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Celia sheds her bags and coat and hugs me. I haven’t seen her in a year.

“Lucinda, this is Clare DeTamble. Clare, this is Lucinda Flowers.”

“Hello, Lucinda. It’s lovely to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you . . .” says Lucinda in a barely audible whisper.

“Have you been here before?”

“No . . .”

Celia says, “She’s not usually quite so shy, it must be all this grandeur.” Lucinda is staring at the huge Christmas tree. “Why don’t you get up and go have a good look at it and then we’ll get down to lunching?”

Lucinda looks at me from the corner of her eye with her head turned. I smile. “Go for it, Lucinda.” She slides off her chair and walks toward and around the tree; she’s trying to take it all in without bumping into anyone. For a moment everyone in the room notices Lucinda. She is rapt and graceful, and the diners of the Walnut Room appreciate her, remember their own childhoods and smile upon her.

Celia says, “Everywhere we go, it’s like that. People notice her, it’s like walking down the street with Beyoncé.”

“How’s she adapting to living with you?”

“She’s starting to sass back a little, which I take as a good sign. At first she was mostly silent, and then she was ultrapolite, like she was scared I was going to send her back. Which was a sensible notion for her to hold, based on everything that has gone before. You couldn’t joke with her at all. But I introduced her to Darcy—” (Celia’s most recent foster daughter, who has aged out of the system) “—and I think Darcy calmed her down. She’s testing me a teensy tiny bit lately. I think we’ll get there.” Celia smiles broadly.

Lucinda returns and we get down to lunching. Of course we all order the potpie. Lucinda is quiet, she concentrates on eating and watching the other diners, she yearns toward the twinkling tree, she listens as Celia and I fill each other in on the events of the past year.

“I can’t believe Alba is fourteen already,” Celia says.

“She’s taller than me now,” I say. “It’s crazy, she grew six inches in one year.”

“Well, Lucinda is taller than me, but everyone is, so I’m used to it,” Celia replies. “But you’re going to be pretty tall,” she says to Lucinda. “She comes from a tall family.”

Lucinda doesn’t look as though she wants me to inquire about her tall family, so I say, “What do you want to be when you grow up, Lucinda?”

Alba would have considered this a lame question when she was nine, but Lucinda appears to take it seriously. “I think I would like to be a model,” she says softly. “Or maybe a stylist. I like fashion.”

“You could be a model and then a stylist,” I offer. Celia frowns and I wonder if I’m being ageist. “Or the other way around.” An idea pokes at me, a very partial idea whose implications I haven’t considered before I open my mouth. “Have you done any modeling yet?”

“No, ma’am,” Lucinda says.

“I know someone, an artist, who might need a model.”

Celia shoots me a look. “Modeling for artists isn’t what Lucinda has in mind.”

“This would be for Beck. She’s looking for a girl to be the avatar for an artificial intelligence she created.”

“Like making a video game avatar?” Lucinda asks.

“Yes, exactly,” I say. “The character is a girl named Isadora who lives in a museum. Her job is to take care of the things in the museum’s collection.”

Celia says, “Maybe we could come over and talk to Beck about it. Would you like to do that, Lucinda?”

Lucinda nods. We order ice cream, and Lucinda eats hers slowly while Celia and I chat about politics, her latest causes, my upcoming shows. We pay, put on our coats and gather our bags. As we wander through the store, watching Lucinda take in the sparkly slinky dresses and the acres of winter coats, Celia says quietly, “If this is what I think it is, y’all ought to pay Lucinda handsomely, if she ends up doing it. I mean, this is a kind of digital body-snatching, isn’t it?”

“Not exactly. Beck has used me as a model, it’s just like being photographed. Beck isn’t going to steal Lucinda’s soul. She would be the image of Isadora, so if you were in Beck’s museum and you encountered Isadora, she would look just like Lucinda.”

“Is this a commercial thing? Is Beck going to sell it?”

“No, it’s the opposite; Beck made an AI that currently has the form of a digital cat, but she keeps saying she’s a girl. And Lucinda reminds me of the way Isadora describes herself. I don’t know if Beck will agree, or if Isadora will recognize herself in Lucinda. But this isn’t something Beck will sell—it’s a gift for a lonely robot.”

Celia looks skeptical. “I’ll say this for you, Clare, it’s never boring on your planet. Let’s make a playdate for Lucinda and Beck’s robot. If it works out, y’all should fund Lucinda’s way through college.”