression didn't change, but something behind it shifted slightly. He leaned forward a degree and set his book on the side table.

"Tell me about the placements," he said. "All of them. In order, if you can manage it."

Quinn could manage it. He had a good memory. He went through them: eight places--group homes and foster homes. The latest was Millhaven.

The Colonel listened. He didn't take notes, which Quinn noticed. Most adults in any kind of official capacity always took notes when you talked. The Colonel listened with focused, unhurried attention.

"And before the state's care," he said when Quinn finished, "your parents."

"Parent. My mother." Quinn paused, measuring. "She died when I was five."

"Your father."

"I don't remember him. He was not a factor."

That was the phrase a social worker named Delgado had used once. It had seemed to Quinn to be an accurate summary, so he had remembered it.

The Colonel nodded, just once. "The report I was given mentions a period during which you were not placed anywhere," he said. "When you were twelve. Approximately eleven months."

Quinn looked at him. The question was asked in a way that told you the man already knew the answer. He thought briefly about skirting the time on the streets. Then he thought about what Sullivan had said in the car. To his surprise, he found he didn't want to lie to this man.

"I ran away," Quinn said. "I ran from the Driscolls; it was a bad place. I lived on the streets for about eleven months."

"Where did you sleep?"

"Depends on the time of year. Park in summer. The public library on Mercer Street as much as I could. A parking building I found that had a maintenance room that wasn't always locked. A shelter on Clement Street sometimes, but not often. Shelters are bad places. I only slept there when it was so cold outside that I didn't have a choice."

"How did you eat?"

Quinn looked at the Coke can in his hand. "Various ways."

"I'd like to hear more."

The fire shifted, sending a brief pulse of warmth across the side of Quinn's face. He kept his eyes on the Colonel's.

"Panhandling. Dumpsters behind restaurants. I stole food from grocery stores. There was a bakery on Paulson Street that left their back delivery door unlocked on Tuesdays, and the bakers were okay; they didn't mind me taking the stale donuts and bread. They was going to be thrown out anyway." He paused. "And I played chess sometimes in the park for a buck a game. I usually won."

"You played chess for money."

"Yes. Adults hardly ever think a kid could beat them." Quinn allowed himself the very slight edge of something that wasn't quite a smile.

The Colonel studied him for a moment. Then something in his face changed, almost imperceptibly, but Quinn caught it. Not warmth exactly. Something more considered than warmth. Recognition, maybe.

"Were you afraid?" the Colonel asked. "During that time. On the streets."

Quinn thought about it seriously, the way the question deserved. The honest answer had some complexity to it.

"Yes, most all the time," he said. "But it was..." He searched for a word, "okay. Which I guess is weird."

"Why do you think it felt manageable?"

"Because I was the one deciding things," Quinn said. "I wasn't helpless. Even when I fu...made mistakes, I wasn't helpless."

He said it flat, without ego. It was simply the accurate thing. Accuracy in front of this man seemed right.

The Colonel sat back in his chair very slowly. He looked at Quinn for a long moment.

"Would you like to look at the books?" the Colonel asked.

Quinn blinked. It was the last thing he'd expected.

"Now?"

"We're not finished," the Colonel said. "But there's no reason you need to sit still. I saw how you reacted to my books. Go and look if you like. I want to watch you choose."

Quinn set his unopened Coke down on the wood floor, stood and walked to the shelves. He was aware of the old man's eyes on his back. He was aware that this was a test of some kind, though he couldn't yet see the shape of it. He did what he always did when he couldn't see the shape of a test.

He stopped thinking about it and started looking at the books. He so loved the smell of books.

He moved along the lower shelves slowly, reading spines, tilting his head sideways without self-consciousness. History, biography, military history, philosophy. There was a whole section of philosophy, the names familiar in some cases from the public library on Mercer Street where he'd spent so many hours. Mathematics, astronomy. Fiction. His hand trailed lightly along the spines, as if he was reading the titles through his fingertips. He stopped twice, pulled books out, read the first page, and put them back. He stopped a third time and read three pages before remembering where he was.

He put that one back too, reluctantly and turned around.

The Colonel was watching him carefully.

"Come and sit back down," he said.

Quinn came and sat.

"The book you read last," the Colonel said. "What was it?"

"The Count of Monte Cristo," Quinn said.

He considered Quinn for another long moment. "I'm going to ask you something and I want a direct answer."

"Okay."

"Do you want to continue as you have been? Group homes, placements, the machinery of the state. Another four years until you age out. That is one path. It is a legitimate path and I make no judgment of that choice." His pale eyes were level and serious. "Or do you want something different? Something that would ask a great deal more of you, but provide a great deal more in return."

Quinn looked at him. The walls of books. The ladder on its brass railing.

"What would different look like?" he asked cautiously.

The Colonel's expression didn't change.

"That," he said, "is exactly the right question."

Chapter 3

"Gunny," the Colonel said. "Take him back to Millhaven, if you please."

The big man opened the library and stood waiting for Quinn.

Quinn looked at the Colonel. He had a list of questions running in his head that had been building he got in the car. How did you know about me? What are the tests for? What did you mean by something different? What would be asked of me? But he was the opposite of impulsive, had learned not to blurt out questions.

But he hadn't expected the interview to end without him getting even one of them answered.

He got to his feet and walked to the door.

"Quinn," the Colonel said.

Quinn turned back to face the man.

The old man opened his book. "It may be that we'll see each other again."

It was not quite a promise and not quite nothing. And another question piled on his list.

He turned and followed Sullivan out of the library.

The Bentley smelled like leather and something faintly chemical. Quinn sat in the back seat. The door locked again. He watched the mansion recede through the rear window. The fountain caught the last of the afternoon sun and threw it in every direction. The iron gates swung open automatically as they approached, then closed behind them with a solidity that Quinn felt rather than heard.

Sullivan drove in silence.

He thought about the library. He thought about the ladder on the brass railing, the way it would feel to push off from one shelf and glide along the curved track to another, the room's full circumference available to you, every book on every wall within reach if you were willing to climb. He thought about books and the particular quality of them, leather bindings and gilt-edged pages.

He thought about what the Colonel had said. Something that would ask a great deal more of you, and provide a great deal more in return.

He pressed his forehead lightly against the cool glass of the window and watched the neighborhoods scroll past in reverse -- wealth retreating, familiarity advancing -- and permitted himself, very carefully, one small, dangerous act of wanting.

Then he put it away. Wanting things was for losers. It was never going to happen.

The group home came back into view with all its reliable ordinariness -- the slightly ragged front lawn, the paint on the window trim beginning to blister and peel. Sullivan pulled to the curb and unlocked the doors.

"Out," he said.

Quinn got out. He stood on the curb, and Sullivan's window came down two inches.

"You did alright," Sullivan said, in the tone of a man issuing a receipt rather than a compliment. The window went back up.

Quinn watched the Bentley pull away, then turned and went inside.

Chapter 4

The fight he'd been expecting happened on Wednesday. He was the new kid. A fight was looming to anyone paying attention, which Quinn always was as a matter of survival. Tex was sixteen, big and fat, solid mass and aggression. He had been pushing Quinn since the first week: shouldering him when he walked by into the food line, trying to trip him, calling him pussy. Nothing that could catch Mrs. Vickers' attention; just steady pushing.

Quinn watched him and waited and thought: soon.

Wednesday after lunch, Tex walked past the table where Quinn was reading and knocked the book out of his hands. A backhand flick, the slight pause in his stride before and after, a challenge deliberate and clear as words would have been. A small crowd of boys materialized in an instant, waiting to see what would happen.

Quinn picked up his book. He set it carefully on the table. He looked at Tex.

"Blood Alley," he said. "After dinner."

The alley they called Blood Alley was behind the building, narrow and half-paved, bounded by the back fence on one side and the property wall of the house behind them on the other. There was a dumpster at one end. The pavement was cracked and uneven. Not a lot of room to maneuver, which Quinn had been thinking about.

Everybody was there, arranged along the fence with the tense, bright-eyed interest of boys who knew this was coming and were glad it was finally happening.

Tex was already in the alley, jacket off, loose in the arms.

He was bigger than Quinn. This was simply a fact. Quinn had something else. He'd been in homes since he was six. He'd been in dozens of fights. He was calm--something Tex should have noted. The kids that Tex got away with bullying had always been smaller, scared, and in their heart of hearts, afraid of hitting him and making him madder.

Quinn had none of that fear. He knew he was going to get his ass kicked, but not before he hurt Tex as badly as he could. That was the only way to make a kid like Tex leave him alone.

Tex came at him fast, which Quinn had expected--an aggressive bully's first move is almost always a fast one, an attempt to overwhelm before the other person is ready. He moved sideways rather than back, a sharp, economical step that made Tex's grab close on empty air. Quinn hit him hard as he could in the ear with the heel of his right hand.

Tex made a sound and turned. Then they were into it properly.

Quinn took a fist in the ribs that drove the air out of him and saw stars for a second, long enough for Tex to get him by the front of the shirt and throw him against the fence. The wire bit into his back. He got a hand up in time to deflect the next punch and took it on the forearm instead of the face, which hurt but was better than the face. He drove his elbow up and caught Tex under the chin, which bought him a step of separation.

He breathed. He spat. He got himself set.

Tex came again, slower this time, the ear Quinn had hit showing red in the alley's dim light. They traded punches--Tex's were wild; Quinn's were aimed at his nose. He couldn't have said how long they fought. Time does a strange thing in fights, compressing and expanding simultaneously. The kids had gone silent in the concentrated way of people watching something more serious than they'd expected.

By the end of it, they were both on the ground--Quinn on his back with his lips split, Tex sitting against the fence with a bloody nose and his right eye beginning to close. Neither of them was going anywhere particularly.

Then Tex made a sound that might have been a laugh and got up and left.

Quinn, meanwhile, tasted blood and looked at the gray sky, thinking about nothing while his ribs made their complaints felt.

He hadn't won, exactly. He also hadn't lost, exactly. He had established that there was a cost to messing with him and that cost was pain.

Tex ignored him after that. The matter had been settled. There was nothing further to discuss.

The same thing had happened in every place Quinn had been.

Two weeks went by.

He was in the yard, the apple tree's generous branches giving him shade from the sun, when Mrs. Vickers appeared again on the back steps.

"Quinn," she said. "Come inside, please. Get your things together."

He looked at her. "Everything?"

"Everything."

He went upstairs. He didn't have much. His duffel bag took him four minutes to pack. He took the paperback from the mattress and put it in last. He took one look around the room, the water stain on the ceiling, Denny's comic book spread across the lower bunk, the window that had a crack in the lower left corner that nobody had fixed.

Another place gone.

The man, Sullivan, stood by the front door. He wore a different suit, a dark gray one. He looked at Quinn and his duffel bag with an expression that was a degree or two warmer than before.

"You set?" he said.

"What's happening?" Quinn asked.

"You're coming with me." Sullivan picked up Quinn's duffel bag from the floor. "The Colonel wants you at the house."

Quinn looked at Mrs. Vickers, who was standing in the doorway to her office with her arms folded and something in her expression he recognized after a moment as satisfaction. Not satisfaction at getting rid of him, he didn't think, but maybe the relief of a person who has seen a thing resolved better than they expected.

"Is there paperwork?" Quinn asked.

Mrs. Vickers smiled. "There's always paperwork, Quinn. But that's been handled. You just need to go with this man. Good luck."

Quinn nodded. He looked once down the hallway, toward the common room, where he could hear the television and the low background noise of the house going about its business.

He followed Sullivan out the front door and down the steps to the Bentley idling at the curb.

Sullivan opened the rear door and stood aside.

Quinn stopped at the door and looked up at the big man. "Will you tell me what's going on?"

Sullivan looked down at him for a long moment with his flat, serious face.

"You're going to a new home," he said. "The Colonel's home. Whether you stay there depends on you." He paused, as though weighing something. "You understand what I'm saying to you?"

Quinn looked at him steadily. "I understand."

"Then get in the car."

Quinn got in the car. This time, he didn't reach for the door handle.

He set his hands in his lap and watched Millhaven slide past the window and grow smaller and then disappear around a corner and was gone. He sat with the feeling he stood at the edge of something whose size he could not yet measure.

So he did what he always did.

Started paying very close attention.

Chapter 5

The first thing he did after Sullivan showed him to his new room was check the window.

Not obviously, but he'd learned a long time ago about the importance of having a way out. So he crossed the room with what he hoped looked like the casual curiosity of a kid exploring his new surroundings, stopped at the window seat as though he simply wanted to look out at the garden. While he was looking, he found the latch with his fingers, unlocked it and tested the window.

It moved smoothly. No paint sealing it shut, no swollen wood, no lock that required a key from the inside. He pressed the lower sash up another inch, felt the cool air come through, and pressed it back down.

Good. That was good.

He stood at the window for a moment and looked out at the gardens; he allowed himself thirty seconds of looking before he went back to explore the rest of the room.

There was a fancy bathroom attached to the room. He palmed a thick bar of Irish Spring soap still in its green box wrapper. He took it back to the bed and found the sock he'd packed at the very top of his duffel just for this purpose, a thick wool sock. He put the bar of soap in the sock, knotted the end, and slid it under the pillow, within reach if you knew it was there, invisible if you didn't.

He stood back and looked at the room.

It was the kind of room that would have been inconceivable to him two weeks ago. A little over a year ago he'd been sleeping in a dusty corner of the maintenance room of a parking garage with cardboard between him and the cold concrete floor.

The room was big, bigger than the living room at Millhaven. This one room was for only him and the things that had apparently been put here for him. The floor was dark wood, covered at the center by a rug that was thick enough to absorb the sound of footsteps, some pattern of deep blue and green that Quinn stood on and looked down at for a moment before continuing his assessment.

A desk and bookcases occupied the wall to his left -- a proper desk, solid wood, with a surface large enough to actually spread work across rather than the narrow shelf-desks that had been provided in various group home rooms over the years. On it sat a laptop computer, silver with the Apple logo on the lid catching the light. Quinn had used computers in school and at the library but had never imagined he'd be in a position to have one of his own. He stared at it the way other people might look at a rare diamond necklace.

Beside the desk, the bookshelf. Nearly empty with just the one book, The Count of Monte Cristo. The same volume he'd stood reading in the library. Someone had brought it up here and put it on the shelf for him, which made it both a gift and a statement. Quinn stood looking at it for longer than he looked at anything else in the room. He reached out and touched the spine without taking it down.

In the far corner was a walk-in closet, genuinely a walk-in, fitted with dark wooden hangers on a chrome rail that ran the full depth and breadth of the space, with shelves along the top. The hangers hung in a neat row, waiting. The smell of cedar wafted from a block hanging in the corner. Quinn laughed as he looked at the empty hangers and empty shelves. He had nothing to hang, his stuff would easily fit on two feet of a shelf.

This bathroom had a vanity with a mirror above it with lights, a big bathtub with claw feet, snow-white porcelain, and a separate shower with a glass door. Cream colored tile covered the floor.

He opened the drawer under the vanity. A toothbrush still in its packaging, toothpaste, deodorant, a comb. More Irish Spring soap in the shower, shampoo, a second bar on the ledge of the tub. Somebody had thought about what he would need and provided it without being asked, which struck Quinn as the most quietly remarkable thing about a room full of remarkable things.

Holy shit, this must be the way the rich kids live.

There was another closet in the bathroom, with shelves and on every shelf, towels. Thick white towels folded with precision, stacked three high, more towels than Quinn had used in the previous two years combined. He touched one, and the thickness of it was like something that belonged in a different category than the kind of towels that he knew. Below them, extra sheets and blankets, the dense kind that held warmth without doubling up.

He stood in the bathroom doorway and breathed for a moment.

There was a word for how he was starting to feel that he didn't ever use because it wasn't a word he allowed himself. That word was safe. Safe was the kind of word that, once you started believing it, made you dumb in ways that were hard to recover from.

Quinn went back into the bedroom and sat on the window seat. He looked out the window and thought about nothing in particular until he heard the knock.

Sullivan filled the doorway. He was holding a flat package in one hand and a folded white robe over his other arm.

"Tailor's coming," he said. "Personal shopper too. They'll be here in a half hour with clothes for you." He held out the package of boxer shorts and the robe. "Shower first. Wash well."

Quinn took them. Sullivan remained in the doorway.

"There a problem?" he asked. Not hostile. The question had the flat neutrality of a man who asks because he wants accurate information.

"No, sir," Quinn said. "Everything's fine."

Sullivan nodded and left.

The shower took a long time.

Not because Quinn was slow, but because the hot water didn't run out -- he kept waiting for the shower to do what every shower he'd ever taken: go from hot to lukewarm to icy cold. That didn't happen. He stood in the steam and let himself get warm all the way through, a thing he didn't have a lot of experience with. He scrubbed with the soap, washed his hair twice, and stood under the spray for a while doing nothing because the doing-nothing under this luxury felt so good.

When he came out, his reflection in the vanity mirror looked back at him, clearer than usual in the good light. The bruising under his eye from the fight in Blood Alley had faded to a greenish-yellow. In a week it would be gone entirely. The cut on his lip had closed and left a thin pale line that might become a scar or might not. He looked, he thought, like himself, which was neither a disappointment nor a relief.

He slipped on the new boxer shorts Sullivan had given him and then the robe. It was white and thick; it fell past his knees and the collar was high enough to cover his neck. He stood for a moment with his arms at his sides, feeling stupid in it, then went next door as he'd been told.

The room next door was smaller than his. It had a standing mirror in the corner and rolling racks of clothing that spanned most of two walls: shirts, trousers on hangers, and a section at the end with different kinds of coats. Two people stood beside it: a woman in her forties with her dark hair pulled back in a bun. She held a notepad and a pen. And a man about the same age with round glasses and a practiced professional manner. He had a measuring tape around his neck.

Sullivan leaned against the wall with his arms folded.

"This is the boy," Sullivan said.

The man looked Quinn up and down, not rudely, just professionally. "Drop the robe, if you please," he said; his accent sounded Eastern European.

Quinn dropped the robe.

The woman moved toward him with the measuring tape, and the man was half a second behind her. Then they both stopped.

The silence lasted three seconds. It felt longer.

Quinn knew what they were looking at. He'd stopped thinking about his back long ago. Fifteen scars ran horizontally and irregularly across the length of his back down to his butt, the marks of a wire whip that a woman named Miss Ella had used on him after Quinn had hit her brother-in-law with a baseball bat.

Quinn had been nine. After that, the scars had branded him in other places as a troublemaker.

The woman's hand had come up to her mouth.

The man had gone very still, his clipboard at his side, and stared.

"Get on with it, goddammit," Sullivan snapped.

Quinn's heart sank. It hadn't even been a whole day and he had already pissed off the big man. He'd forgotten the scars.

The woman and the man looked at each other. Something passed between them without words--an acknowledgment, an agreement to set the information aside and do the job, to be professional.

The man stepped forward and began to measure.

He was good at it, efficient and impersonal in a way that communicated respect. His hands were quick and sure, the tape going around shoulders, chest, waist, and inseam with the practiced speed of someone who has done these ten thousand times. He called the numbers, and the woman wrote them on her pad. Next, they moved to the racks and began pulling items and conferring in low voices.

Quinn stood in the standing mirror and looked at himself, trying not to think about the expression that had been on Sullivan's face.

Clothes were brought to him in sequence, and he put them on and was assessed, and minor adjustments were noted. An hour later, there was a pile on the bed in his room of things that were his. New things. Trousers that were brand new, not the jeans worn thin by someone else first. Shirts with all the buttons. A wool sweater in dark green that fit him across the shoulders as though it had been made for him, which, he supposed, it effectively had been. Two pairs of shoes. A pair of Nikes. Three belts. A winter coat. A sport jacket in dark navy that the woman had smoothed across his back with her hands and then stepped away from without saying anything.

His old stuff was gone.

Ms. O'Toole appeared in his doorway with the quiet authority of a person entering territory they are entitled to but for which they maintain a respectful knock. She looked at the pile of new clothing on the bed and at Quinn standing beside it, wearing the new trousers and a white shirt with the wool sweater.

"Watch," she said, gesturing to the bed.

Quinn watched.

She took the first sweatshirt from the pile and began to fold it. Her hands moved in precise angles, the shirt becoming a flat, exact rectangle in four motions.

"Watch," she said. "Then you'll do the next one."

Quinn watched. Then he did the next one. It was sloppy, and she unfolded it. He did it again, and it was less sloppy, and she unfolded it again without comment. He did it a third time until it met whatever interior standard she was measuring against.

They worked through the pile. She was exact. She made clear that hers was the standard to be adhered to without negotiation. When he folded something correctly, she moved to the next item without comment. When he didn't, she wordlessly waited for him to do it again, which was a way of teaching Quinn found efficient. No frustration, no praise -- just the work and its standard.

"In this life, with these people, your clothing is a tool," Ms. O'Toole said, at some point midway through the pile. Her Irish accent gave the words a particular gravity. "The Colonel has certain expectations of this household. You will learn to meet those standards."

She held up a folded t-shirt, examined it, and placed it in the chest of drawers next to the closet.

"Good quality clothing, well-maintained clothing communicates that you are a person who respects himself." She looked at Quinn with her clear gray eyes. "You are a person who pays attention. I have already seen this. So, this part should not be difficult for you."

Quinn looked at the shirt in his hands. He began to fold it.

"Like this?" he said.

Ms. O'Toole considered it. "Better," she said. "Again."

He did it again.

"Good," she said.

She stayed for an hour. By the end of it, the closet held clothing organized by type and then by color, the hangers spaced evenly on the chrome rail, the shoes on the floor below with their toes pointed out at a consistent angle, the sweaters folded on the shelf above. She showed him the linen closet and explained the rotation -- oldest towels to the front when clean ones come out of the wash, sheets changed on the same day each week, a system that maintained itself if you maintained the system.

"The Colonel's home runs on order," she said on her way out. She paused with one hand on the frame and looked around the room. Something in her expression suggested she was satisfied. "Order is a foundation; you must build your new life on it."

She left.

Quinn stood in the middle of the room and looked at the space that had been given to him -- the books, the window, the desk with the laptop on it, the closet that was no longer empty, the bathroom with its unreasonable towels. He looked at it and knew, in the practical, unsentimental way he looked at most things, that it soon would be taken away. That was the truth of his life. He reminded himself not to forget that.

But, he told himself; it hadn't been taken away yet.

He went to the window seat and looked out at the backyard fountain, lit from below now, the water catching the lights and throwing them in soft arcs across the pond. He sat with his knees drawn up and his back against the window frame. His hands found the sock with the soap in it and held it in his lap without embarrassment and without apology, because it was what it was, and the way of the world as he had learned it.

Then he reached over to the book on the shelf, opened it to page one, and began to read.