Mama and Papa looked troubled, but they couldn’t turn down such a generous offer. I was heartbroken the day Lan started lessons. He was the only person in the world who didn’t think there was something wrong with me, and now he was going to be shut away from me for hours every day. He whispered a promise to come every night and teach me what he’d learned, but that still didn’t ease the hurt.

Mama found me curled up in a sniveling ball, just down the hall from the closed door of the lesson room. “Why, Eff! What are you doing?” she began, and then she saw my face and she got right down on the floor beside me and gathered me in her arms. “Honey, what’s the matter?”

I just shook my head. I didn’t want her to think I grudged Lan his lessons. He was special, everybody said, the same way I was wicked. He deserved those lessons—but, oh, I wanted him to be with me! Or at least close enough to call or run to when the others started in.

Even though I didn’t say anything, I think Mama understood. She sat and stroked my hair for a while, and then she brought me to the kitchen and we made sugar cookies together. She didn’t scold me when I spilled the milk because I was in such a hurry to show I could help. She just studied me with a thoughtful expression.

I got a lot more of those looks over the next month or so. I didn’t know what to make of them. Then, about a month after Lan started his lessons, the two of us were doing his exercises in the attic one evening when Allie came puffing up the stairs. She was three years older than we were, and her blue eyes were snapping with excitement. “There you are,” she said to me. “They want you in the sitting room.”