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quickly. I’ve even asked her to tutor one of the younger ones having trouble with subtraction.”
    Daniel hoped Donna Forley would be one of the Home’s success stories. After losing her mother to illness at an early age, Donna was raised by her father and an aunt until the war, when battle and influenza took them both from the poor child. Life had dealt Donna a terrible hand indeed, and she’d been withdrawn and near starving when she had come to the Home. Now, at sixteen, she was blooming into a confident young woman ready to take her place in the world. She’d managed to establish bonds with the other children, crafting siblings when no blood family existed. Daniel took great satisfaction in the fact that many of the Home’s “graduating” classes became makeshift siblings to each other in the outside world. Father had told him, “The Home makes families out of need, not blood,” and it was true.
    He was almost afraid to ask the next question. “And the business with Matthew Hammond?” Romantic entanglements—even on the most basic teenage levels—were one of the most difficult parts of his job. Young hearts deprived of familial affection often looked for love in inappropriate places. It seemed at least once a week he, Mrs. Smiley and Mr. Grimshaw had to sit down and strategize how to keep Boy A from finding a few minutes alone with Girl B out behind the dormitories. Mr. MacNeil had even once suggested they install a hive of honeybees in that corner to deter “trysts.” While Daniel applauded the groundskeeper’s creativity, he also knew young hearts would simply seek out another secluded corner. Since then, however, “beehiving” had become the staff code word for teens getting a bit too sweet on each other.
    â€œSettled for now,” Mrs. Smiley said wearily. This particular couple had been caught “beehiving” multiple times, making Daniel wish Donna would indeed focus her clever mind on math rather than Math
ew
. “But it won’t be the last, I’m sure.” Her eyes squinted in analysis, as if the pair were a mathematical equation. “Properly chaperoned, they might make an appropriate couple.”
    Daniel sat back in surprise. “Really?” While still eminently clinical, this was the first time he’d ever seen Mrs. Smiley offer anything close to an endorsement of any couple. Just because his curiosity refused to let go, he asked, “How so?”
    â€œWhen they’re not making eyes at each other over supper, their characters do suit each other well.” She folded her hands in front of her. “Donna coaxes him out of that shell of his, and Matt calms Donna down. Matt turns seventeen next month, and Donna two months after that. I believe they might actually fare well if they chose to make a go of it after graduation.” Again, Daniel couldn’t shake the notion that she looked as if she’d just solved an algebra problem, not brokered a match.
    Still, Mrs. Smiley claimed to have been happily married for six years before her husband died. As a bachelor himself, Daniel had to at least respect her opinion as the more experienced on the subject of courtship and matrimony. He certainly brought no expertise to the subject; women had mostly bored or baffled him. Not that Mother ever ceased to offer up suitable bridal candidates—that woman’s pursuit of a Parker family heir could never be called subtle.
    It served him well that most women, while enamored of his social standing, quickly grew tired of the time and devotion he gave to the Home. And for all of Mother’s rants about his duty to the Parker legacy to pressure him to find a bride, wasn’t
this
the true Parker legacy—this orphanage that his father had built? Daniel knew he didn’t measure up to his father in many ways, but he would not cease in striving to give his best to the Home, come what may.
    â€œAnd