"Bianca… Annelise… Charlotte… Raquel… Paulette…"

Mavis heard the string of names before she even opened the door. She frowned, twisted the knob and opened the door slowly, poking her head in. "What are you doing?"

Johnny looked up from the game of Jenga he had roped the group into. "Oh, hey, honey. We're trying to figure out the kid's name, got any ideas?"

"He's trying to figure it out." Ericka sat on the floor with her legs tucked under herself. The girl, wearing a dress Mavis distinctly remembered despising herself, was pressed against her side, watching Mavis like a mouse watches a hawk. Ericka put a hand on top of her head. "We're trying not to topple the tower."

"And our team's winning!" Dennis cheerfully announced. "Nana Ericka keeps making the tower wobble."

Mavis crossed the room to sit between the two pairs, careful not to knock over the precariously-balanced block tower. "Why are you trying to guess her name?"

"We can't call her 'girl' and 'kid' forever. And if she can't tell us yet, we can guess. It's kinda fun - like Rumpelstiltskin but without the blackmail and threat of kidnapping."

The word 'kidnapping' gave Mavis a brief bit of pause. Was this technically a kidnapping? Ericka had pulled the kid out of the water and onto her own boat, sure, and that was technically a rescue, but… Then she was brought here. Not to mention they had her coat hanging in a closet instead of letting her wear it. Was this a kidnapping? She hadn't considered it before, and the thought made her insides twist uncomfortably.

But she looked over at the girl, who fiddled with the Jenga piece between her fingers. She didn't seem to have any reaction to the word. And if anything, she slid a little bit closer to Ericka, who put an arm around her upper back.

Mavis supposed that was a good sign.

Johnny suddenly snapped his fingers. "I got it! Leila!"

The girl looked confused, then frowned.

"Why are you so sure it's Leila?" Mavis asked.

"Well, she looks like a Leila. Don't you think?" Johnny held his hand out towards the girl, who looked down at herself in confusion, as if trying to see what he apparently did. "Am I right? Is that your name?"

She looked back up and shook her head, lips pressed together firmly. It was hard to tell if she was trying not to laugh, or if she hated the name that much.

Mavis leaned forward a little, lowering her voice. "Do you want him to stop?"

There was another short pause. Then, to her surprise, the girl shook her head. Her lips pressed tighter together, and this time Mavis could see the corners twitching slightly. Ah, so that was how it was.

"Okay, but I wanna warn you, we have baby name books. In our rooms and in the library. He's got a lot of options."

"Ohhh, you're right, I completely forgot about those!"

The girl flinched slightly as she pulled her wooden block out of the tower. Wordlessly, Ericka drew her to her side again.


Over the next few days, with the girl joining them more and more often for quiet board games or eating in their apartment, Mavis began to remember something from her earlier part of childhood:

The fact that once, she'd wanted a sibling.

She wasn't sure if this really… counted? She was an adult, this was a child. ("She's ten, by the way," Johnny casually told her one night. Dennis had been thrilled because it meant the new kid was old enough to be 'a cool older kid,' but not so old that she wouldn't even consider hanging out.) And she hadn't even been there that long. She still didn't talk to them, preferring to stick close to Ericka, but she was smiling a little at Johnny's attempts to guess her name. And while she still gave Mavis wary looks, she wasn't running or hiding.

It was something.

In any case, there was a kid here, and one directly under the care of her dad and stepmom. She and Johnny helped out, but more often than not it was Ericka looking after her. So it… sort of was starting to feel like… well, something. She wasn't sure.

Don't get attached, she thought to herself. She'll be going home later.

But still. Before that happened, she found herself looking over at her and remembering how she'd wanted siblings. Kids her age - or just a little bit younger, one who would look up to her as a cool big sis, borrow her things without asking, they could have each other's back and they'd each have someone to play with no matter what… She would have been fine with a brother, but she'd really wanted a sister. When she was little, she had it all figured out: they'd share clothes, brush each other's hair, she'd be the one the other girl would come to for advice, and she'd think she was so cool and grown-up…

Of course, though, that never happened. And she gave up on that idea very quickly.

There had simply just… been no way she was getting a sibling. It wasn't happening.

But still. A part of her, a tiny and quiet part, hadn't stopped wanting.

And that part seemed to have reawoken with their unexpected guest.

That was probably why it hurt when the girl drew away from her, or watched her teeth warily.

But soon enough, her own chance to spend time with the new kid and build a bridge came, and it happened when she was walking past the laundry room.

Noises inside the laundry room were nothing unusual. At any given moment, someone would be in there, working on moving clothes to the dyer, or unloading into a basket, or maybe even washing the old-fashioned way - with a huge copper pout, boiling water, and lavender flowers with lye. But this time, the shuffling noise Mavis heard as she went in to put Dennis's laundry into the machine was different. It was less confident, faltering as if the room were unfamiliar. And there was a repeated soft noise, like clothes were being dropped onto the floor.

Her hand stilled on the knob as the thought struck her. No. It couldn't be. What were the odds?

But sure enough, when she looked inside, there was the girl.

The girl's back was to the door, and she was wearing another of Mavis's old dresses - another black one. Ericka had put in an online order for a few more modern clothes, but they hadn't arrived yet. Mavis could tell the girl was itching - literally - to get something else to wear, from the way she kept pulling on her sleeves and scratching at where the high collars met her chin.

And judging by the way she was pulling clothes out of the dryer, holding them up to herself, then dropping them back to the floor, she had gotten tired of waiting.

Mavis bit her lip as she entered the room, making sure her footsteps sounded against the stone floor so as not to startle her. "You know someone's going to have to wash those all over again," she said.

The girl jumped, dropping the oversized shirt she was holding up like it was on fire. She looked at Mavis, face paling.

"It's okay, you're not in trouble. I won't tell on you. Wait…" Mavis squinted and looked at the clothes again. "Are those Johnny's?"

The girl kicked at the clothes pile, looking away with her hands behind her back.

"Is this revenge for 'Muriel' yesterday?" she asked, wrinkling her nose a bit. "I mean, I wouldn't blame you if it was, that was kind of a bad one…"

The girl's lips pressed tightly together and she looked away sharply.

"Or…" Mavis slowly smiled. "Are you looking for new clothes? You won't want those, they're pretty well-used." When the girl glared at the clothes on the floor, she laughed and set the laundry basket down. "Okay. Come with me."

She started to walk away, but as she paused by the door she noticed the girl looked unsure. She inclined her head towards the hallway. "Come on. It'll be okay. And you can kick me in the shin if you think I'm tricking you. I'm going to do some magic for you."

The girl nearly tripped over the floor-length skirt of her (Mavis's) dress, and it was everything she could do not to laugh.


"Okay, so we just let out the seams here… stitch it along here, tie it off…" Mavis muttered to herself, tongue poking between her fangs. She held her old dress in her lap, deftly moving the needle and thread along the hem. On the table next to her was a pair of sewing scissors, a pincushion, and several strips of fabric that had been cut away. The girl sat across from her, wearing one of her own bathrobes, and watched with interest.

"Aaaand done." Mavis grinned and held it up. "Try it on."

As the girl cautiously took it and walked behind the screen Mavis had set up, the woman kept talking. "I know it's not perfect, and this is only temporary until your new clothes come in tomorrow. But this way you won't be walking around feeling like a mannequin, I bet." The sound of fabric rustling stopped, and Mavis tilted her head a bit. "Come out and let me see?"

The girl stepped out, staring past Mavis and into the large mirror behind her. The dress had been altered; the itchy lace atop the collar had been removed and the fabric adjusted so it still covered her throat, the sleeves had been shortened and made into small cap sleeves instead of reaching her wrists, and the skirt now reached her knees. And just for some color, Mavis had quickly added a bright blue ribbon belt. The girl stared at herself, slowly turning around as she lifted her arms.

And then she made a face.

"I know, not what you'd have picked. But I'd rather do this than have you walking around in an old, sweaty men's shirt," Mavis laughed.

A quick smile appeared on the girl's face before she could stop it.

Mavis's eyes widened a bit, but she didn't comment. "Hey. You wanna come see the library?" she whispered, like she was sharing a secret. "We've got a lot of cool kids books there."

So it wasn't how she'd imagined it, she thought to herself as she led the girl down the hallway and felt the girl grasping the edge of her sleeve. But this was a tiny start. Baby steps.

However long it would last.

Meanwhile, down in the laundry room, Johnny stared at a pile of shirts on the floor, dumbfoundedly holding an empty laundry basket. "What happened to my stuff?" he muttered.