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1

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The sun was beginning to go down on the desert. The raw, seemingly dead earth was blooming into vibrant color with the last light. Standing on the doorstep of her house, a stucco shack in the reconstructed town of Mesa Verde, New Mexico, Colleen Esterhas studied the long road that stretched out across the desert from Mesa Verde to all places north. There wasn't a soul on it.

The last parent should have come and gone hours ago, when all the others had appeared for their brood. But the last parent had yet to show up.

She sighed, deeply troubled, and ambled back into the house and all the way through to the backyard. She was a large, motherly woman who kept her hair cut short and never wore anything but jeans. Fashion didn't pay in her business.

The backyard was a fenced-in playground on the hard-packed desert earth. There was a sandbox, a swingset, a much maligned Joshua tree that currently held a flock of "ornaments" inexpertly made from construction paper and glue, a few tricycles, and toy trucks of varying sizes. Maria Stamos, Colleen's only employee, was currently walking about the yard and picking the trucks up one by one. "Any sign of him?" Maria asked.

"Neither hide nor hair," Colleen said.

"He did say he'd be coming back for her, didn't he?"

"Actually, he didn't say much at all," Colleen said. "He just smiled, patted her on the head and gave me a wave goodbye. Didn't seem like he was all there, to tell you the truth." He hadn't been a local like most of the parents who used their daycare center. He had just swooped in in his weird amphibious vehicle and pushed the child at her, saying that he was in a hurry because something big had just landed. "Seemed a few bricks shy of a load, if you know what I mean," she added.

"I think it must run in the family," Maria answered.

"Where is she now?"

"Inside. I locked her in the activity room."

"Maria!"

"Well, I let her loose before, and you know what she did? She took apart the satellite communicator! She didn't have a screwdriver or anything, she just unscrewed all the parts with a pair of scissors and her teeth!" Maria was so worked up she actually dropped a few trucks. "She's like a little animal. The other kids don't seem to like her, either."

"Well, it looks like we might be stuck with her for a bit," Colleen said with a sigh. She turned from Maria and went back into the house. Sure enough, the activity room was locked. Colleen opened it and stepped in. The first thing she saw was the puff of red hair in the middle of the floor. That was where a skinny little body in denim overalls and a white tee-shirt sprawled out, face down, so completely enthralled with what she was scribbling on the tiles that she didn't even notice Colleen's presence. Colleen thought about yelling, but lectures didn't seem to work on this one. Curious, she tiptoed over to see what the little girl was writing. It didn't make any sense to her. It looked like some kind of math.

"Looks like you'll be staying with us, at least for the night, kiddo," Colleen said.

"Okay Mommy-lady-person," the little girl replied, not even looking up.

Colleen stared with her hands on her hips, wondering if what she had heard was really what she had heard. "You know perfectly well I'm not your mother," she said.

"Right-o, Mommy-lady-person," the girl said, still scribbling away.

"Do you have any idea where your real mother lives, sweetie? Is there some way we can contact her?"

"Mama doesn't live anywhere," the girl said.

"You've got to have a home somewhere," Colleen reasoned.

"Mama doesn't live there," she answered in a singsong voice. "Mama doesn't live here, Mama doesn't live there, Mama doesn't live anywhere, Mama doesn't live."

"Ah," Colleen said awkwardly. "I'm very sorry to hear that."

"Where's Papa?" the little girl asked, as if she'd already forgotten what she had just said.

"That does seem to be the question of the hour, doesn't it?" Colleen said to herself. "Your name is Francoise, is that right?"

"Hmmmm, Francoise," the girl said. She started to invent a song about it. "Francoise, Francoise, bonjour Papá, c'est Francoise, je no se quas…"

Colleen took that as a "yes." A few bricks shy of a load all right, she thought. The writing on the tiles seemed to have gone from the strange math to a language of letters and numbers, and the girl was clearly more concerned with that than she was worried about her father. Colleen shook her head.

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Author's Note. This is part of a looooong story I started a few years ago and never finished. If you have interest I will post more.