By then the library was clearing out. Lilly-Rose had completely forgotten about her 2:00 class.

Her hearing dog Max sat patiently at her feet, but he had already nudged her a couple of times to remind her that it was getting close to dinnertime. She had one last bit of information to look up.

Jim Davis had once mentioned that his sister was a pharmacist's assistant. Maybe it wasn't Jim who was the connection with Canadian drug smugglers. Maybe it was his sister.

But, after fifteen minutes, she still had not tracked down Jim Davis's sister, and the daycare center closed at 6:00.

By the time she reached the center, the other kids had all been picked up by their parents.

"I'm sorry," Lilly-Rose told the pastor's wife, who ran the center. She articulated very carefully so the woman could understand her. "I have a problem."

Then she pulled out her notepad and wrote a note for her to read: "I'm afraid to take Zane home to my apartment tonight, because I think it might have been used as a meth lab. I think there may be toxic fumes in it. On the Internet I found some information saying a child should never be inside a place like that. Could you keep Zane overnight for one night?"

The pastor's wife looked shocked by what she read. She looked up at Lilly-Rose and slowly nodded her head, "Yes." Then she took the notepad and pencil from Lilly-Rose's hands and wrote: "I'll take him home with me tonight. What about you? Where will you go?"

"I don't know," Lilly-Rose wrote in reply, "but I'll figure out something and come get Zane here tomorrow afternoon, if that's OK."

Lilly-Rose had often wondered why so many women on the reservation refused to leave home when their husbands beat and abused them. Now she understood. 'They had nowhere to go.'

As she left, Zane started to cry. She turned away from him. It hurt her to see him like that. She realized he had on nothing but a hand-knit sweater Aunt Daisy had made for him and diapers. It would be winter soon. He needed a parka.

'He's just a little guy. Who knew he would need so much?' she thought. He hardly took up any space. He didn't eat much. She hadn't believed Aunt Daisy when she warned how hard it was going to be to get a college education and raise a kid at the same time.

Lilly-Rose walked away, and Mrs. Miller began to jiggle Zane up and down and to croon to him--at least that is what Lilly-Rose guessed she must be doing. It was what she would do to calm him. She couldn't hear either one of them.

At that moment she felt as if she were stepping through a looking glass--she was cut off from everything she loved. Her baby's cries were silenced by an impenetrable barrier. Lilly-Rose and Zane had never before spent a night apart. She knew her boy was even more scared than she was.