Our birthday is nearing again and Rabbit and I are in the library. She has a large book propped against her crossed legs and I am sowing a patch onto one of the other girl's coats. It's been nearly four months since any of us have seen Rose, all of us still ask Sister Agatha for news.

"Fox, do you ever think about your mother?" Her question is so direct and strange that I stop what I'm doing and look up.

"What do you mean?"

"You know," Rabbit prompts. "Your real mother, before you came here."

"She's dead," I say. I don't even have a name; this does not trouble me yet. Like all of our mothers I know that it was the affliction, I know that she was fifteen.

Rabbit all but ignores what I just said. She does this when the conversation does not turn the way she would like it to. "But who do you think she was?"

I don't answer; I know Rabbit will continue for me.

"I'll bet she was an actress," Rabbit is a poet when she speaks like this. Her eyes sparkle and she gets a faraway look on her face. I don't say anything; I know that she needs to continue. "I'll bet she was on the stage." I try to picture the train whistle somewhere beyond the convent, or the white smoke stacks, I cannot picture a stage. Rabbit only knows about it from the novels that she reads. "I'll bet your father was an actor too—he would have been older, but not as old as Father Urselle." I continue to sow, I do not stop her, but a smirk swells across my cheeks. "I'll bet it was love at first sight."

I do not tell her that I bet my real mother died in a hospital or a convent when she was fifteen. My father did not claim me, therefore he does not exist. My eyes travel to the ceiling. I stop trying to imagine a stage, and instead I image Rose dying in the bed upstairs.