He had never liked the big house. Well, that's not completely true: he had liked it at first, when Daddy carried him through the long, echoey hallways on his shoulders and Miss Louane would sneak him treats when Mama wasn't looking. But then his mother and father went away, and Richard had told him to pack his favorite toys and given him the biggest room to sleep in. And at first he still liked it enough, and he liked the girls—the nice ones, anyway—and Mimaw let him eat ice cream and go to the flea circus as much as he wanted, and that was fun for a while. But it didn't take long for the fun to wear off, and some of the girls played mean jokes on him and he got lost in the long hallways and the animals were huge and scary and his room got so dark at night, and he hated the big house, just hated it.
He had liked Julia's house from the start. It was smaller than the big house but bigger than home, and the room that had once belonged to a boy called Freddie was just the right size for him, and had the best toys. He tried not to think about the day Paul had yelled at him, because now the old man didn't mind when he played with the tin soldiers and even played with him sometimes, and now when he heard the old man crying at night he wasn't too scared to go to him and hold his hand. He cried at night too, sometimes.
He didn't remember much about that night, the night when Richard saved him. Sometimes when he shut his eyes he could still hear the bangs and the shouts, and they frightened him even though he knew they were only in his mind. There were no strange men at Julia's, only the sweet lady that had made Richard blush and Paul, who wasn't as mean as he'd let on in the beginning. That didn't always stop him from seeing the bad men when he tried to fall asleep, but it helped to make them go away again.
He hadn't felt much like talking, in the beginning. He missed his Mama and his Daddy, and Richard most of all. He would sit in the window, staring at the cars passing by and waiting for Richard to come back and take him home, like he'd promised, but after a while he started to give up hope, and then he gave it up altogether. Julia didn't mind—she made him eggs better than Mama could and didn't get mad when he didn't always eat them. And she sat with him at night and stroked his head and told him he was safe here, and he believed her. But he still missed Richard.
He finally felt like talking when the weather got hot and he woke up one morning wanting to go to the sea, like he used to do with Mama. When he said this to Julia over breakfast, she had grinned from ear to ear and packed a blanket and a picnic lunch, and they spent the day by the water and made a sandcastle and she even bought them ice cream cones. The whole time, he kept an eye out for Richard or his mother to come find them, but they did; he didn't mention this to Julia.
He wasn't sure when it happened, but after a while he started to feel at home with Julia and Paul. He still thought about his Mimaw, wondered if she missed him and if she still lived in the big house with the girls and the strange men and the giant bear. He still thought about his mother and father, waiting for him somewhere far away where they wanted to come back to him, but couldn't. And he still thought about Richard, who always made him feel safe even when everything was so scary and new. But he liked living here, in his just-right room with his toys and Julia's yummy cooking in his belly every night. He started going to the little schoolhouse up the road and made some friends there, and no one asked why he lived with his aunt and uncle and not his parents, like the rest of the kids, and that was okay. He wouldn't know what to tell them, anyhow.